From: thornley@micro.cs.umn.edu (David H. Thornley)
Subject: Re: The Monthly Cecil Fielder Thread
Organization: University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, CSci dept.
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 17:59:45 GMT

In article <1992Sep4.173018.18923@nntpd.lkg.dec.com> g_waugaman@nac.enet.dec.com (Glenn R. Waugaman) writes:
>
>In article <1992Sep4.163712.8090@Princeton.EDU>, roger@crux.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig) writes...
>> 
>>Did he?  did he lead the league (or come close) in percentage of runners
>>driven in?  Top 20, sure -- that's what SLG does for you.  But others did
>>as well.  See Elias.
>
>I would definitely like to see that leaders list, especially for 1991 (I
>didn't purchase Elias this year).
>
Here's some work I did with my '92 Elias and a spreadsheet.  I took every
player with 100+ RBI, plus a few others, and listed actual RBIs, RBIs with
Fielder's opportunities at the player's rate, RBIs with the player's
opportunities at Fielder's rate, and RBIs with Fielder's opportunities
pro-rated for plate appearances at the player's rate.

Player        RBI  Fopp  FRBI  Pro-rated
Fielder       133   133   133   133
Belle          95   128   100    83
Canseco       122   138   119   119
Carter        108   105   135    96
Gonzales      102   110   122    86
Griffey       100   108   120    89
Ripken        114   124   123   116
Sierra        116   108   142   103
Tartabull     100   140    95   103
Tettleton      89   121    98    97
Thomas        109   128   115   118
Ventura       100   110   120   100
Bonds         116   129   117   106
Bonilla       100   102   126    90
Clark         116   140   110   115
Dawson        102   112   121    87
Gant          105   114   123    96
Johnson       117   127   122   109
McGriff       106   123   113   104
Murray         96   101   124    85
Sandberg      100   116   114   104
Strawberry     99   121   108    94

Consider Canseco.  Given Fielder's opportunities, he would have 138 RBI,
5 better than Fielder; Fielder would have had 119 RBIs given Canseco's
opportunities, 3 worse than Canseco, so Canseco was slightly better at
converting opportunities into RBIs.  On the other hand, Fielder played
more than Canseco, and if Canseco had his RBI conversion rate, and
his PAs, and Fielder's opportunities per PA, Canseco would have had 119
RBIs.

A few conclusions:

1.  Fielder was among the best in baseball at converting opportunities
to RBIs.  Canseco, Tartabull, and Will Clark used their opportunities
slightly better, while such players as Joe Carter and Bobby Bonilla
were considerably inferior in that regard.

2.  Canseco et al. were better at converting opportunities to RBIs, but
did not play as much as Fielder, who was very durable in 1991.  This is
similar to saying that player A had a better batting average than player
B, but played less.  In the analogy, we can agree that player B had more
hits; similarly, we conclude that Fielder had the most RBIs partly
because he played more than his rivals.  On this ground, I consider
Fielder to be the top RBI man in baseball last year.

3.  This analysis considers only RBIs, how efficient players were at
converting opportunities to RBIs, and a normalized score that tries to
factor out opportunities to find some sort of an RBI/PA score.  It does
not consider the fact that Canseco's replacement was presumably not
worthless, for example, or that Canseco made a lot fewer outs than
Fielder.

4.  Fielder's RBI abilities are not adequately represented by % of runners
in scoring position driven in, since he was good at driving in runners from
first and exceptional at driving himself in.

5.  In all respects other than RBI ability and durability, Fielder was an
average first baseman.  He was a one-dimensional player, although the
dimension is a very useful one.  Although all the players on the above list
were inferior to him in RBI production, most had greater defensive value,
and many got on base better.  This is *not* an argument that Fielder
deserved the MVP, since I would take Canseco, Ripken, and Tettleton ahead
of him for sure.

6.  This *is* an argument that nobody else in baseball would have driven
in more runs given Fielder's opportunities, unless you are also willing to
throw in Fielder's durability.

David Thornley
Niccolo Machiavelli for commissioner!

Appendix:
Data from the 1992 Elias (although it may not be sabermetrically correct to
buy it).  Opportunities and RBI rates were given for runners at 1st, 2nd,
and 3rd; if the player in question walked or was hit by a pitch, the
opportunities were not in general counted.  I counted the RBI rate for
the batter-runner as HR/AB, keeping it consistent with the Elias count.

As an example, the Fopp score for Canseco is derived by dividing Canseco's
RBIs from men on first with the number of men on first Canseco had, and
multiplying it by the number of men on first Fielder had, doing this with
men on other bases (including Canseco at home), and adding them up.
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