Epstein interview re JD Drew and stats, generally

[Tracer Bullet]

I straight up love Theo Epstein. But screw Boston. They don't need a great GM.

 

Interesting that not only do they ignore RBI (which you'd expect), they completely ignore RBI%. I've never been fond of it as an evaluation tool, but I've never been able to articulate why. I might have to see if he's explained that elsewhere.

 

http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2009/10/03/theo/?6a52a940

 

After the radio guys say Drew's OPS hasn't resulted in "production" -

 

“That’s not true. With RBIs, yes. Based on his skill set, he’s always going to have underwhelming RBI totals. I couldn’t care less. When you’re putting together a winning team, that honestly doesn’t matter. When you have a player who takes a ton of walks, who doesn’t put the ball in play at an above average rate, and is a certain type of hitter, he’s not going to drive in a lot of runs. Runs scored, you couldn’t be more wrong. If you look at a rate basis, J.D. scores a ton of runs.

 

“And the reason he scores a ton of runs is because he does the single most important thing you can do in baseball as an offensive player. And that’s NOT MAKE OUTS. He doesn’t make outs. He’s always among our team leaders in on-base percentage, usually among the league leaders in on-base percentage. And he’s a really good base runner. So when he doesn’t make outs, and he gets himself on base, he scores runs — and he has some good hitters hitting behind him. Look at his runs scored on a rate basis with the Red Sox or throughout his career. It’s outstanding.

 

“You guys can talk about RBIs if you want, I just … we ignore them in the front office … and I think we’ve built some pretty good offensive clubs. If you want to talk about RBIs at all, talk about it as a percentage of opportunity but it’s just simply not a way or something we use to evaluate offensive players.”

[Sammy Sofa]

*Sigh*

[mcgoobs]

JD Drew has been a very productive player for the Red Sox over the past two years. Given his injury history though I could understand if teams are unwilling to pay him $14 MM per year .

[CyHawk_Cub]

Man, I wish Theo had a hankering for ivy, Old Style & deep dish pizza