Jimmy Rollins ... Mr. Clutch!!
Move over, JWest, turns out JRoll is looking to take your moniker.
First ... Full disclosure: I have been one of those that felt that Jimmy Rollins did not adhere enough to his obvious talents, cringed every time he swung at the first pitch and huffed whenever he would pop up when a walk would have sufficed ... But we have always thought he was headed for the Hall of Fame one day. And, this I think, might just clinch it.
Rollins' two RBI Monday night gave him an even 800 for his career, pretty good for a leadoff guy. So we went to baseball-reference.com to see how those 800 broke down. Turns out — just like both RBI Monday night — 341 have come with two outs, that's 42.6 percent of his total. We thought that number looked a little high. Boy, were we wrong ...
It is off the charts!
How off the charts? Well, we went through nearly two dozen players for which baseball-reference breaks RBI down by outs (which means since the mid-50s or so) and found no one — NO ONE!!! — with a percentage that high. And only one other (surprising) player (a Phillie) that was even in the 40s.
The full list of the players we checked out are below. A couple of notes: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and other stars from the first half of 1900s are not included, because we could not find how their RBI break down ... The totals for Aaron and Mays do not constitute their full careers (*), but even if each RBI unaccounted for (less than 100 for each) was of the two-out variety, neither would have broken 40% ... The other guy we found in the 40s was Pat Burrell, for whom 41.0% of his Phillies RBI (40.3% of his major league total) came with two down ... As a point of reference, about 37.1% of the RBI in major league baseball this season have come with two out.
Two questions:
Is this a legitimate value of "clutch" or does it mean he fails more with none or one out?
And ... Can anyone find any other major leaguer that had 42.6% of his RBI be with two out ... Or even any better than the 38.1% Manny Ramirez has rung up, which is the second-best we could find among the top 20 career RBI leaders?
Comment below ... email me ... tweet ... or whatever else you kids do these days. I'm real interested to see how if Rollins' numbers hold up and to see how people feel about this.