Tradition! How Did Baseball Get RBIs vs. Runs Wrong for a Century?

During the 20th Century, baseball wisdom tended to value Runs Batted In over Runs Scored despite no theoretical justification. How come?

I was going to write a high-minded philosophy of science post about how one of the main arguments behind the Race Does Not Exist conventional wisdom:

… there is more genetic variation within a single population subgroup than between two different population subgroups.

… would also prove that Team Does Not Exist because there is more variation with a single baseball team than between two different teams.

For example, the 2024 World Series-winning Los Angeles Dodgers were feared during the off-season to be ruining baseball by signing the best free agents, both in America and Japan. The Dodgers have a huge market (5% of the U.S. population lives in the 5 SoCal counties) and, over the last decade, smart management. So since 2017 they’ve been on a tear exceeded only by the great New York Yankees teams of the Babe Ruth to Mickey Mantle eras. They’ve managed to win two of the last eight World Series.

But 56 games into the 2025 regular season (35% of the 162 game season), the Dodgers are only a good but not great 34-22 because a huge number of their pitchers are hurt. Still, their six best hitters have performed up to expectations, so they are scoring a lot of runs (which they need).

To compare the mighty (at least in payroll and repute) Dodgers to the historically horrible Colorado Rockies (9-47), I looked around for a simple-to-grasp measure that could be used both for individual players and the whole team and settled upon runs scored per game.

But then … I got distracted by observing that Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani has scored 59 runs in the first 56 games of the Dodgers’ 162 game baseball season (in 54 of which he’s played), putting him on pace for 171 runs, the most since Babe Ruth’s 1921 season.

In contrast, the mighty Aaron Judge (6’7” and 282 pounds) of the New York Yankees is batting a stratospheric .391 with almost as many homers as Ohtani (18 to Ohtani’s 20), but is on pace for a mere 150 runs (through Wednesday).

“Mere” is intended sarcastically. By the way, the last three players to reach 150 or more runs in one season were Jeff Bagwell in 2000, Ted Williams in 1949 and Joe DiMaggio in 1937.

Generally speaking, if you have a good point to make, you can often find famous examples to illustrate it that even readers with the most casual interest in the subject have heard of: granted, Bagwell, while a Hall of Famer, is relatively obscure. But the names Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, and Ted Williams ought to be recognized by Americans with even the most casual interest in sports history or merely in the popular culture of the 20th Century.

Similarly, Ohtani and Judge are obviously the two greatest baseball players of the current decade.

As I may have mentioned once or twice over the years, Ohtani is also a pitcher, for which he’s endlessly compared to Babe Ruth who both pitched and hit homers in 1918-19, before moving permanently to the outfield.

Ohtani hasn’t pitched since 2023, when he got his second Tommy John surgery. But he threw a batting practice session a few days ago and reached 97 miles per hour. The Dodgers aren’t hurrying his return to the mound, presumably because they want him to pitch in the post-season and they don’t want him to blow out his arm again in a less-important mid-season game.

Runs Scored was long under-valued relative to Runs Batted In, especially in Most Valuable Player voting, although in theory and practice they seem highly comparable in worth.

I think the reason RBIs were glamorized more is because …

Paywall here.

… they were of more value to newspaper headline writers: e.g., “Giants Capture Pennant, Beating Dodgers 5-4 in 9th on Thomson’s 3-Run Homer.” A player can earn up to four RBIs in one at-bat but can score only one run, so RBIs tend more often to be the dramatic turning point to highlight in the opening of an article on today’s game. For example, in the Shot Heard Around the World Game that decided the 1951 National League pennant in a tiebreaker playoff, Bobby Thomson had 4 RBIs, but all 5 runs scored by the New York Giants were scored by different players.

In general, RBIs are a little lumpier than runs: e.g., in a key game late last season, just as the fading Dodgers looked like they’d be overtaken by the surging San Diego Padres, Ohtani drove in ten runs to turn the season around and launch the tired Dodgers on their way to winning the World Series.

In contrast, no individual player has scored more than six times in one game since modern baseball began in 1901. (In contrast, the single game record for RBIs is 12.) So, RBIs, not unreasonably, find their way into the headlines about last night’s game more than do runs scored.

Similarly, RBIs can pile up a little higher than runs in a single season: eight times during the turn of the century Steroids Era did players reach 150 or more RBIs, with Manny Ramirez’s 165 in 1999 being the peak since the 1930s.

