The RBI guys

Will Buster Posey’s preference for the RBI stat lead the team away from finding good players or is this all just a matter of taste?

My response to the end of the Farhan Zaidi era was to be more critical of the next guy, but then the next guy wound up being Buster Posey. Fans are ready for Buster Posey to lower egg prices fix the San Francisco Giants by any process he comes up with and so being skeptical or critical of a franchise icon — even one with no experience in his new position — makes me look like a jerk*.

With that in mind, I want to take something that happened recently and use it to fashion a lens through which we might see the offseason. A couple of weeks ago, Buster Posey powerbombed his former teammate Brandon Belt’s 2023 season through a metaphorical conference table when he talked about player incentives and stats:

“If the industry is paying a guy to have an .850 OPS, but he only drives in 40 runs, well, where’s the incentive to drive in runs if it doesn’t matter? So the challenge, from my perspective, is that driving runs does matter to me. There’s probably a lot of people who’d disagree with me and say (RBIs) are all based on luck, right? I disagree with that. I don’t think it is (totally context dependent). I think it’s a mindset and a want-to.”

Rather than disagree with his interpretation of “context dependent,” I’ll capitulate. That’s what Buster thinks, so he’s right.

So, given this renewed importance of the RBI, I thought it was worth going through the past 3 seasons to find some players who have excelled at accumulating RBIs with runners in scoring position. Using FanGraphs, I looked at hitters from 2022-2024 (min. 300 PA) and their numbers with runners in scoring position (RISP). You can look at the full search result here, but for the purposes of this post I’m plucking out 15 players from the top 50 of this list who either are (thanks to free agency) or might be (via trade) available for the Giants to acquire this offseason. It’s compelling!

Now, this is by no means an exhaustive list, and if you poke around at the FanGraphs link you’ll be able to find dudes to shore up any trade proposal you want to throw down in the comments or into that online trade machine. Two examples of what I mean:

• The corpse of Javier Baez, in 330 plate appearances since 2022, has 130 RBI with runners in scoring position, a 133 wRC+ thanks to a triple slash of .304/.342/.502 in an RISP situation. That’s a significant improvement over his overall line: .221/.262/.347 in 1,426 plate appearances. He’s also owed $73 million over the next 3 seasons, so, you know, not all RBI guys are created equal.
• If you sort by plate appearances rather than RBI total, and sort by fewest plate appearances, there are 16 guys who drove in a run around a third of the time or better. Some notables (in terms of their availability this offseason): Jesse Winker (102 RBI in 301 PA), Gavin Sheets (107/304), Kyle Farmer (121/305), Joc Pederson (lol — no, not happening), Gio Urshela (114/315). All of them have plenty of warts, but they might come cheap; but then, there’s Wilmer Flores with 104 RBI in 325 PA with RISP — so, maybe just stick with him?

But, let’s go through the 15 I’ve highlighted.

Josh Naylor

Humm baby. I think the McCoven really nailed this one. He fits the exact profile that Buster Posey has signaled a preference for and, really, he just fills a need. He’ll turn 28 in June, so really in a good position in terms of the age curve/prime. The batted ball data is good and Statcast really likes his defense at first base (+5 OAA). Do the Giants need another first baseman/DH is a meaningful question, though.

He’s set to earn $12 million in his final year of arbitration and maybe the Guards just want to hang on to him and tag him with a qualifying offer next offseason — because he provides tremendous value to them — but, geez, if the Giants could somehow land him, he’d check a lot of boxes at the plate: decent walk rate (that was more like great in 2024) and strikes out well below average (career 16.6% K%). He hit a career-high 31 home runs in 2024, so that would necessarily come down because of Oracle Park and, as a bit of additional downside, his home/road split in 2024 was pretty alarming: .852 OPS home, .699 OPS away. That hasn’t always been the case, though, as his career split is .742 home, .790 away, but still, something that’s interesting to note.

The Qualifying Offer RBI Guys: Pete Alonso, Willy Adames, Teoscar Hernandez, Christian Walker, Juan Soto, Anthony Santander

While it’s plausible the Giants grab one from this bunch (or Corbin Burnes, Max Fried, Sean Manaea, Nick Pivetta on the pitching side), I think it’s improbable, given the draft cost (2 draft picks plus $1 million in international bonus pool money per qualifying offer player signed) relative to where they are in their competitive window and development pipeline.

You can also run through each case and arrive at pretty quick nos: Alonso suffered a massive power drop in 2024 and will be entering his 30s to start his next contract. You’ll find more red flags in his free agent profile than you will in China, even though he is 3rd overall in RBI since 2022. Adames, while a CAA client (Jeff Berry connection!), will command more than Ha-Seong Kim and has less of a chance of sticking at shortstop long-term than Kim (though, given Kim’s recent surgery, I have doubt). Teoscar just won the World Series — why would he want to play for the Giants? Santander would be very expensive, too, plus he’s also more of a DH than a fielder and the acquisition cost might not be worth it because of how Oracle Park would stifle his power. Walker would cost a lot for a very fine player but who is still, ultimately, a first baseman. Soto probably doesn’t even know the Giants exist.

