Calculating Baseball Stats – Runs Created (RC)

If you’re a baseball fan, you probably are aware of how important statistics are to the game. A casual fan probably understands what most of the most popular statistics measure, but what about some of the more advanced statistics created to measure a players worth? In this article, we’ll look at a one of the slightly more advanced statistics, what it means, and how it’s calculated. If you do not already have a familiarity with how to calculate batting average, on base percentage, slugging percentage, and total bases, you may want to see my articles on those topics before diving into this material.

Runs Created, or RC, is a statistical attempt to measure a players overall offensive contribution to his team. The statistic, created by baseball analyst Bill James, is calculated by taking a player’s On Base Percentage (OBP) and multiplying it by the players Total Bases (TB). For example, in 2005, Derrek Lee of the Chicago Cubs led the major leagues in Runs Created. He had an OBP of .418 (which ranked 4th in the NL) and 393 TB (which led the NL). Multiplying the two together, we get 164 Runs Created. In the American League, New York Yankee slugger Alex Rodriguez led the league with 151 Runs Created (.421 OBP X 369 TB).

Why are these two statistics combined to come up with Runs Created? James argued that scoring runs, which is the name of the game in baseball, consisted of two components. The first is getting on base (i.e., creating baserunners). Obviously, if nobody gets on base, you can’t score a run. The second component is driving those runners around the bases. The more total bases a player has, the better you can assume he was at moving runners (including himself) around the bases.

The greatest single season ever turned in by a player based on Runs Created was Babe Ruth’s 1921 season, in which he racked up an amazing 233 RC. Ruth also has the most career Runs Created, with 2757. The active career leader in RC is Barry Bonds, who’s 2501 also rank him 5th all time. In between Ruth and Bonds on the all time list, you’ll find Hank Aaron (2590), Stan Musial (2568), and Ty Cobb (2526).

Some statisticians take RC a step further, with a statistic called “Runs Created per 27” or “RC27”. To calculate this statistic, you take the players RC and divide it by the number of outs he made (available on most advanced statistical sites), and multiply by 27. For example, in 2005, Derrek Lee had an RC of 164, and made 417 outs. That gives Lee an RC27 of 10.6 (164 / 417 * 27). Why 27? Because there are 27 outs in a major league game (9 innings times 3 outs each). RC27 attempts to measure how many runs a team would score if they had a lineup made up of the same player nine times. In other words, a team with nine Derrek Lee (circa 2005) clones hitting in every spot in the lineup might expect to average about 10.6 runs per game.