Runs scored are downstream of arguably the most important offensive statistic: on-base percentage plus slugging percentage (OPS). The more times you don’t get out, the more times you’ll score. The more times you hit a double, triple, or HR when you don’t get out, the more times you’ll score than if you were to get walk or single when you don’t get out.
OBP is important as is drawing walks. Going way back to the 70s and 80s, there was Gene Tenace who never hit for a high average but drew a lot of walks. Going way, way back to my father's youth, the Washington Senators had a player named Eddie Yost, nicknamed the Walking Man. He usually hit about .270 and would hit about 12 home runs a year. But he regularly drew 150 walks.
There were several guys after WWII who were somehow like Ted Williams without the power in that they drew a huge number of walks. Mostly in the American League.
But that kind of baseball started to go out of fashion with Jackie Robinson and the Latin influx. African-American players walked just as much as white American players, but for a couple of generations, Latin players were more free-swinging than Americans. The National League especially liked to put a fast Latin as lead off hitter, such as Omar Moreno, even if his On Base Percentage was .280.
Pirates catcher Manny Sanguillen was a notorious "bad ball" hitter. But it caught up with Sanguillen. He rarely walked. Free-swingers tend to be learned by good pitching.
For quite a while, the Pirates had a large contingent of black Latino players and the Pirates generally were strong in the NL East throughout the 70s. But they also had very good pitching, most of whom were white.
Postwar National League teams were more aggressive about pursuing new sources of talent after WWII than the more dominant American League. E.g., the Giants pretty much discovered the Dominican Republic. I can recall watching a 6'3" Japanese pitcher for the SF Giants in 1966. Vin Scully was highly impressed by him.
One downside of the Caribbean players was that their philosophy was "You can't walk off the island:" the scouts were looking for you to crush the ball and they'd be bored if you mostly walked or struck out.
I did a study of this around 2001 and Latins definitely walked less than Americans. I suspect the difference has faded over the last generation but haven't checked.
I think Juan Soto walks a lot. Very disciplined. He's still a terrible outfielder. He's destined to be the Harold Baines of his era. Designated Hitter by the age of 30.
See the 1985 Yankees, where leadoff man Ricky Henderson led the league in runs scored (146) and #3 hitter Don Mattingly led the league in RBIS (145). In the mid-late 80s, the Yankees lineup was almost always Henderson, followed by slap hitting 2nd basemen Willie Randolph, Mattingly, and then slugging Dave Winfield. Now I would probably bat Randolph 9th, in hopes he got on base for Henderson.
The early 1990s White Sox, with post his prime but still good Tim Raines leading off, had two not quite right leadoff hitters in #7 Lance Johnson and #9 Ozzie Guillen. They didn't walk much but when they got hit basehits they got the party started.
Ah, yes. I remember it well. Yankees of the late 90s lineup was Knoblauch, Jeter, O’Neill, Williams. Williams was the best athlete/hitter on the team. Also a very strange guy.
Yes. I do think he became more normal than most later in life. That was quite an era; the Bronx was still burning. I still watch the 1986 World Series on ancient VCR and YouTube every October. The last game is the greatest game ever played in baseball.
Is there a name for this strategy of putting a base-stealer who doesn't get enough walks to be a leadoff hitter as #9? You can get some fun 1980s St. Louis Cardinals style rallies going that way.
The Nationals have that sort of player in Jacob Young, who is hurt right now. Great defensively. Hits about .250. Little power. Can steal a base. Fast. A single gets him home from second. A double gets him home from first.
I don’t know. Always seemed fairly simple to me. If my all star stud hitter with say a . 600 slugging percentage has on average one base runner in front of him this would result an extra 50 or so runs a season in contrast to a slew of solo home runs and doubles. If Bonds or Ruth was batting lead off I’d walk them every single time.
The tradition is based on Protestant notions of not being impatient and greedy: don't waste your home run hitter by having him hit a solo homer to lead off the game.
