Through 110 games, Rodriguez has an .824 OPS — much lower than his career .958 OPS. His slugging percentage is down and he’s only on pace for about 29 home runs, which would be his lowest single-season total since he hit 23 in 1997.
But A-Rod leads all of baseball with 97 RBIs, a testament to his hitting prowess with runners on base. Twelve of Rodriguez’s home runs have come with runners on, three of which were grand slams.
With nobody on base, Rodriguez has been relatively horrible, posting a .237 average and .724 OPS. Because his 239 plate appearances with the bases empty account for over half of his 469 total PAs, Rodriguez’s overall season numbers of .267/.335/.488 don’t paint the whole picture of what kind of hitter the future Hall of Famer still is.
A-Rod is hitting .357 with a 1.100 OPS with a runner on third base and less than two outs. Compare that to Albert Pujols (.188/.745), widely recognized as the best player in the game, and it’s hard to argue which hitter you’d rather have up with ducks on the pond.
The RBI statistic has been argued by many sabermetricians to be an irrelevant one, because a player’s RBI total can be directly attributed to how many of his teammates are on base when he gets his hits.
While that may be true, you cannot make the claim that Rodriguez leads the league in RBIs simply because he hits in a lineup filled with other great players.
What makes A-Rod so special is his ability to pick up his teammates and drive them in. His .267 average doesn’t look good on the surface, but when you break it down, Rodriguez could be having one of the most clutch seasons in his career.
