There's a lot more to baseball statistics than the Big Three

Jose Guillen's 97 RBIs in 2008 masked some serious shortcomings in his game. AP

If you are about my age*, then you grew up as a baseball fan with three statistics and only three statistics. There was batting average. There were home runs runs. And there were RBIs. That was it.

*You might also groan when you get out of a chair and get just a little bit too excited when you come across some nostalgic thing you had forgotten all about like Lite-Brite or the Dean Martin Celebrity Roast or Wacky Packages. And right about now you are humming the Superfriends theme.

It would be difficult to overstate how deeply those three statistics were burned into our baseball fan psyche. Every single time we would watch a game on television, we would see those three same stats, always the same three stats, listed below the batter, usually in large blocky letters so that it looked like so:

Graig Nettles
.267 avg.
21 home runs
91 RBI

Often, they would put the numbers across the screen, horizontally -- but no matter the design, it was still the same three numbers. But it wasn't just on television. The newspapers would only list those numbers. And every time you would hear a game on the radio, the announcer in (I suspect) every single town would give the player's name followed by the those three numbers: "That will bring up Sixto Lezcano, Sixto's hitting .273 on the year, 21 homers, 49 runs batted in."

Same numbers in the same order every time.

Baseball cards would have a couple more numbers on the back, but not many more. In the early-to-mid 1970s, when I started collecting cards, the only numbers they had on the back other than the core three: at-bats, hits, doubles and triples. It wasn't until 1977 that Topps even put runs on the back on cards. In 1978 they added games. In 1981, around that time when the Donruss and Fleer cards started to offer some competition, Topps added stolen bases, slugging percentage (what was this slugging voodoo?) walks and strikeouts. And that's how it stayed until my Cleveland Indians card collection runs out in 1987.

My point is we were inundated with batting average, homers and RBIs. We were inoculated with batting average, homers and RBIs. We were brainwashed with batting average, homers and RBIs -- those are, for kids of my generation, like the queen of diamonds in The Manchurian Candidate. If someone called me up right now and said, "Why don't you pass the time by playing a little solitaire," and I looked at my baseball cards, and came across batting average, homers and RBIs, yeah, I'd probably be programmed to kill.

I think it's good, every so often, to consider how deeply batting average, homers and RBIs are cut into our baseball DNA. Those were more or less the only numbers we were even allowed to consider. Why do you think Bill James was such a seminal figure -- it's because he so clearly and concisely and hilariously was able to slap our faces and show us that, yeah, there was more out there, a bigger world. He was like the baseball version of Morpheus for us. Red pill or blue pill. Blue pill you can stick with your core statistics and believe that Steve Garvey had a good season in 1984 and Andre Dawson deserved his '87 MVP. Red pill and you can see beyond: .279, 14, 74.

The funny part is that even after you appreciate that there is a bigger baseball world, it's very hard to completely break away from what you grew up with. Sure, I know that on-base percentage is a more compelling statistic than batting average, and yet I find myself looking at batting average first. I know that home runs, while significant, do not give as complete a picture of a batter's power as slugging percentage does ... but I am built to look at the home run number and make judgments. I know that RBIs give an utterly incomplete picture of a baseball player's hitting talent, but I cannot help but feel a bit of admiration when I see that someone had 97 ribbies.*

*That would be Jose Guillen. I KNOW that Jose Guillen was one of the worst everyday players in the American League last year. I know this. He's an awful fielder. He can't, and often doesn't, run. He had a .300 on-base percentage, which is abominable (third-worst among corner outfielders). He had a .438 slugging percentage which is barely one step above abominable for a guy who was signed for $12 million per so he could hit with power. He was a total pain in the Hillman. And while he had a smoking hot 44-game stretch in the middle of the year (.380/.391/.659 with 10 home runs ... and, yeah, two walks), the other 109 games he was, no exaggeration, the worst player in baseball. He hit .215/.263/.344 as a lousy fielding corner outfielder with an attitude ... you simply can't pay enough for that kind of dreadfulness.

BUT ... I can't help it. I see those 97 RBIs and, against my will, I find myself reverting to childhood and involuntarily thinking, "Hey, that's a lot of ribbies." A person my age cannot help this, it's impulse and reflex . It's like if you go up to anybody my age, anyone, and start that Muppet Show song -- you know "Me-nah-me-nah" -- they will, without wanting to, respond with "Doo-doooo-doo-do-do." It's in our genes.

So what's wrong with a baseball world filled only with batting average, homers and RBIs? OK, well, I think everyone here can appreciate why on-base percentage is so much more telling than batting average. I've written at length on this, like everyone else has, but to put it simply: Batting average -- for reasons that go back more than 100 years -- does not incorporate walks. On-base percentage does incorporate walks. There's your difference. Walks are very good things for a hitter. Very good things. Important things. Significant things. Very significant things.

In my view, walks, even now, even after Moneyball, are wildly underrated. One of the many cool things Bill James has shown -- and others have shown it in different ways as well -- is that if a player could walk every at-bat, he would be the most productive player in baseball history. And that would be true no matter how brutal the players around him might be. Someone who walked every time -- and I remember reading a kids' book about the possibility, The Kid Who Batted 1.000 -- would be more productive than Barry Bonds or Babe Ruth or Ted Williams in their greatest seasons. Bill and others proved this in really cool and dramatic ways -- I believe Bill even set up some computer simulation to prove the point. I don't know how to to do computer simulations, but I should be able to demonstrate this in a few short sentences:

OK, so, the all-time record for total bases in a season is Babe Ruth with 457 in 1921. That's a massive season. If you tack on his 145 walks and the four times he was hit by a pitch (Four hit-by-pitch? That's all? Hey does someone want to move the Babe off the plate or something?), you get 606 grand total bases, which is the most in baseball history.

If they had walked the Babe every single time, he would have had 693 grand total bases, which would be, you know, more.

Barry Bonds in 2004 -- the year he had that sick .609 on-base percentage -- had 303 total bases along with 232 walks (amazing) and nine hit-by pitch. That's a grand total of 544 bases (total bases plus walks plus hit-by pitch).

If they had walked Bonds every single time that season -- and Lord knows they tried -- he would have had 617 grand total-bases.

Ted Williams in 1941 hit .406 with 37 homers, 147 walks, a .735 slugging percentage. His grand total bases was 485.

If they had walked the Splinter every time, he would have had 606 grand total bases.