Almost every team in baseball uses computers to analyze how to use their players and how to attack opposing players. Call me a skeptic on putting power hitters at lead-off just to get them 50 more at-bats a year. Isn't the concept to score more runs, not get more at-bats?
I was brought up to think that RBIs were the most important stat there was for a hitter. A modern computer baseball analyzer would say that RBIs are just a result of positioning in the batting order. For instance, I've always thought that Jeff Kent belonged in the Hall of Fame. No second-baseman has knocked in as many runs and he had eight seasons with 100 or more RBIs. But six of them were with the San Francisco Giants and Kent batted behind Barry Bonds, the greatest hitter of his era. As it stands now, the only way Kent gets in the Hall of Fame is by an old-timer's committee which might not be so hard. Harold Baines and his 37 WAR got in; the Hall of Fame might expand into the thousands if Baines' career is the criteria. Who's next for the Hall of Fame? Ron Cey? Bert Campaneris? Toby Harrah? Brett Butler? Curtis Granderson?
One analytic radio announcer in Washington DC, Al Galdi, has claimed that all baseball teams must make a decision by late July on whether they are "all in or all out" for the season. If you are all out, you trade your best players for what can you get for them. But how does this work for a badly underperforming but young team like the Baltimore Orioles? Barring a Washington Nationals 2019 miracle or a Boston Braves 1914 miracle, the Orioles are out of playoff contention for this season. Their pitching has been terrible and even their young hitters have not performed well. Do you really trade Gunnar Henderson or Adley Rutschman for what you can get for them? Rutschman is 27 and Henderson is 23.
Jeff Kent is at 56 bWAR which is close to the usual Hall of Fame benchmark of 60. And he was a second baseman, a job that dings you up, not as much as catching, but it's not unreasonable to have a slightly lower WAR expectations for 2nd basemen. So I'd say Kent is legit borderline HoF.
I'm an Orioles fan. They should keep Henderson, Holliday and Rutschman. And Cowser, who is hurt. This season has been very demoralizing for the Orioles and Rutschman seems to be going backwards as a hitter. Having done a little catching in little league, catching is the most physically demanding sports position.
With Harold Baines in the Hall, who else should get in? Lou Whitaker? Willie Randolph? Jim Edmonds? Lance Berkman? Curt Schilling? Kenny Lofton? Dwight Evans? Luis Tiant? Graig Nettles? Chase Utley? Tommy John?(special case due to his historic surgery) Sal Bando? Rick Monday?(he saved the flag) Fred Lynn? Willie Davis? Andy Pettitte? Bret Saberhagen? Darrell Evans? Frank Tanana? Wil Clark? One could go on to WARs above Harold Baines' 37.
Whitaker and Schilling are way over the 60 WAR benchmark.
After that, the rest are fine ballplayers, probably 2 or 3 deserve inclusion, but the rest ought to be in the Hall of the Really Good.
Will Clark and Fred Lynn seem a lot like Don Mattingly. Do 5 Hall of Fame level seasons make you a Hall of Famer? For Ohtani, Judge, and Koufax, I'd say yes, but for most everybody else I'd say no.
Lynn was a favorite player growing up. He had about four great years, six very good years and about seven mediocre years. He's not worthy for Cooperstown. But Baines has lowered the bar.
I was a mild White Sox fan during Harold Baines' years in Chicago. He was a good ballplayer, but, say, Robin Ventura was worthier for the Hall of Fame. And Ventura is the embodiment of all the fine baseball players who aren't quite Hall of Fame material.
Judge is having a Judge-sized season. Line: AB 207 BA .391 R 51 RBI 47 HR 18 WAR 4.2 - crazy. Plus he is the scariest batter to face, although Ohtani is very close.
Judge is incredible in that he's at the age that large sluggers usually lose bat speed and become big out machines. Think Chris Davis and Ryan Howard. Frank Howard. Nate Colbert. John Mayberry. I think Judge has a very compact swing for such a big man.
