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Mike Scioscia Statistical Fantasyland Poll

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Jed Jacobsohn - Getty Images

I don't even want to find out if Mike Scioscia prefers Jiminy Cricket over Tinkerbell...

Poll
Which Meaningless Stat Do You Least Believe In
Santa Claus - RISP (Batting Average w/ Runners in Scoring Position)
55 votes
Easter Bunny - RISP2 (Batting Average w/ Runners in Scoring Position, 2 Outs)
76 votes
Tooth Fairy - CERA (Catcher's Earned Run Average)
310 votes
Zombies - RBI (Runs Batted In)
73 votes

514 votes | Poll has closed

0 recs  |  15 comments

Comments

Santa Claus, of course!!

Haha

No one believes in the Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy, right? As for zombies, I’m scared of them.

Seriously though, I probably pay the most attention to RISP and RBIs.

You can't fool me, there ain't no Sanity Clause
No, but there is Insanity!
Nooooo . . .

I cannot believe that. There is no other explanation as to why there are presents under my tree.

When Mike Scioscia passes on,

his soul will forever haunt whoever voted for CERA.

Then his soul will be awfully busy, won't it?

It may never rest!

CRAP!

should’ve read this before I voted

CERA

The battered wife syndrome of Angels fan.

I don't believe in Leprechauns and chasing pots of gold at the bottom of rainbows.

Which would be, of course, UZR.

Keep calculating all you want. Rivera is never gonna catch up to that fly ball.

not a real surprise about CERA winning this one.

i hope i don’t get killed over this, but i don’t 100% get why RBI’s became grouped in as a meaningless stat. could someone explain that reasoning to me?

they are so dependent on stats accrued by your teammates

that it is impossible to isolate anything meaningful about the individual accruing them.

If you are in the middle of a stacked lineup you can have a down season and get a lot of Ribbys. It just means you stayed healthy and that your teammates were on base when you got your hits. Move that same player to a team with lousy offense or have him batting first in the lineup and the RBIs disappear even though his personal stats stay the same.

I would propose that it is merely incomplete.

The objective of offense is to score runs. Batting in runs is a good thing but, as you point out, unless you are a super heavy HR hitter you are dependent on the rest of the offense and game situations in order to pull those off.

RISP is, similarly, also incomplete. Getting a hit when runners are in scoring position does not mean that the runners actually scored off of the hit that the batter acheived.

A better stat would be to merge RISP and RBI into some “rbiWrisp” percentage, breaking down how often as a percentage a hitter is able to convert opportunity.

"rbiWrisp" is RISP
RISP is batting average with RISP.

I believe it was proposed that a better stat would be to count the number of rbi’s when there are runners in scoring position.

RBIs divided by "RBI Opportunities"

Is a good way to judge how often a hitter drives in teammates on base. If I’m not mistaken, this type of logic is already incorporated into stats like WPA.

Those types of metrics do make more sense than the counting stats such as runs & RBI’s. If a leadoff hitter gets to third (walk & 2 SB, single & 2 SB, triple, etc), he’s done a great job of putting the team in position to score. If the next three guys make outs that don’t advance him, did he fail to do his job?

On the flip side, if that leadoff hitter gets walked & then the 2nd hitter homers, did the leadoff man do a better job in this situation?

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