Others Batted In

Dr. Giganto

Sports Moderator

So, even though people have used RBI as a measure of a player's contributions, there's an obvious problem with it: It can be highly dependent on your teammates. After all, a player in a great offense will have lots of RBI opportunities, while the 9 hitter on a terrible team will have far fewer opportunities, translating to fewer RBIs.

So, baseballprospectus keeps track of "Others Batted In", which is basically RBIs minus home runs. They also give you an overall OBI%, as well as the percentage of knocking in guys from each of the three bases.

Here are 2007's leaders in OBI% (min. 400 plate appearances):

1. Magglio Ordonez 21.85%
2. Matt Holliday 21.22%
3. Chase Utley 21.04%
4. Ryan Braun 20.86%
5. Vlad Guerrero 20.46%
6. Sammy Sosa 20.34%
7. Victor Martinez 19.82%
8. Chone Figgins 19.64%
9. Miguel Cabrera 19.63%
10. Nick Markakis 19.60%

Just for reference, the 2 MVPs, A-Rod and J. Rollins were #s 12 and 66, respectively, out of 210 eligible hitters.

The bottom 10:

1. Nick Punto 7.72%
2. Rickie Weeks 7.97%
3. Juan Pierre 10.51%
4. David Eckstein 10.57%
5. Alfredo Amezaga 10.73%
6. Ryan Garko 10.78%
7. Shannon Stewart 10.94%
8. AJ Pierzynski 11.04%
9. Akinori Iwamura 11.11%
10. Ty Wigginton 11.38%

Blitzkrieg

Administrator

I'm shocked to see Sammy Sosa on the list lol

Freak

I don't understand what the percentage refers to...

Dr. Giganto

Sports Moderator

It's what percentage of baserunners were driven in by each batter. So, for instance, 21.85% of all runners that were on-base when Magglio came up to bat last year were driven in by Magglio.


It's indicative of a hitter's success in driving in runners. The fact that it's a percentage and not just an overall number (like RBIs) levels the playing field, since the clean-up hitter for the Red Sox will have many more opportunities to drive runners in than the #9 hitter for the Royals, and thus would be much more likely to have a ton of RBIs, even if the players were of equal caliber