There’s a section on India in David Reich’s book where he talks about the “antiquity of caste.” He says the castes show clear bottlenecks due to endogamy, i.e., they’re truly distinct. But he also points out that variation within castes and even between villages is quite high, exceeding the variation between northern and southern Europeans. But, he doesn’t say caste therefore isn’t real.
Manny Ramirez once said that his mental approach at the plate was to make his head “empty, empty, empty” and just see the ball. The joke was that it wasn’t that hard for him. But who cares? He was awesome to watch.
As the slow, fat kid who was reasonably coordinated and strong, I always batted 5th on my little league teams. Not surprisingly I had many more RBIs than runs scored. The one way I broke stereotypes was that I played shortstop because I could actually field which was an uncommon skill back in the day.
That Team/Race analogy is great. The whole misunderstanding is a consequence of a flaw in human reasoning that trips up the sharp and dull alike. Humans over-estimate the power of simple deterministic reasoning. Sharp people may even fall for this more because their introduction to Newtonian mechanics in high school was life changing. People think they can model complex systems based on a small number rules.
You'll note that in science experiments great pains are taken to minimize the number of variables. As systems become more complex, our ability to predict how they will behave goes away. Most people won't believe it when confronted with a real world example. They'll claim that although you can't predict the exact value of a variable as you go further in the future, you can tell the direction based on facts you know.
Nope. That's usually an illusion supported by confirmation bias.
Relatively simple. RBI's are similar to an assist in the NBA, NHL, and Soccer. For the most part, when a runner scores, the player that knocked him in has contributed to the run being scored and it goes on his personal stat as a Run Batted In (or an assist, as he helped the runner to score). Not really more complicated than that.
Re: how well LA's 2020's team are doing, for historical perspective...
The 1939 New York Yankees had a run differential of +411, which is the highest in MLB history. They outscored their opponents by 411 runs, with 967 runs scored compared to 556 runs allowed. This makes them one of the most dominant teams in baseball history, with a +411 run differential, which is the highest in MLB history.
Also keep in mind that Bill Dickey, Babe Ruth, Bob Muesel, and Mark Koenig played themselves in the film. When Gehrig lunges out of the way of an inside pitch during spring training, its really Bill Dickey there to encourage him.
Gehrig died in 41, and POTY was released in 42, also as America entered WW2, so he was still very fresh in MLB and Americans minds as a whole.
Gehrig, along with Roberto Clemente are the only two HOF inductees to have been automatically inducted, the voting rules were specifically waived in their cases--that speaks to their universal beloved and the consensus of their greatness as players.
Bill Dickey is the guy who socks the pitcher for complaining about Gehrig's bad defensive play. When Gehrig falls off the stool, Dickey motions to the other Yankees to leave Gehrig alone and let Gehrig get up on his own.
It's also real poignant during the early part of the film, where Ruth and Gehrig visit some sick kids in the hospital (during 28 WS vs STL), Ruth promises to hit a HR for a little kid, then quietly after media leaves, kid asks Lou to hit 2 HR's out of the park for him, Lou agrees and proceeds to do so.
Lou exhorts the kid to promise to do something for him--to get up and learn to walk one day because "There's nothing you can't do if you TRY hard enough."
Toward very end of the film, the roles have reversed. The kid is now a young man, he bumps into Gehrig on Lou Gehrig Day, and he reminds him of how they met and he can now walk. Lou then heads into the stadium. Meanwhile, he's slowly dying of ALS.
Cooper's physical resemblance to Gehrig, particularly in the face is uncanny.
My impression as a kid in the 1960s and the 1970s was that sports movies tended to be not very good. It often seemed like the movie makers didn't know that much about the sport.
Ichiro was an earlier example of a team's best hitter taking the leadoff role, though he also had the baserunning skills of a classic leadoff hitter and I remember controversy around him being "too good" to bat first!
