Betancourt and RBIs

A couple years ago Baseball Prospectus had a contest where they were calling for writers to submit articles, BP Idol is what I think they named it. I don't recall too many of the details but basically they'd review and eliminate articles every so often and post the ones that advanced on their website. I thought it was an interesting idea so I decided to give it a shot. I knew I wasn't a good enough writer or statistically inclined enough to ever advance so I went in another direction, I wrote up a defense of RBIs. My plan was that they'd be so dumbfounded that I'd pass the initial screening just because they'd want to see what I'd defend next. That article is now lost to a deceased laptop and I can't quite recall what all I wrote but I do remember using every cliche in the book, about how only good hitters drive in 100 runs and several others. Man, I really sold it. Unfortunately they weren't buying what I was selling which is too bad because I'm sure their subscribers would've had a field day with it.

By now you're probably asking what this has to do with Betancourt, though I expect you already have a feeling where I'm going. Last season he tied for the team lead in RBIs with Butler and since he also tied for the team lead in home runs with Guillen this led people to believe he had a better season than he actually did. This post is inspired by an actual conversation I had with an old friend of mine, he believed Betancourt was the Royals best player last season. His reasoning is that whoever leads the team in RBIs has done more than the rest to help the team win games. Furthermore he bet me that if I went through the Royals past, using my "nerdy stats" like brWAR and OPS+, I'd actually prove him right. In the words of the immortal Barney Stinson, "Challenge accepted!". Now it might be unfair to use brWAR since it incorporates defense but he did say best player, not just best hitter.

So here's what I did, I went back and looked at the team leader in RBIs, brWAR, and OPS+ from every season since 1991. He suspected that the three would match up 90% of the time and if they didn't than it was because brWAR and OPS+ are flawed, not RBIs. Yeah, he's of the earth is still flat even if you prove it round ilk. At this point I realized there was probably no point in looking at the stats but my curiosity had already been piqued so I went ahead with it. So here's the team leaders in the three stats for the last 20 years.

Year	RBIs	brWAR	OPS+
1991	Tartabull	Tartabull	Tartabull
1992	Jefferies	Miller	McReynolds
1993	Brett	Gagne	MacFarlane
1994	Hamelin	Hamelin	Hamelin
1995	Gaetti	Gaetti	Joyner
1996	Paquette	MacFarlane	MacFarlane
1997	King	Bell	Davis
1998	Palmer	Offerman	Offerman
1999	Dye	Damon	Sweeney
2000	Sweeney	Damon	Dye
2001	Beltran	Beltran	Sweeney
2002	Beltran	Sweeney	Sweeney
2003	Beltran	Beltran	Beltran
2004	Sweeney	Randa	Sweeney
2005	Brown	DeJesus	Sweeney
2006	Brown	DeJesus	Teahen
2007	Brown	DeJesus	Grudzielanek
2008	Guillen	DeJesus	Aviles
2009	Butler	DeJesus	Butler
2010	Betancourt Butler	Butler	Butler

So breaking it down we find that 4 times the RBI leader led in WAR and OPS+, that would be 20%, which is a far cry from 90. That's counting Butler last year, not Betancourt.
Removing WAR though and focusing purely on the offensive side of things we find the RBI and OPS+ leaders were the same only 6 times (30%), again counting Butler and not Betancourt. 


This just confirms what we already knew, RBIs are a terrible way to judge and compare hitters. Now I didn't need to do this exercise to confirm that but once an idea is planted in my head I like to see where it leads. All this did lead to one burning question though, how in the hell did Keith Miller ever lead the team in brWAR?