Pittsburgh Pirates: 10 Single Season Stats Worth a Deeper Dive

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Runs batted in, or RBI, are essentially a batter’s version pitcher wins/losses. They can be majorly affected by forces outside of an individual player’s control, and don’t accurately tell how productive a player is.

If you are a middle of the order bat, then you’re going to have a lot more RBIs than if you hit lead off, regardless of how good you are with runners in scoring position, or how good you are with men on base simply because you’re going to have way more chances. RBI totals almost completely rely on where a hitter hits in the line up, how many chances they get, and who hits in front of them.

Obviously, a number two or number three hitter will have a lot more RBIs if the team leads off a guy with a .400 on base percentage over a guy with a .330 OBP. Leadoff guys, even if they are extrmely good with men on, will almost never have high RBI totals. Because of how easily they can be manipulated, some odd things can happen. This is the case with the lowest RBI total across an entire season since the start of the 1900’s.

In 1907, the Pittsburgh Pirates used a guy named Goat Anderson in the outfield quite often. This is the first and only year of his MLB career, and in 513 plate appearances, Anderson hit .206/.343/.225 with a 77 OPS+ and 89 wRC+. Despite playing in over 100 games, and receiving fairly regular playing time, Anderson had just 12 RBIs. Just to show how few that is, the lowest amount of RBI’s in 2019 across at least 500 plate appearances was Mallex Smith a 37. Even in the shortened 60 game season in 2020, only one player out of 142 had both a qualifying amount of plate appearances and less than a dozen RBIs.

Now granted, he was the Pirates’ lead off hitter as 467 of his 513 plate appearances came in the number one spot of the order. However, 12 RBIs is the lowest total in Pirates’ history across at least 500 plate appearances. To have that many plate appearances, and just 12 RBIs is an insanely hard feat. It might even be harder to have this low of an RBI total, than have an RBI total over 100. What’s even more impressive is he did it on a team that was second in baseball in on base percentage at .325.