I would think you’d just trade the vets who could possibly help a contender. Charlie Morton, Mountcastle, O’Hearn. What could you get for Rutchsmann now anyway?
Galdi is the only sports radio guy in DC worth listening to. I can’t believe the lack of talent on the airwaves.
Thom Loverro teamed with Kevin Sheehan used to be pretty good a decade ago. But Loverro was axed because he was old. Galdi was very good but the radio ownership dumped him.
Unless the Orioles go on some sort of 25-5 streak, they'll likely be sellers. Mountcastle. Mullins. O'Hearn, who is actually having a good season. Urias. Very few franchises have floored so fast. The Orioles won 102 games in 2023 and 91 last year. The manager was fired ten days ago and the General Manager might follow at season's end.
The Orioles might have money limits. Baltimore is an incompetently run, violent city. The fans don't really flood Orioles Park even when the team was good. I am not sure of their cable deal.
In 2024, like most years, over 95% of MLB runs were DRIVEN IN. Yeah, occasionally, there’s a run scored by wild pitch, or balk, or error. But, generally speaking, runs do not occur unless somebody gets a hit to push the runner across home plate. The two are linked.
It’s become very cool to dismiss all the old baseball statistics, but RBIs - although understood to be a product of opportunity - are a critical part of the process of scoring in baseball.
Unless a player steals home, runs scored is completely dependent on a subsequent player hitting, or a lapse by the defensive team. Runs scored does not exist in a vacuum.
RBIs might be slightly flukier than Runs for predicting next season's performance since they depend on small samples size questions like what were the average number of men on base when you hit your 40 homers?
On the other hand, in voting for MVP, which is done retrospectively, flukey clutch hitting ought to MATTER. It's not an election for who would have been been the best player if the season was replayed 100 times in a computer, it's an election for who happened to be most valuable in the season that actually happened. If you hit an improbable percentage of your homers this season with 2 or 3 men on base, well, that's really valuable even if it's unlikely you'll hit as well in the clutch next season.
Sabremetrics is mostly forward looking as Sabermetricians try to get jobs working for ballclubs making them better in the future. But MVP voting is historical not predictive.
So let’s consider this argument: If RBIs don’t matter, each player’s runs scored should be in direct correlation with on-base percentage (OBP), correct?
But it’s not, because there is variation in the number and type of hits that follow a runner reaching base.
So one can argue that RBIs are fluky and volatile, yet understand they are important and reflective of an individual hitter’s performance when pitched to in scoring opportunities over a given year.
Baseball statistics!
Runs scored are downstream of arguably the most important offensive statistic: on-base percentage plus slugging percentage (OPS). The more times you don’t get out, the more times you’ll score. The more times you hit a double, triple, or HR when you don’t get out, the more times you’ll score than if you were to get walk or single when you don’t get out.
OBP is important as is drawing walks. Going way back to the 70s and 80s, there was Gene Tenace who never hit for a high average but drew a lot of walks. Going way, way back to my father's youth, the Washington Senators had a player named Eddie Yost, nicknamed the Walking Man. He usually hit about .270 and would hit about 12 home runs a year. But he regularly drew 150 walks.
There were several guys after WWII who were somehow like Ted Williams without the power in that they drew a huge number of walks. Mostly in the American League.
But that kind of baseball started to go out of fashion with Jackie Robinson and the Latin influx. African-American players walked just as much as white American players, but for a couple of generations, Latin players were more free-swinging than Americans. The National League especially liked to put a fast Latin as lead off hitter, such as Omar Moreno, even if his On Base Percentage was .280.
Pirates catcher Manny Sanguillen was a notorious "bad ball" hitter. But it caught up with Sanguillen. He rarely walked. Free-swingers tend to be learned by good pitching.
