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I placed this on another thread, but I think it’s worth repeating. I had to look at it twice through bifocals, but believe it or not, the Redbirds are the only team not only the entire Big Leagues, but also in all 4 major U.S. professional sports leagues to have never been below .500 in 2026.
The late Wednesday night scoreboard:
The Cubs lost at Coors Field in Colorado. 3-2 Rockies your final.
The Brewers lost at Alameda Coliseum. 4-3 Athletics your final.
Pirates came back late to beat the Doyers. 9-8 Pittsburgh your final at Forbes Field.
And, of course, the Reds lost to the Padres at Jack Murphy Stadium on a two out homerun in the last of the 9th by Frank Tates Jr. 5-4 San Diego your final.
And the upcoming WhiteSox won again over Atlanta. 2-1 ChiSox your final at Comiskey Park.
And now its bedtime for me and Whitey Herdog.
r/Esteemed Rat
Two very comfortable games so far. Let’s sweep up the last one in NY with more of that heart-warming offense.
Kind of amazing, and cool, that the Chicago American League ball club leads their division, while the National League entry sits at .500.
Also our club is only 3.5 games back despite. a mediocre +12 run differential, while the Brewers are well over 100 to the plus side. We were negative until we hit New York. Wonder if anyone in the Big Apple cares about the Mets with the Knicks on an amazing run and a game away from their first NbA title since the days of Walt Frazier and Willis Reed.
And finally, Jordan Walker is on some RBI pace. If he can keep it going he might end up close to 40 knocks and 125 RBIs. Those RBIs are especially important because as 1TD reminds us, runs are pretty important in baseball.
I have heard some thought from modern stat geeks that RBIs are overrated since they are mostly dependent on other players. I don’t fall into that line of thinking – to me they are the ultimate clutch- hitting stat. If you are delivering the runs, you are producing when it is most important. After all a run in the first inning counts as much as one in the ninth.
2B J. Wetherholt L
DH Ivan Herrera R
1B A. Burleson L
RF J. Walker R
LF L. Nootbaar L
SS Masyn Winn R
C Jimmy Crooks L
3B Nolan Gorman L
CF N. Church LBack in April I mistakenly compared Nathan Church to Michael Siani. It turns out he might actually be more like Pete Crowe-Armstrong (minus the attitude). That might be a stretch but he could become a long term fixture for us in CF.
Now if we could solve 3B we might have a real team.
Nothing is black or white. Where a hitter is placed in the batting order affects his RBI. It only stands to reason hitting behind high OBP players creates more opportunity.
For me, a rate based stat rather than a counting stat would be better for comparisons.
RBI Percentage takes RBI (minus HR) and divides it by the total number of runners that are on base when the batter comes to the plate.
Then everyone would be on equal comparative ground.
I first read about this 15 years ago, but don’t know if it is tracked anywhere.
P.S. For me, it is sort of like a favorite topic of some here, batting average. They don’t award the batting title to the player with the most hits, because leadoff batters have more opportunities than second place hitters who have more than those hitting third, etc. Hence, batting average (over a minimum number of at-bats) is used to select the batting champion.
I first read about this 15 years ago, but don’t know if it is tracked anywhere.
Here you go, Brian:
I don’t know that I would call that a percentage – maybe an “efficiency rate”.
Dobbins with an unpleasant greeting, but now the Nootz with the tater to trim the Mets lead to 1. This team scuffles back.
Thank you, LACF. I hadn’t been to Baseball Musings in a while.
So for the Cards, Walker and Burly are the RBI efficiency leaders, but far from the best in MLB.
Whoa…And now Crooks with the 2 run TATER to give the Redbirds the lead! No potato famine today. It’s an Ore Ida fest in NY!
Here is a more detailed discussion about the RBI efficiency metric:
Most serious baseball fans have known for years that RBI is a flawed stat. It’s skewed by RBI opportunities, that is, the more runners that are on base for the batter, the more runs he can drive in. Thus, the batter’s position in the lineup is going to radically impact his RBI total. Your cleanup hitter, say Prince Fielder, will get several more chances to drive in runners than will your leadoff hitter, say Austin Jackson. Also, the better the players are that surround you, the more runners will be waiting for you (the more “ducks you’ll have on the pond”). So there can be a significant difference in the number of runners on base for middle-of-the-order hitters from one team to another.
And Brian, you were right – that article was almost 15 years ago!
If I didn’t know the game was in NYC, I’d assume the wind was blowing out at Wrigley or the AC was blowing out at the Homerdome!
Memphis is up 7-0 through 5. Mathews’ line so far: 5 ip, 3 h, 0 r, 1 bb, 5 K. He just hit 95.3 to the last batter in the 5th. 71 pitches
Lunch was fish and chips with a bit of slaw and a mint milano.
1. Aaron
2. Pujols
3. Ruth
4. Rodriguez*
5. Anson
6. Bonds*
7. Gehrig
8. Musial
9. Cobb
10. FoxxPrince ain’t on the top 10 list…
Another inning, another zero runs, zero hits, zero walks and one K for Mathews, who hit 94.1 on one pitch. 79 pitches through 6.
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