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I’ve long felt that RAF is the best measure of a baseball player.  RAF?  Yep, Runs Accounted For.  It’s a stat I made up years ago and used for softball stats.

It’s a very simple formula, with a very powerful result. It’s simply:

[runs]+[RBIs]-[HRs]

This tells you how many runs that each player has had a direct part in, either by knocking it in or scoring it themselves.  If the entire purpose of baseball is to score more runs, doesn’t it make sense to give credit to those that do it the best?

The reason we subtract HR from the total is so we don’t count a run twice.  For example, if the Phillies win a game 1-0 on a Ryan Howard HR, he would have both a Run and and RBI.  We can’t give him a RAF of 2 for the game (“He accounted for 2 runs in the 1-0 win…”), so we subtract the HR total.  This gives us the exact number of runs that a player has directly affected.

Using this system, Jose Reyes of the Mets is the current MLB leader. Of the 379 runs that the team has scored, Reyes has accounted for 124 of them (34 RBI + 99 R – 9 HR).  That’s astounding!  Most of the list is stacked with RBI leaders, as it should be.  If you drive in a lot of runs, you’re obviously doing a good thing.

Here is the current top 15:

1 – Jose Reyes (NYM) — 124 (34 RBI, 99 R, 9 HR)
2 – Lance Berkman (HOU) — 118 (68/72/22)
3 – Josh Hamilton (TEX) — 113 (80/52/19)
4 – Ian Kinsler (TEX) — 109 (50/72/13)
5 – Chase Utley (PHI) — 102 (65/60/23)
6 – Carlos Beltran (NYM) — 100 (54/58/12)
7 – Ryan Howard (PHI) — 99 (68/51/20)
8 – Adrian Gonzalez (SDG) — 98 (68/51/21)
9 — David Wright (NYM) — 97 (64/48/15)
10 — Nate McLouth (PIT) — 96 (52/59/15)
11 — Justin Morneau (MIN) — 95 (63/44/12)
11 — Aramis Ramirez (CHC) — 95 (55/54/14)
13 — Mark Teixeira (ATL) — 93 (62/47/16)
13 — Michael Young (TEX) — 93 (43/57/7)
13 — Carlos Quentin (CHW) — 93 (61/51/19)

We could always take it a step further and make it a percent of their team’s total runs.  For example, Jose Reyes would have a RAF % of .327 (his 124 RAF / Mets total of 379 runs).  However, this would skew the system toward good players on weak teams, rather than just focusing on who the best players are.  Sometimes simple is better.

There you have it.  RAF — the new measure of MLB players.