For quite a while, the Pirates had a large contingent of black Latino players and the Pirates generally were strong in the NL East throughout the 70s. But they also had very good pitching, most of whom were white.
Postwar National League teams were more aggressive about pursuing new sources of talent after WWII than the more dominant American League. E.g., the Giants pretty much discovered the Dominican Republic. I can recall watching a 6'3" Japanese pitcher for the SF Giants in 1966. Vin Scully was highly impressed by him.
One downside of the Caribbean players was that their philosophy was "You can't walk off the island:" the scouts were looking for you to crush the ball and they'd be bored if you mostly walked or struck out.
I did a study of this around 2001 and Latins definitely walked less than Americans. I suspect the difference has faded over the last generation but haven't checked.
I think Juan Soto walks a lot. Very disciplined. He's still a terrible outfielder. He's destined to be the Harold Baines of his era. Designated Hitter by the age of 30.
See the 1985 Yankees, where leadoff man Ricky Henderson led the league in runs scored (146) and #3 hitter Don Mattingly led the league in RBIS (145). In the mid-late 80s, the Yankees lineup was almost always Henderson, followed by slap hitting 2nd basemen Willie Randolph, Mattingly, and then slugging Dave Winfield. Now I would probably bat Randolph 9th, in hopes he got on base for Henderson.
The early 1990s White Sox, with post his prime but still good Tim Raines leading off, had two not quite right leadoff hitters in #7 Lance Johnson and #9 Ozzie Guillen. They didn't walk much but when they got hit basehits they got the party started.
Ah, yes. I remember it well. Yankees of the late 90s lineup was Knoblauch, Jeter, O’Neill, Williams. Williams was the best athlete/hitter on the team. Also a very strange guy.
Was he considered strange by anyone other than Mel Hall?
Bernie Williams became an award winning Latin jazz musician after his retirement from baseball.
Had a terrific batting record in the post-season, comparable to Derek Jeter's.
Seems like a life well-led.
For me, it's all about Darryl Strawberry and Keith Hernandez. Irrational, I know. But those were the days.
Ralph Kiner and Tim McCarver agreed, on air, that Hernandez had a strange personality. But if I needed a double, he's the guy I'd want at bat.
Yes. I do think he became more normal than most later in life. That was quite an era; the Bronx was still burning. I still watch the 1986 World Series on ancient VCR and YouTube every October. The last game is the greatest game ever played in baseball.
Is there a name for this strategy of putting a base-stealer who doesn't get enough walks to be a leadoff hitter as #9? You can get some fun 1980s St. Louis Cardinals style rallies going that way.
The Nationals have that sort of player in Jacob Young, who is hurt right now. Great defensively. Hits about .250. Little power. Can steal a base. Fast. A single gets him home from second. A double gets him home from first.
Should Harmeet Dhillon take a look at the on-court anti-Caitlin Clark violence in the WNBA?
Her teammates need to step up if the refs won't.
I don’t know. Always seemed fairly simple to me. If my all star stud hitter with say a . 600 slugging percentage has on average one base runner in front of him this would result an extra 50 or so runs a season in contrast to a slew of solo home runs and doubles. If Bonds or Ruth was batting lead off I’d walk them every single time.
I’m sure the I’m wrong statistically though.
The tradition is based on Protestant notions of not being impatient and greedy: don't waste your home run hitter by having him hit a solo homer to lead off the game.
Almost every team in baseball uses computers to analyze how to use their players and how to attack opposing players. Call me a skeptic on putting power hitters at lead-off just to get them 50 more at-bats a year. Isn't the concept to score more runs, not get more at-bats?