Justin Turner

I put him on this list mainly to tick myself off. I can’t believe this guy is still kicking around and performing. How does Captain Crowd-The-Plate have just 135 hit by pitches? How did he provide value through age 39? He turns 40 in a couple of days and even though he was able to salvage his 2024 following a trade from Toronto (.722 OPS) to Seattle (.766), it’s highly unlikely the Giants would commit effort to acquiring a 40-year old former Dodger who looks like he was created in a lab to scare children.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

It defies reason that the Blue Jays would trade one of the faces of their franchise and it’s almost more ridiculous to imagine the Giants of all teams having the right quality and quantity of players to land him, even if he’s set to be a free agent after 2025 — but I’ve included it as “plausible” because maybe Russ Atkins sees this as an opportunity to pile up some prospects and setup the Jays’ next competitive window.

A somewhat relevant comp is the Juan Soto trade last offseason, but I don’t think that really fits because the Padres were under the gun to slash payroll to compensate for the sudden loss of cable TV revenue. The Blue Jays are owned by a telecommunications company. They can retain their homegrown stars. But, I present him as a possible target anyway, in the event the Giants want to offer Toronto 86% of what the Yankees offered the Padres for Soto (Guerrero Jr,’s 138 wRC+ over the past 3 seasons is 86% of Soto’s 160 wRC+ over the same period), because it’s plausible that with so much of this recent crop of homegrown players stalling out they might want to turn the page.

Ian Happ & Cody Bellinger

Both of these guys seem like important pieces to the Cubs and so I include them here not only because they’re both in the top 50 but also because the Cubs might be looking to trim their payroll a bit. Ken Rosenthal seems to have mostly speculated that this would put Bellinger (and Nico Hoerner) on the trade block, but Hoerner’s RBI Guyness isn’t as impressive as Happ’s and so I’m pairing him with Bellinger. Happ is owed $21 million in 2025 and $19 million in 2026 while Bellinger has a series of convoluted player options and team buyouts that puts him closer to $52.5 million over the next two seasons. Happ just won his third consecutive Gold Glove, too, so I think the acquisition cost would be pretty high even if the Cubs were looking to dump salary. And in terms of Bellinger, would a salary swap for Robbie Ray’s 2 years, $50 million make a lot of sense for the Cubs?

Nick Castellanos

Why would the Giants take on a middle-aged (for MLB’s age curve) designated hitter still owed $40 million, who doesn’t get on base much and strikes out a lot? Because. He. Drives. In. Runs. Not only when they’re in scoring position, when they’re anywhere. Since the start of 2022, his 254 RBI are 31st in MLB. “Analytics”-wise, he’s basically a slightly better than league average hitter when taken together, and you shouldn’t factor in his defense because it will only make him look worse. He also hits much worse away from Citizens Bank Park and is a career .225/.225/.350 at Oracle Park (10 games, 40 PA).

I’d also look at something like his average leverage index and Win Probability added (low leverage on the whole, negative value provided) to conclude he’s more trouble than he’s worth, but who knows? What the Giants have been doing the past six seasons hasn’t worked, and a lot of fans are frothing at the mouth to do the exact opposite, no matter how silly it seems. Plus, the Phillies seem determined to shake up their roster a little bit to see if that’ll juice another long competitive streak and selling off one of their former clubhouse pillars might be just what they need and in the Giants they might find a willing buyer.

J.D. Martinez

The Giants tried to sign him last offseason, but he doesn’t like the ballpark.

Paul Goldschmidt

As I mentioned yesterday, I think he’s the exact kind of player the current Giants front office seeks and they’re willing to ignore his age and his performance the last 2 seasons. What a guy did three years ago is sort of what we’re all basing this organizational revamp on anyway, right? This is a pretty standard front office concept, practiced by both Brian Sabean and Farhan Zaidi.

Interesting to note that last season was the first season where Paul Goldschmidt provided negative Win Probability Added (-0.7). Posey himself had two such seasons: 2011 (which shouldn’t count) and 2019 and he was twice as bad (-1.4). Well, he had a surgery, got some rest, and in 2021 he was back up to positive. I’m sure they see a similar possibility in a player like Goldschmidt, who won’t break the bank and might relish the chance to pound the NL West regularly. For his career, he has a .303 average, 99 HR, and 364 RBI in 1,857 combined at bats against the Diamondbacks, Rockies, Dodgers, and Padres.

I think, at the end of the day, good players will show up on any list that seeks to sort the good players from the rest, but what I need to let go of is the irritation I feel when the inversion forms the basis. As in, “He’s an RBI guy! Of course Pete Alonso is good!” Well — no. Okay, okay. I relent. It does mean that now, I guess. Carry on, Buster Posey. RBI isn’t the greatest tool for the purposes of evaluation, but if you’re a former player who knows how to win, its utility is undeniable and these results speak to that.

*-yes, I know I already look like a massive jerk to most of you