I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the lines between advanced metrics and the more conventional means we used to use to evaluate baseball players. I wrote a lot about Derek Jeter the last two weeks, which certainly spurred the thinking, and in one of those posts, we talked about how Justin Morneau’s 2006 AL MVP is essentially a “Hey that guy had a lot of RBI” kind of season.
RBI are a funny thing. It wasn’t that long ago — within the lifetimes of most readers — that having a high RBI total nearly guaranteed you a spot on the MVP ballot, if not the award outright.