I was brought up to think that RBIs were the most important stat there was for a hitter. A modern computer baseball analyzer would say that RBIs are just a result of positioning in the batting order. For instance, I've always thought that Jeff Kent belonged in the Hall of Fame. No second-baseman has knocked in as many runs and he had eight seasons with 100 or more RBIs. But six of them were with the San Francisco Giants and Kent batted behind Barry Bonds, the greatest hitter of his era. As it stands now, the only way Kent gets in the Hall of Fame is by an old-timer's committee which might not be so hard. Harold Baines and his 37 WAR got in; the Hall of Fame might expand into the thousands if Baines' career is the criteria. Who's next for the Hall of Fame? Ron Cey? Bert Campaneris? Toby Harrah? Brett Butler? Curtis Granderson?
One analytic radio announcer in Washington DC, Al Galdi, has claimed that all baseball teams must make a decision by late July on whether they are "all in or all out" for the season. If you are all out, you trade your best players for what can you get for them. But how does this work for a badly underperforming but young team like the Baltimore Orioles? Barring a Washington Nationals 2019 miracle or a Boston Braves 1914 miracle, the Orioles are out of playoff contention for this season. Their pitching has been terrible and even their young hitters have not performed well. Do you really trade Gunnar Henderson or Adley Rutschman for what you can get for them? Rutschman is 27 and Henderson is 23.
Don't trade Gunnar Henderson.
Jeff Kent is at 56 bWAR which is close to the usual Hall of Fame benchmark of 60. And he was a second baseman, a job that dings you up, not as much as catching, but it's not unreasonable to have a slightly lower WAR expectations for 2nd basemen. So I'd say Kent is legit borderline HoF.
I'm an Orioles fan. They should keep Henderson, Holliday and Rutschman. And Cowser, who is hurt. This season has been very demoralizing for the Orioles and Rutschman seems to be going backwards as a hitter. Having done a little catching in little league, catching is the most physically demanding sports position.
With Harold Baines in the Hall, who else should get in? Lou Whitaker? Willie Randolph? Jim Edmonds? Lance Berkman? Curt Schilling? Kenny Lofton? Dwight Evans? Luis Tiant? Graig Nettles? Chase Utley? Tommy John?(special case due to his historic surgery) Sal Bando? Rick Monday?(he saved the flag) Fred Lynn? Willie Davis? Andy Pettitte? Bret Saberhagen? Darrell Evans? Frank Tanana? Wil Clark? One could go on to WARs above Harold Baines' 37.
Whitaker and Schilling are way over the 60 WAR benchmark.
After that, the rest are fine ballplayers, probably 2 or 3 deserve inclusion, but the rest ought to be in the Hall of the Really Good.
Will Clark and Fred Lynn seem a lot like Don Mattingly. Do 5 Hall of Fame level seasons make you a Hall of Famer? For Ohtani, Judge, and Koufax, I'd say yes, but for most everybody else I'd say no.
Lynn was a favorite player growing up. He had about four great years, six very good years and about seven mediocre years. He's not worthy for Cooperstown. But Baines has lowered the bar.
I was a mild White Sox fan during Harold Baines' years in Chicago. He was a good ballplayer, but, say, Robin Ventura was worthier for the Hall of Fame. And Ventura is the embodiment of all the fine baseball players who aren't quite Hall of Fame material.
If a “Noogie Victim” Hall of Shame is ever created, Ventura will be a charter member.
If Robin Ventura gets in, why not Paul Konerko or Chet Lemon? But Harold Baines is in.
Agree on Kent, who I've always liked. But just for laughs, watch the top of the 1st inning, ##2 and 3 hitters, of this game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR3kz2Gf4ao
Judge is having a Judge-sized season. Line: AB 207 BA .391 R 51 RBI 47 HR 18 WAR 4.2 - crazy. Plus he is the scariest batter to face, although Ohtani is very close.
Judge is incredible in that he's at the age that large sluggers usually lose bat speed and become big out machines. Think Chris Davis and Ryan Howard. Frank Howard. Nate Colbert. John Mayberry. I think Judge has a very compact swing for such a big man.
