January 11, 2007
BASEBALL: Full Plates
One of the many cool features of David Pinto's Day by Day Database is the charts showing the percentage of baserunners driven in by different hitters. You can look here at the total chart for 2000-06 for guys who batted with 1500 or more men on base (note that driving yourself in doesn't count; Pinto subtracts homers but includes the runners driven in on homers). Mike Sweeney and Larry Walker check in as the #1 & 2 best RBI men of the era, the punchless Luis Castillo the worst, with free-swinging Adam Dunn, Jose Cruz and Corey Patterson the worst with any power. A-Rod ranks a good deal higher than Jeter.
One interesting feature is the rankings by total baserunners. Here is the 11 seasons over the last 7 years in which one batter hit with 525 or more men on base - John Olerud, who doesn't do terribly on the overall chart, is the only one to drive in less than 100 runs, apparently due in large part to batting behind the glacially slow and often-on-first Edgar Martinez:
| Player | Runners On | Runs Batted In | Home Runs | RBI Pct. | Year |
| Bret Boone | 556 | 141 | 37 | 18.71 | 2001 |
| Miguel Tejada | 546 | 150 | 34 | 21.25 | 2004 |
| John Olerud | 539 | 95 | 21 | 13.73 | 2001 |
| Alex Rodriguez | 534 | 121 | 35 | 16.10 | 2006 |
| Andruw Jones | 531 | 116 | 36 | 15.07 | 2003 |
| Jeff Kent | 530 | 125 | 33 | 17.36 | 2000 |
| Vinny Castilla | 529 | 131 | 35 | 18.15 | 2004 |
| John Olerud | 529 | 103 | 14 | 16.82 | 2000 |
| Mike Sweeney | 527 | 144 | 29 | 21.82 | 2000 |
| Jeff Kent | 527 | 106 | 22 | 15.94 | 2001 |
| Edgar Martinez | 525 | 145 | 37 | 20.57 | 2000 |
I understand why he excludes the batter from home run numbers, but somehow that seems to penalize the home run hitter. You came up with runners on base and didn't just come thru, but came thru big time.
Also would love to see it in terms of total bases. Driving people home from first ought to get more credit than knocking him in from third.