But over the long haul, it’s hard to argue that one is much more important than the other. (There are slightly more runs scored than RBIs since runs scored on errors don’t count as RBIs, but, on the whole, they are pretty comparable in number.)

Besides Ohtani’s batting and base-running skills, one reason for all the run-scoring is that the next five batters in the Dodgers lineup are good.

Another reason is that only in this decade did it occur to teams to put their best hitter, such as Ohtani, up first in the lineup. That way, he will get the most plate appearances over the course of the season, maybe 50 or 55 more turns at bat than the #4 clean-up hitter.

Until recently, teams had aesthetic theories about how to craft batting line-ups to be things of beauty. The leadoff man should be the fastest base-stealer, the #2 hitter a self-sacrificing hit and run artist (for example, the famous 1927 New York Yankees batted light-hitting shortstop Mark Koenig second in the World Series, ahead of #3 Ruth and #4 Lou Gehrig), the third the best all-around hitter, the fourth the most powerful slugger, the fifth a slow but strong hitter, and so forth.

Unfortunately, the traditional order, lovely as it was, didn’t actually score as many runs as possible.

For example, Koenig in 1927 had a solid season at bat for a shortstop, but he had an on-base average of .320 and a slugging average of .382. By batting him second he was precluding about 20 extra plate appearances per year to Ruth (.486/.772) and 40 per year to Gehrig (.474/.765) in perhaps the greatest season ever by two sluggers on the same team. Ruth and Gehrig’s old-fashioned batting average / homers / RBI stats were .356 / 50 / 165 and .373 / 47 / 173, respectively.

Those guys were good.

What really matters is not saving your best hitters to drive in the most runs in the first inning, but getting your best hitters up to the plate the most often times. Say that you are losing by one run in the ninth inning and your #9 hitter just made the second out of the final inning in the 36th plate appearance by your team in this game — i.e., you’ve gone through your batting line-up four times. You now are down to your last chance, the one guy guaranteed to get a fifth plate appearance in this game, your leadoff hitter. Who do you want to bat for your last chance to tie the game? A skinny speedster or the major leagues’ home run leader (Ohtani)?

One reason to use home run hitters at the top of the lineup is because they also tend to get more walks because pitchers are scared to aim their pitches down the middle against them. My vague impression is that Ohtani is an action addict (last season, unable to pitch, he stole 59 bases as well as hitting 54 homers, an unheard of combination) who would prefer to swing away rather than draw walks. But pitchers insist on nibbling at the corners against him so he winds up on base a lot.

Thus, we see previously unthinkable phenomena like the fine Philadelphia Phillies using 5’11” and 229 pound slugger Kyle Schwarber, who doesn’t do much besides hit homers and draw walks, as their lead-off hitter. In 2023 he scored a head-scratching 108 runs while batting .197, but hitting 47 homers and drawing 126 walks.

You could argue that baseball was better when Schwarber was relegated to batting fifth as God intended rather than the sacrilege of him batting in Lou Brock’s spot.

But this year, the plodding designated hitter is tied for third with speedy Pete Crow-Armstrong for most runs scored in baseball behind Ohtani and Judge.

This evolution in baseball tactics reminds me of the story about how Bono and his producer Steve Lillywhite couldn’t agree on what order to place the songs in on U2’s 1987 Joshua Tree album. They both had complex but contradictory theories about how to maximize their artistic impact. Finally, in exhaustion, with the deadline at hand, they asked Lillywhite’s wife, singer Kirsty MacColl (who did the duet on the Pogues’ great Christmas song “Fairytale of New York”) to decide for them.

Everybody was stunned by how perfectly her list worked. The record became an immense hit.

When asked how she came up with this album order, she said something to the effect of: I put the best song (“Where the Streets Have No Name”) first, the second best song second, the third best song third, and so forth.

So, to get back on topic … the Dodgers (average runs per game of 5.61) have scored a vast 77% more runs per game this years than the extraordinarily inept Rockies (3.16), which is a huge amount.

On the other hand, among Dodger regulars, Ohtani has scored 59 runs in 54 games played (an average of 1.09) while slumping veteran Max Muncy has scored 13 in 52 games (an average of 0.25). So, Ohtani has been 337% better than Muncy at scoring runs per game.

Therefore, TEAM DOES NOT EXIST!

Or something.