If you’re reading this site, chances are you’ve at least dipped a toe into the waters of analytics, sabermetrics, whatever you want to call it. Even if you haven’t done more than that–or even that at all–you likely know that RBI isn’t exactly an ‘in vogue’ measure of a player’s performance. And, really, it shouldn’t be. While getting a hit with a man on base is great, that hitter didn’t do the work to put the men on base. At best, a high RBI total shows us a combination of skill–getting the hit–and chance–hitting while there happened to be men on in front of you.
Stil, RBI tells us a story–who scored when and courtesy of whom. Without that story, the story of the game itself can’t be told. Earlier in the week, I saw a story about RBI that caught my attention.
In a Facebook group, someone mentioned Luis Castillo’s 2000 season, in which he notched 17 RBI in 626 (!) plate appearances. Curious as to how that happened, I went to Castillo’s game logs page on Baseball Reference and looked up this handy chart:
Despite how shockingly low that is, especially when you see it compared to the average, it makes sense. Castillo was mostly a leadoff guy who was on a below average (79-82) team, so he routinely had bad hitters and the pitcher in front of him to drive in. The whole thing, though, got me curious about the Yankees. How good were they at driving in runners? Let’s take a look, using some charts. I included only those who had 300+ PA.
Gary Sanchez
| PA | ROB | RBI | RBI % | AVG RBI | AVG ROB | AVG RBI % | +/- RBI% |
| 446 | 296 | 77 | 26 | 54 | 263 | 21 | +5 |
Luke Voit
| PA | ROB | RBI | RBI % | AVG RBI | AVG ROB | AVG RBI % | +/- RBI% |
| 510 | 320 | 62 | 19 | 61 | 300 | 20 | +1 |
DJ LeMahieu
| PA | ROB | RBI | RBI % | AVG RBI | AVG ROB | AVG RBI % | +/- RBI% |
| 655 | 343 | 102 | 30 | 79 | 386 | 20 | +10 |
Didi Gregorius
| PA | ROB | RBI | RBI % | AVG RBI | AVG ROB | AVG RBI % | +/- RBI% |
| 344 | 215 | 61 | 28 | 41 | 202 | 20 | +8 |
Gio Urshela
| PA | ROB | RBI | RBI % | AVG RBI | AVG ROB | AVG RBI % | +/- RBI% |
| 476 | 304 | 74 | 24 | 57 | 280 | 20 | +4 |
Gleyber Torres
| PA | ROB | RBI | RBI % | AVG RBI | AVG ROB | AVG RBI % | +/- RBI% |
| 604 | 368 | 90 | 24 | 73 | 356 | 21 | +3 |
Brett Gardner
| PA | ROB | RBI | RBI % | AVG RBI | AVG ROB | AVG RBI % | +/- RBI% |
| 550 | 305 | 74 | 24 | 66 | 324 | 20 | +4 |
Aaron Judge
| PA | ROB | RBI | RBI % | AVG RBI | AVG ROB | AVG RBI % | +/- RBI% |
| 447 | 249 | 55 | 22 | 54 | 263 | 21 | +1 |
This isn’t too surprising, is it? The Yankees get a lot of men on base–not one player had fewer than expected runners–and drive a lot of them in–not one player had fewer than expected RBI. As such, all of them are above the average expected RBI% by at least 1%, with DJLM smoking everyone else at 10% above average.
Are these players good because they have high RBI totals and percentages compared to the average? No. They have those things because they are good players and they play with good players who get on base. RBI don’t tell the whole story, but they tell part of it. In this case, it’s another way of telling us the the Yankees are good at hitting. Plain and simple.