Most Important Baseball Batting Statistic?

[SlowwHand]

Which do you think, overall, is the most important indicator of prospect?

R, HR, RBI, SB, OBP, or SLG?

[Imran Siddiqui]

There isn't one.

And your list is deficient . My favorite hitting stat is probably OPS+. Of the ones you've listed, OBP.

[SlowwHand]

OPS+ isn't a stat in the league that I'm in. I went OBP. I didn't do it so I could follow the path of the A's though, which I am. I figured with proven professionals that it would be different. So far, no.

[Berzerker]

obp

money ball, man

[SlowwHand]

Well see, that's what I was thinking exactly. I could see the reasoning. Maybe I'll have a renaissance of sorts. We'll see.
So far, OBP is ahead. I meant to make a poll, but I had one of those moments.

[rah]

For me it's Runs and RBI's. Scoring is the goal, so getting them or knocking them in are all that really count.

[-Jrabbit]

The problem with those stats is that they depend on the quality of the guys immediately before and after the player being considered. If you've got a .400 OBP in front of you or a high-avg power hitter behind you, it will look like you're a much better player than, say, the equivalent Cubs player.

Of course, in fantasy, that's still relevant, since real stats trump playing ability.

[SlowwHand]

I think if anything moves me off of OBP, it would be RBI. Same stat, primarily, but maybe more power behind it.

[Imran Siddiqui]

What -Jrabbit said. RBI is almost useless in determining the value of the actual player - more about determining the value of the guys batting in front of the player.

[rah]

Yeah, but there's the other side of the coin. You can have the highest batting average in the world but if you can't hit in the clutch and drive in those guys that bat in front of you, what good are you?

[Imran Siddiqui]

That's why you have stats like Win Probability Added (WPA) - which is exactly what it says, it calculates the Probability of your team winning before and after your at bat and takes the difference and assigns it to you.

RBI is somewhat useless to tell you the value of that specific player. For example, Joey Votto, who is the best player in the majors right now, has 45 RBIs, that's not in the Top 10 in the MLB. He has the same RBIs as Michael Cuddyer. He has one less than his teammate, Jay Bruce... who interestingly bats 2 spots after Votto. (On that subject, why in the Hell does Dusty Baker bat Brandon Phillips in the cleanup role right after Votto?!!)

I would say that the fact some people are still treating RBI like it matters means Bill James is weeping somewhere, but I'm not sure some would really understand .

[OzzyKP]

Well see, that's what I was thinking exactly. I could see the reasoning. Maybe I'll have a renaissance of sorts. We'll see.
So far, OBP is ahead. I meant to make a poll, but I had one of those moments.

Yea, but it doesn't work like that in Fantasy. OBP may help a real baseball team win games in the real world, but it is only one category in Fantasy. You can't build a team around one stat. The only way to get the most points for HRs is to hit more HRs. The only way to get more points in RBIs is to have more RBIs.