 So the next time you watch a baseball game on TV They're gonna put up this screen and the announcer is gonna say something like Walle's having a great year because he has more RBI's than anybody else on the team and you should not listen to this man because RBI's are misleading. Why is that? Let's say in the first game Walle gets up and he hits a home run And so everybody would then clap for him and be happy and then the next batter Gus gets up and He hits a home run So in the view of most people and in the view of RBI's included These two players are equal because each player got one RBI for what they did now Let's say in the next game Larry leads off the inning with a triple And then Walle comes up and he hits another home run and everybody's happy and then Gus gets up Following Walle and he hits another home run So again in the eyes of most people Walle and Gus did the same thing and therefore they would be equal That makes sense to me But in the view of RBI's Walle is the better player because Walle drove in two runs as opposed to Gus's One run and therefore we see the shortcoming of RBI's Walle did not help Larry reach base in any way, but it helped Walle's RBI count and Likewise, it was not Gus's fault that nobody was on base when he hit and so we see that solo home runs are in fact The only thing that do not require help from another teammate in order for a player to get an RBI and being the baseball is set Up the way that it is one player cannot affect the outcome of another teammates at bat and so therefore it is beyond their control Whether or not there is anybody on base or not whenever they are up to bat and therefore RBI's are relying on events out of players control and so throughout the season Walle had 100 of bats with a runner on third base He had a batting average of 300 in those at bats and therefore a total of 30 RBI's Gus on the other hand had half of that number of at bats with a runner on third base And even though he still hit for the same average He only ended up with 15 RBI's and so it's important to note What RBI's do not tell you and that is how many at bats a player had with runners on base How many at bats a player's had with runners in scoring position? What a player's batting average or on base average with runners on base was and what spot that player hit in the batting order? Because it's been statistically proven that some spots in the batting order come up with guys on base more often than others So when that announcer says Walle's having a great year He very well may be having a great year, but it is not because of the number of RBI's that he has