re sandberg runs rbis was re notes on jays vs indians series in article apr princeton edu roger astro princeton edu roger lustig writes right so who cares which player gets credited as long as the team gets more runs if a player helps the team get more r and rbi but doesn t score them all himself who cares amusing isn t it seems only the sdcns realize how much baseball is a team game combining efforts from every player for the win consider the red sox game last night the sox won in the bottom of the th who won the game clemens pitched a strong nine innings allowing only two runs ryan pitched a couple shutout innings though he needed some excellent defensive plays behind him to do so quantrill pitched a couple of innings gave up the go ahead run and got credited with the win when the sox scored two in the bottom of the inning looks like a team effort to me yet only quantrill got credit for the win how about the offense dawson and vaughn hit i think hrs early in the game without either one the sox would have lost in nine quintana led off the th with a solid single zupcic pinch ran for quintana providing the speed to go from first to third when cooper ripped a second single in the inning melvin avoided the dp getting the run home with a sac fly not much of a help but it was something scrub richardson then hit a double scoring the speedy cooper all the way from first hill s lack of defense helped cooper and zupcic were credited with runs melvin and richardson were credited with rbis but it seems to me that it was quintana s hit that set up the whole inning and did melvin really contribute as much as richardson furthermore people seem to consider rbis to be more significant than runs did melvin contribute more than cooper cooper provided the game winning baserunner and moved the tying run to third base with only one out assigning credit based on runs and rbis is clearly ridiculous you can argue that obp and slg don t show you who came through in the clutch but r rbi don t do any better at least obp and slg don t claim to try to tell you that here s to the red sox who contributed to last night s victory all of them valentine
