Why RBIs Are a Terrible Stat ​

January 15, 2026 · MLB · 5 min read

Every year, like clockwork, some grizzled baseball commentator looks into the camera, furrows his brow with the intensity of a man who has strong opinions about steak temperatures, and declares that Player X "drove in 115 runs — that's what it's all about." And every year, a small but growing portion of the audience dies a little inside. RBIs are the participation trophies of baseball stats: they technically exist, they technically measure something, and citing them unironically in 2026 tells everyone exactly how seriously to take your analysis.

The Core Problem ​

RBIs measure opportunity, not skill. To drive in runs, you need runners on base ahead of you. To have runners on base ahead of you, you need teammates who can get on base. A league-average hitter batting cleanup behind three OBP machines will pile up RBIs. A phenomenal hitter batting leadoff with a terrible lineup behind him won't.

This isn't controversial. This isn't even debatable. It's arithmetic.

A Fun Experiment ​

Consider two hypothetical hitters:

Hitter A looks like the RBI king your uncle would argue for at Thanksgiving. Hitter B is clearly the better baseball player by every meaningful metric. The difference? Hitter A batted 4th on a team with a .350 team OBP. Hitter B led off for a team that couldn't get on base with a GPS and a map.

"But Run Production Matters!" ​

Sure. Team run production matters. But if you want to know how much an individual contributed to scoring runs, we have wRC+ (Weighted Runs Created Plus), which accounts for park factors, era, and the actual run value of each outcome. We have wOBA, which weights singles, doubles, walks, and home runs by their actual contribution to scoring. We have, in other words, better tools for the job.

Using RBIs to evaluate a hitter in 2026 is like using a sundial to check if you're late for a Zoom meeting. It technically involves the concept of time, but you're going to get some very wrong answers.

The RBI was invented in 1920. The forward pass was legalized in 1906. At least football stopped pretending the game hadn't changed.

The Real Kicker ​

Year-to-year RBI totals for the same player are only correlated at about r = 0.52 — meaning nearly half the variance in a player's RBI total comes from factors outside their control. Compare that to wRC+ (r = 0.72) or ISO (r = 0.68). If your stat is less reliable than basically every alternative, maybe it's time to retire it.

But sure, tell me more about how your favorite first baseman "knows how to drive in runs."

Related: Is Clutch Hitting Real? · Advanced Metrics Guide