The goal of any offense in baseball is to score runs and make sure that you score more than your opponent, that much is a given. Even though we often discount RBI as a useful measure of individual player performance because it’s more a matter of opportunity than actual talent level, and rightfully so, is there a way to better qualify runs batted in?
Instead of looking at the total number of runs an individual player batted in I’m going to look at the total number of runs a team batted in, more specifically the Baltimore Orioles. But, instead of looking at runs batted in as simply the total number I’m going to look at the efficiency with which the Orioles did so by looking at their expected RBI and compare it to their actual RBI total.
For more information on what eRBI is and how it’s calculated you can check it out here.
Before I really dive into it though, would you think me crazy if I told you that the Orioles actually had the third most efficient offense in baseball last season? Okay, perhaps that’s stretching it a bit so let’s re-qualify that half statement/half question. Would you think me crazy if I said the Orioles, as a team, were the third most efficient at driving in runs based on their number of run scoring opportunities?
You probably would because the Orioles only scored 712 runs last season which was just middle of the pack in all of baseball and it’s widely accepted among Orioles fans that the team could have done a much better job of scoring runs if they lowered their strikeout rate and raised their walk rate — which is true for any team mind you. At any rate, their offense wasn’t very impressive for a playoff qualifier.
Even though the Orioles will certainly have to improve upon their run scoring ability if they are to compete for another playoff berth this season, that’s my general opinion at least, let’s explore how they did with the opportunities they actually had.
The Orioles had the fewest eRBI in all of baseball last season with 698.31 then we had the Toronto Blue Jays just behind them at 704.583 and the Houston Astros not far behind them at 706.613. As a matter of fact, there was just one other team that qualified for the playoffs that had fewer than 760 eRBI and that was the Oakland Athletics with 727.919.
Although the Orioles wound up with the fewest eRBI, or opportunities to produce a run, in all of baseball they did quite a bit with the opportunities they did have. This team was third in overall offensive efficiency, or at least what I’m calling offensive efficiency based on their ability to drive in the runs they had the opportunity to, with a .969 efficiency rating. The closer to one the rating is the better as a score of one means that they drove in all of the runs they had an opportunity to drive in during the season.
The Chicago White Sox ranked number one with a .995 rating, the Texas Rangers were second with a .971 rating, the New York Yankees were just behind the Orioles at .965, and the Toronto Blue Jays were just behind the Yankees at .961. There’s, obviously, more involved regarding whether a team wins or loses a game based on their offense but it’s important to be able to put how well their offense did in those situations in which they could have scored a run in perspective. This is a way for us to evaluate whether the offense, or strategies used throughout the season, was effective and whether changes need to be made for the following season.
What this tells us is that the Orioles did a fantastic job of capitalizing on the opportunities they did have to score a run, as few as they may have been overall, and whatever strategies the players or manager Buck Showalter used to make the most of those opportunities worked very well. Does this mean that if the Orioles had more opportunities to score runs last season that they would have remained as efficient? That’s difficult to say for sure because who knows if the team would have become more lackadaisical in those situations if they were as common for them as they were the Rangers or the Yankees.
The one other interesting piece of information gleaned from this data is that the Orioles missed out on 21.31 runs and the argument could be made that they missed out on potentially two more wins on the season. Before you jump up and say that they would have won the division, the Yankees also missed out on nearly three wins last season and the Tampa Bay Rays missed out on roughly eight potential wins.
I also urge you to look into this a bit further before taking any of this as gospel because my conclusions about the data I’ve gathered and made certain observations about may not be the same as yours and I could very well be wrong. I could very well be missing an important part of the equation and welcome each of you to find it if it’s there and tell me about it.