There’s a section on India in David Reich’s book where he talks about the “antiquity of caste.” He says the castes show clear bottlenecks due to endogamy, i.e., they’re truly distinct. But he also points out that variation within castes and even between villages is quite high, exceeding the variation between northern and southern Europeans. But, he doesn’t say caste therefore isn’t real.
It’s almost like it’s complicated or something.
Manny Ramirez once said that his mental approach at the plate was to make his head “empty, empty, empty” and just see the ball. The joke was that it wasn’t that hard for him. But who cares? He was awesome to watch.
As the slow, fat kid who was reasonably coordinated and strong, I always batted 5th on my little league teams. Not surprisingly I had many more RBIs than runs scored. The one way I broke stereotypes was that I played shortstop because I could actually field which was an uncommon skill back in the day.
OT: another good hoax... https://www.dailywire.com/news/colorado-springs-mayor-mobolade-implicated-hate-crime-hoax-bernard-conviction
and the implication that the Biden DOJ went soft on the black mayor.
Poor old Kirsty MacColl died bravely, sacrificing herself in saving her son from exuberant and somewhat reckless Mexicans.
On a happier note, The video for her rather fun song 'Terry', stars a young Adrian Edmondson and is worth a nostalgic view to my mind
That Team/Race analogy is great. The whole misunderstanding is a consequence of a flaw in human reasoning that trips up the sharp and dull alike. Humans over-estimate the power of simple deterministic reasoning. Sharp people may even fall for this more because their introduction to Newtonian mechanics in high school was life changing. People think they can model complex systems based on a small number rules.
You'll note that in science experiments great pains are taken to minimize the number of variables. As systems become more complex, our ability to predict how they will behave goes away. Most people won't believe it when confronted with a real world example. They'll claim that although you can't predict the exact value of a variable as you go further in the future, you can tell the direction based on facts you know.
Nope. That's usually an illusion supported by confirmation bias.
Relatively simple. RBI's are similar to an assist in the NBA, NHL, and Soccer. For the most part, when a runner scores, the player that knocked him in has contributed to the run being scored and it goes on his personal stat as a Run Batted In (or an assist, as he helped the runner to score). Not really more complicated than that.
Re: how well LA's 2020's team are doing, for historical perspective...
The 1939 New York Yankees had a run differential of +411, which is the highest in MLB history. They outscored their opponents by 411 runs, with 967 runs scored compared to 556 runs allowed. This makes them one of the most dominant teams in baseball history, with a +411 run differential, which is the highest in MLB history.
Very interesting stat you provide. And 1939 was the year Lou Gehrig had to hang up the spikes because of ALS. The Yankees didn't miss a beat.
Can you just imagine if Lou had been healthy and put up his usual stats from most of the 30’s?
Averaging something like .325 BA, 35-39 HRS, 150 RBI?
Throughout his career Gehrig averaged an RBI per each game he played— one of the most prodigious RBI men in MLB history
Gehrig was an incredible player. I don't cry easy but when Gehrig falls off his stool near the end of "The Pride of the Yankees" I get a little wet.
Also keep in mind that Bill Dickey, Babe Ruth, Bob Muesel, and Mark Koenig played themselves in the film. When Gehrig lunges out of the way of an inside pitch during spring training, its really Bill Dickey there to encourage him.
Gehrig died in 41, and POTY was released in 42, also as America entered WW2, so he was still very fresh in MLB and Americans minds as a whole.
Gehrig, along with Roberto Clemente are the only two HOF inductees to have been automatically inducted, the voting rules were specifically waived in their cases--that speaks to their universal beloved and the consensus of their greatness as players.
Bill Dickey is the guy who socks the pitcher for complaining about Gehrig's bad defensive play. When Gehrig falls off the stool, Dickey motions to the other Yankees to leave Gehrig alone and let Gehrig get up on his own.
It's also real poignant during the early part of the film, where Ruth and Gehrig visit some sick kids in the hospital (during 28 WS vs STL), Ruth promises to hit a HR for a little kid, then quietly after media leaves, kid asks Lou to hit 2 HR's out of the park for him, Lou agrees and proceeds to do so.
