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What's the job of a hitter?
Answer: To create runs.
Do we know of something that can, in a sense, remove what a hitter has done from the context of the players batting around him?
Answer: Yes
What is it?
Answer: There's a basic formula known as runs created. The simplest version is written like this ((H + BB)*(TB))/(AB+BB)
What do you mean?
Answer: I mean if you take that formula, and plug in a team's batting stats, you'll see it in almost all cases give a result that is quite close to what that team actually scored.
Gee, that's nice, but why would that work for individual players?
Answer: If you go through the players individually, and calculate their runs created, and add those up, it will again work out close to what the team scored. Furthermore, you can oftentimes compare that runs created result with the simple (Runs + RBI)/2 and again those two numbers will be close. The variance is often greater than at the team level, because the sample size has gone down and how many runs a player scores and drives in is dependent upon his position in the batting order and the players around him in the order.
So are you saying batting average is unimportant?
Answer: no, just saying that one should recognize that is a component of how runs are created. The runs created formula has three distinct areas: measuring how often the player got on base (H+BB), how far he moves people with his hitting (Total Bases), and how often he does those things with the divsion into his plate appearances (AB+W)
So wait a second, if I look at that formula, a walk isn't quite as good as a hit, because walks aren't part of total bases, are they?
Answer: correct
But still, I guess walks would be important then, why's that?
Answer: Because if you get on base you have a chance to score. Walks are positive contributions. Also, drawing a walk doesn't give up an out. Outs are a precious commodity in baseball, you only get so many of them and you don't get extras.
So maybe the statheads are just saying we should try to figure what's important to creating runs?
Answer: Yes, batting average is part of that. OBP is a bigger part of that. Slugging is part of that.
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