Speaking of the Cubs and Red Sox, our friend Joe Posnanski offered a quick shout-out to esteemed Boston GM Theo Epstein. Poz rightfully lauded Epstein’s front-office philosophy on RBIs, which the Boston GM highlighted in a radio interview defending J.D. Drew.
“Sometimes you get stuck in the world of evaluating players through home runs and RBIs. … And if you look at underlying performance of a lot of our guys, they bring more to the table than just the counting stats. … J.D.’s certainly having another good year for us … He’s up around a .900 OPS right now …
Based on his skill set, he’s always going to have underwhelming RBI totals. I couldn’t care less. When you’re putting together a winning team, that honestly doesn’t matter. When you have a player who takes a ton of walks, who doesn’t put the ball in play at an above average rate, and is a certain type of hitter, he’s not going to drive in a lot of runs. Runs scored, you couldn’t be more wrong. If you look at a rate basis, J.D. scores a ton of runs.”
“And the reason he scores a ton of runs is because he does the single most important thing you can do in baseball as an offensive player. And that’s NOT MAKE OUTS.
(Via Posnanski, Emphasis is Joe’s.)
I just want to point out that I agree totally with this logic. Have for quite some time. And in fact, it’s exactly the logic much of literate Cub nation called for in offseason acquisition and planning.
And it’s exactly the logic that we used, during three years of urging the Cubs to sign Milton Bradley. We heartily endorsed this move. We begged for it. We celebrated it.
And we couldn’t have been more wrong.
So it turns out there is a place for chemistry, intangibles, clutch, role play, and even traditional statistics in player evaluation, despite what Theo (or Joe) or legions of SABR members would have us believe.
As a test case, we urge the Sawx or Royals to trade for Milton Bradley this offseason. Prove us wrong. He’ll be cheap.
On the flip side, Milton Bradley may actually be the exception that proves the effectiveness of OBP lineup-creation. At least, we hope the Cubs give it another shot. (No, not with Adam Dunn, smart guy.)
