Ryan Howard has batted cleanup for the past 7 very successful years in Philadelphia. He 
has won a Rookie of the Year, MVP, and finished as the games top RBI guy 3 times while leading the league this year in the same statistic. The Phillies rewarded him a contract that will pay him $75 million over his age 34-37 seasons with a $10 million buyout of his age 38 season. Howard is a very good player but according to Sean Forman, creator of Baseball-Reference.com, in this NY Times article is “NOT an elite hitter.” The argument is convincing and I’ll discuss some of the ideas going forward.
From Forman’s article:
Based on sabermetric stats, Howard does not appear to be the elite hitter that his R.B.I. totals imply … Among N.L. batters who have qualified for the batting title entering the weekend, Howard’s .831 O.P.S. was just 23rd in the league. Among N.L. first basemen, he ranked seventh, below average for the 12 qualifying players … If we combine hitting, defense and base running, WAR (wins above replacement) rated him as the seventh-best player on the Phillies this year.
Simply, OPS is one of the best statistics we have for quantifying how successfully a hitter hits. Howard ranked 7th among NL First Baseman! Todd Helton and Michael Morse are significantly better than the big Philly. I’m in no way endorsing Howard as the seventh-best player on the Phillies this year but, that is what the statistics say.
I expect many of you to say, “But, how can you possibly say that a man with 95 RBI is the 7th most valuable hitter in a given lineup?” The difficulty comes in Howard’s opportunities as a hitter. Howard’s RBI%, or the percent of people he drives in based on the number of people on base when he comes up to bat, is 25th in the league at 18.4%. He comes up to the plate with the second most people on base in the Majors yet his BA is 39th in MLB with RISP. His OBP is 28th in MLB with RISP. His SLG is 38th in MLB with RISP. All of which are lovely but not the in the top 10% of qualifying MLB players, or worthy of $20 million.
In 1984, Tony Armus’ league leading 123 RBI’s seem to us to indicate his greatness and not his good fortune of batting behind Wade Boggs and Dwight Evans. By the same token, Ryan Howard’s prodigious RBI totals have as much to do with batting behind Chase Utley, Shane Victorino, and Jimmy Rollins, than his tremendously clutch nature. Another example of this may be Rangers outfielder Juan Gonzalez. He drove in 140 runs a year from 1996 to 1999 and grabbed the 1996 and 1998 M.V.P. awards despite not finishing in the top 10 in WAR either year. After joining Detroit in 2000, Gonzalez slumped to 67 R.B.I.
I’m throwing around a bunch of numbers and examples but it comes down to this: RBI’s are an incredibly terrible statistic. They do a terrible job of describing a players’ value. Consider this, (keeping RBI’s in the picture) how can we compare 2011 Ryan Howard (95 RBI, .257 AVG, 65 runs, 26 home runs), and 1957 Mickey Mantle (94 RBI, .365 AVG, 121 runs, 34 home runs, 146 walks 1 MVP award)?
-Sean Morash
