The Stros have scheduled a news conference for this afternoon in which they will announce that the club and All-Star Lance Berkman have agreed to a six year, $85 million contract.
Berkman is one of the best hitters in Major League Baseball, and the contract avoids the possibility of the Stros losing their best homegrown player since Bidg as Berkman could have become a free agent after the 2005 season. To understand just how good a player Berkman is, consider how many many more runs that Berkman has created compared to the number of runs an average Major League player generates.
That statistic — called “runs created against average” or “RCAA” — is particularly valuable to evaluate hitting because it focuses on the two most important things in winning baseball games ? that is, creating runs and avoiding making outs. RCAA basically computes the number of outs that a particular player uses in creating runs for his team and then compares that number to the amount of runs that an average player in the league would create while using an equivalent number of outs. A player can have either a positive RCAA — which indicates he is an above average hitter (i.e., Barry Bonds) — or a negative RCAA, which means he is performing below average (i.e., Brad Ausmus).
Over the past 4 years, Berkman ranks 6th in all of Major League Baseball in runs created against average:
1 Barry Bonds 597
2 Todd Helton 284
3 Albert Pujols 281
4 Jim Thome 250
5 Manny Ramirez 240
6 Lance Berkman 236
7 Jason Giambi 225
8 Alex Rodriguez 218
9 Jim Edmonds 216
10 Gary Sheffield 210
Kudos to Drayton McLane and Tim Purpura in locking Berkman up. It’s a happy day in Stros land.