skyking162

Dave Pinto points out that Jim Thome failed to score in a game for the first time today. That’s right, he had scored in every one of the ChiSox first 17 games this season. Mister Pinto explains an often overlooked baseball truth:

We like to think of run scorers as the fast, leadoff men, but six of the top ten in runs scored were known more for their power than for their speed. In fact, most had the deadly combination of a high OBA and power. The OBA means they’re on base when their teammates hit. The power means they score on their own (home runs) or get themselves on base in scoring position.

Obviously, hitting at the top of the lineup leads to more runs that batting at the bottom of the order, but a study that controlled for lineup position would without a doubt show that the Albert Pujols and Derrek Lees of the world do the most towards getting themselves home. Like Dave points out, getting on base and hitting for power to advance yourself around the bases are the two best ways to make sure you score a bunch of runs. Here are some correlations from 2005 between player runs and some other individual stats:

OB .980
TB+ .979
TB .976
HIT .973
PA .969
AB .964
XBH .941
RBI .920
BB .885
SO .865
HR .821
SB .556
CS .552

TB+ is total bases plus walks and hbp’s. Obviously, any counting stat will correlate decently with runs scored because more playing time leads to more of everything. I need to figure out a way to control for lineup position. If you assume that players with better on-base and stolen base skills tend to bat higher in the order and batters with more power get dropped a little, then these numbers overinflate the importance of OBP and SB (which is damn low anyways) and underestimate XBH and HR.

Here are the correlations for RBI:
TB .964
TB+ .964
OB .933
HR .927
PA .924
RUN .922
HIT .919
AB .920
XBH .898
SO .873
BB .860
CS .353
SB .326

The big changes in this list are that HR shoots up, XBH falls, and both SB/CS fall. The fact that doubles and triples correlate better with RUNs than RBI is interesting — sure, they advance other players towards home, but people tend to ignore that they also do a lot to advance yourself towards home. And boy do managers sure like to use stolen bases as a determinant for batting order position, huh?

Here are the top 20 finishers in runs scored last year:
129 pujols,albert
124 rodriguez,alex
122 jeter,derek
120 lee,derrek
119 ortiz,david
117 damon,johnny
115 rollins,jimmy
114 young,michael
113 figgins,chone
112 ramirez,manny
112 teixeira,mark
111 sizemore,grady
111 suzuki,ichiro
110 bay,jason
108 matsui,hideki
107 dunn,adam
106 cabrera,miguel
104 abreu,bobby
104 giles,marcus
104 sheffield,gary

I count only about six guys that are traditional leadoff type hitters. The rest are bashers. Imagine if Albert Pujols hit first or second for the Cardinals with Rolen and Edmonds healthy. Is it unrealistic to think he could score 150 runs? 160? 170? The all-time record is 192 runs, accomplished in 1894. The post-1900 record is 177 by Babe Ruth in 1921. The post- 1950 record is 152 by Jeff Bagwell in 2000. Bagwell batted inf front of Moises Alou and Richard Hidalgo, who both slugged over .620.

Hat Tips…

… to Dave Pinto for the Jim Thome observation.
… to Baseball-Reference.com for the historical information.
… to Doug’s Stats for last year’s stats in easily downloadable format.

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