December 8, 2015

Fantasy Categorical Breakdowns

Runs and RBI: The General Landscape

by George Bissell

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As the Baseball Prospectus fantasy team boldly pushes forward in our Fantasy Categorical Breakdowns series, be sure to catch up with our previous installments over the past couple of weeks. We’re providing a 10,000-foot overview of each category—such as this article here—to go with a specific article on 2015 over/underachievers and another one targeted for deeper leagues.

If you’re reading BP, you don’t need me to explain the futility of spending time analyzing runs scored and RBI totals. However, I can’t resist the urge. They’re largely the result of a player’s lineup placement in tandem with the number of opportunities he has, either from coming to the plate with runners already on base, or from the ability of ensuing hitters to drive them in. These two context-dependent statistics offer little in terms of predictive value and reveal almost nothing about a hitter’s offensive prowess. Runs scored and RBI may be antiquated metrics, but they are firmly entrenched in traditional fantasy formats.

Let’s start with runs scored. Analyzing individual totals isn’t very useful, but league-wide runs scored totals provide a glimpse into the overall offensive trends in the game. The fairly linear league-wide offensive decline over the past decade has been well documented, but that began to change this past season. Offense began to rebound in 2015, thanks in large part to a significant uptick in home runs.

With offense trending back up, we saw a corresponding increase in the number of individual hitters who cracked the 100-run barrier, up to 13, the most in a single season dating back to 2012. The chart below highlights the number of individual hitters to record 70, 80, 90 and even 100 runs scored in a single season since 2010.

Year	70+ Runs	80+ Runs	90+ Runs	100+ Runs
2010	102	66	34	17
2011	84	58	28	16
2012	99	61	29	12
2013	83	49	22	9
2014	80	41	18	7
2015	81	51	28	13

The only hitters to eclipse the lofty 100-run plateau in back-to-back campaigns over the past two seasons are Mike Trout, Jose Bautista, and Brian Dozier. If you want to include Matt Carpenter (99 runs in 2014, 101 last year) or Ian Kinsler (100 and 94, respectively), who just missed the mark, that’s fine. This exercise only further illustrates the general lack of year-to-year consistency with runs scored totals relative to leaderboards for situation independent hitter statistics like home runs, walks and strikeouts.

Now, let’s dive into RBIs. As evidenced by the table below, despite a league-wide offensive surge last year, the number of elite RBI producers didn’t experience a similar increase.

Year	70+ Runs	80+ Runs	90+ Runs	100+ Runs
2010	86	60	33	25
2011	82	59	33	17
2012	84	56	35	18
2013	75	47	22	15
2014	66	41	24	12
2015	79	48	25	13

Just like stolen bases, the year-to-year leaderboards don’t look very similar. The only hitters to exceed 100 RBI in each of the past two seasons were Jose Abreu, David Ortiz, Yoenis Cespedes, and Bautista.

2014 RBI Leaders	2014 Total	2015 RBI Leaders	2015 Total
Adrian Gonzalez	116	Nolan Arenado	130
Mike Trout	111	Josh Donaldson	123
Miguel Cabrera	109	Chris Davis	117
Nelson Cruz	108	Jose Bautista	114
Jose Abreu	107	Edwin Encarnacion	111
Albert Pujols	105	Paul Goldschmidt	110
Giancarlo Stanton	105	David Ortiz	108
David Ortiz	104	Kendrys Morales	106
Jose Bautista	103	Yoenis Cespedes	105
Victor Martinez	103	J.D. Martinez	102
Justin Upton	102	Jose Abreu	101
Yoenis Cespedes	100	Anthony Rizzo	101
Josh Donaldson	98	Matt Kemp	100
Edwin Encarnacion	98	Kris Bryant	99
Michael Brantley	97	Bryce Harper	99

The overall takeaway from this exercise is not that projecting runs scored and RBI totals is completely impossible. Instead, it should only reinforce the importance of how a hitter’s spot in the lineup and the surrounding talent will affect his ability to drive his teammates home and come around to score when he gets on base. Fantasy owners shouldn’t completely overlook runs and RBI, but they don’t carry nearly as much importance as home runs and stolen bases in the current fantasy landscape.

George Bissell is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Follow @GeorgeBissell
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