Talk:Runs created

Untitled
Anyone have the more recent (post-Baseball Abstract) RC formulae? Dcarrano 1 July 2005 22:52 (UTC)

Article assumes knowledge
Reading this I don't know what 'H' and 'BB' stand for in the simple formula, it may be obivous to others, but not me. Please provide a link for these or a description like some of the others have.


 * Okay, I filled it in for myself, hopefully correctly, please confirm. WilliamKF 03:33, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Confirm D ?
Can someone with a reference please confirm the formula for D please? I saw it elsewhere with the first term being HR not H with runners in scroring position. Thanks. WilliamKF 01:53, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

General Thoughts
It seems to me that neither of the problems mentioned in the "Problems with Runs Created" section are really problems because the formula is not designed to adjust for park or era.

However, there are other problems with Runs Created that are not mentioned: specifically that it doesn't value the homerun correctly. In a hypothetical league in which 10 runs are scored per inning, the difference between the value of a single and the value of a homerun is very small, because the batter who singles is very likely to score later in the inning.

Conversely, in a league in which almost no runs are scored per inning, the value of a homerun will be much larger than the value of a single because the batter who singles will be unlikely to score later in the inning and the batter who homers has already scored.

Although these two leagues do not exist in real life, less extreme versions certainly do. A game in which Pedro Martinez is pitching will have many fewer runs scored per inning than normal, and a game in which a terrible pitcher is pitching will have many more than normal. Runs Created treats each of these situations the same, and by doing so gives unrealistic results.

All of this is explained in the article "How Runs Are Really Created" which can be found at www.tangotiger.net. Chocaholic 04:23, 30 December 2006 (UTC)


 * If RC is supposed to measure the relative value of two different hitters, why would you want to take into account their team? The era and ballpark, sure, but the rest of the team is irrelevant. The question of how good would a team made up of all Ryan Howards be is actually more relevant to comparing him to, say, Pujols, than the question of how much did the Phillies wasted Howard's production.


 * For the same reason, the above comments about home runs are not relevant, unless you treat RC as only cataloguing the effect of a hitter and not as a way of evaluating his performance, but if that's the case, then you should just use the difference between the likelihood of the team scoring in the situation the player came to bat in and the likelihood of it scoring in the situation after his at bat.Leusebi 19:37, 19 April 2007 (UTC)


 * The article uses poor wording. The point is not that the Phillies "wasted" Howard's production.  The point is that Ryan Howard does not and will never exist in a lineup of nine Ryan Howards.  To say that a players production is "wasted" when he's not surrounded by players who are exactly as good as him does not make sense.  Ryan Howard only comes up once every nine batters.  Placing a batter in a lineup of nine versions of himself will amplify the effects of great players -- especially those with very high OBP's -- because the players will be driving themselves in.  A more reasonable construct is to place a batter in a lineup with eight average players and see how many additional runs they contribute over a team with nine average players.  This eliminates the batting-themselves-in issue and also sidesteps commentary about a players actual teammates (who may be above or below average).  Several other run estimators do attempt to place batters in a neutral lineup context (not just neutral park/era context).  DavidRF 16:04, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

a simpler formula
I read somewhere (I forget where) many years ago that a simple arithmetic formula for Runs Created is R+RBI-HR. Simply put, it is how many runs and runs batted in a player creates, minus HRs because a hitter gets one run and one RBI for a homer. Has anyone else heard of this? Who originated this simple formula? Kingturtle 05:04, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * That formula (R+RBI-HR) is called "Runs Produced". "Run Produced" is a fairly well-known stat, but its unrelated to Runs Created and should go in either its own article or in an article summarizing run estimation formulas.  Unlike RC, its a teammate-dependent stat in that it includes R & RBI which are affected by who bats near you in the batting order.  Plus, subtracting HR's seems logical from an individual perspective, but on a team level it double-counts runs that are not HR's.DavidRF 15:24, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I just created Runs produced, based on this conversation. I marked the article as a stub, and it probably needs work. Kingturtle 15:48, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

other versions
There are other versions or Runs Created. I reject the idea that Bill James owns the right to refer to his version as "Runs Created" and no one else is able to do so. I have made edits that have been undone by some Bill James fan-boy that point to other versions that use the name, Runs Created. IrishPrince (talk) 13:52, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
 * "Runs Created" is not a generic term. Its specific to Bill James' formula.  The generic term is "run estimator" and there are dozens of them.  Linear Weights, BaseRuns, ExtrapolatedRuns, Batting Runs, Equivalent Runs, Contextual Runs, etc, etc.   See .  As I understand it, many of these have indeed been shown to be more "accurate" than Bill James' formula, so calling me a "fan-boy" doesn't really make any sense.  If you think your run estimator is better than Bill James', then fine, just don't try to call it "Runs Created". DavidRF (talk) 14:15, 17 August 2008 (UTC)