Lou exhorts the kid to promise to do something for him--to get up and learn to walk one day because "There's nothing you can't do if you TRY hard enough."
Toward very end of the film, the roles have reversed. The kid is now a young man, he bumps into Gehrig on Lou Gehrig Day, and he reminds him of how they met and he can now walk. Lou then heads into the stadium. Meanwhile, he's slowly dying of ALS.
Cooper's physical resemblance to Gehrig, particularly in the face is uncanny.
My impression as a kid in the 1960s and the 1970s was that sports movies tended to be not very good. It often seemed like the movie makers didn't know that much about the sport.
"Pride of the Yankees" was an exception.
Sam Godwyn knew almost nothing about baseball but knew a bit about good filmmaking.
Ichiro was an earlier example of a team's best hitter taking the leadoff role, though he also had the baserunning skills of a classic leadoff hitter and I remember controversy around him being "too good" to bat first!
I would think you’d just trade the vets who could possibly help a contender. Charlie Morton, Mountcastle, O’Hearn. What could you get for Rutchsmann now anyway?
Galdi is the only sports radio guy in DC worth listening to. I can’t believe the lack of talent on the airwaves.
Thom Loverro teamed with Kevin Sheehan used to be pretty good a decade ago. But Loverro was axed because he was old. Galdi was very good but the radio ownership dumped him.
Unless the Orioles go on some sort of 25-5 streak, they'll likely be sellers. Mountcastle. Mullins. O'Hearn, who is actually having a good season. Urias. Very few franchises have floored so fast. The Orioles won 102 games in 2023 and 91 last year. The manager was fired ten days ago and the General Manager might follow at season's end.
Yes, amazing. I thought Elias was a genius. He still may be. I blame the owner. Why buy the team if you won’t spend money?
The Orioles might have money limits. Baltimore is an incompetently run, violent city. The fans don't really flood Orioles Park even when the team was good. I am not sure of their cable deal.
Agreed. Not a destination most players would want to play which makes paying top dollar even more vital. Rosenstein hasn’t done that.
I looked it up. Even in the World Series championship year of 1970, the Orioles only averaged about 12,000 a game. That's incredible.
In 2024, like most years, over 95% of MLB runs were DRIVEN IN. Yeah, occasionally, there’s a run scored by wild pitch, or balk, or error. But, generally speaking, runs do not occur unless somebody gets a hit to push the runner across home plate. The two are linked.
It’s become very cool to dismiss all the old baseball statistics, but RBIs - although understood to be a product of opportunity - are a critical part of the process of scoring in baseball.
Unless a player steals home, runs scored is completely dependent on a subsequent player hitting, or a lapse by the defensive team. Runs scored does not exist in a vacuum.
RBIs might be slightly flukier than Runs for predicting next season's performance since they depend on small samples size questions like what were the average number of men on base when you hit your 40 homers?
On the other hand, in voting for MVP, which is done retrospectively, flukey clutch hitting ought to MATTER. It's not an election for who would have been been the best player if the season was replayed 100 times in a computer, it's an election for who happened to be most valuable in the season that actually happened. If you hit an improbable percentage of your homers this season with 2 or 3 men on base, well, that's really valuable even if it's unlikely you'll hit as well in the clutch next season.
Sabremetrics is mostly forward looking as Sabermetricians try to get jobs working for ballclubs making them better in the future. But MVP voting is historical not predictive.
So let’s consider this argument: If RBIs don’t matter, each player’s runs scored should be in direct correlation with on-base percentage (OBP), correct?
But it’s not, because there is variation in the number and type of hits that follow a runner reaching base.
So one can argue that RBIs are fluky and volatile, yet understand they are important and reflective of an individual hitter’s performance when pitched to in scoring opportunities over a given year.