Frank Catalanotto: The RBI Man

Earlier in the week, I listed the Major League RBI percentage leaders in 2006. Today, I’ll look at the leaders for 2002-2006 combined. Again, the data comes from Baseball Musings by David Pinto. The top 20 batters with at least 1000 runners on over that period are shown in the table below. You can see that the larger time window yields a list that includes mostly big sluggers. This is because it is difficult to consistently knock in runs over a long period of time if you do not also slug consistently.

Table: Major League RBI % Leaders 2002-July 28,2006

Player	Runners On	RBI	HR	RBI %
Mike Sweeney	1296	337	85	19.44
Garret Anderson	1905	461	97	19.11
David Ortiz	2038	558	173	18.89
Vladimir Guerrero	1867	502	155	18.59
Albert Pujols	2048	577	197	18.55
Gary Sheffield	1848	479	138	18.45
Carlos Delgado	2000	534	165	18.45
Magglio Ordonez	1559	387	100	18.41
Travis Hafner	1312	346	105	18.37
Manny Ramirez	2065	564	186	18.31
Miguel Tejada	2273	555	139	18.30
Carlos Beltran	1815	469	137	18.29
Chase Utley	1020	247	62	18.14
Scott Rolen	1770	429	112	17.91
Mark Teixeira	1575	402	121	17.84
Carlos Lee	1901	487	148	17.83
Frank Catalanotto	1021	214	32	17.83
Larry Walker	1176	282	74	17.69
Miguel Cabrera	1476	353	93	17.62
Richie Sexson	1689	438	143	17.47

One notable exception is Frank Catalanotto who ranks #17. I wanted to look at little closer at Catalanotto so I did a year by year breakdown which is shown in the table below. Each year (except 2002), I used a cutoff of 150 for runners on to determine the ranks. I used a cutoff of 100 in 2002 because Catalanotto had only 113 runners on that year. The rank column shows where Cat ranked among roughly 300 eligible Major Leaguers each year. He finished in the top 40 in 2002, 2005 and 2006. His worst rank was 137 in 2004 which is still better than more than half the players in the majors. So Cat has been fairly consistent at getting runners home for someone without much power. I’m really not sure what this says about him without further investigation but I found it interesting.

Table: Frank Catalanotto’s RBI % in 2002-2006

Year	Rank	Runners On	RBI	HR	RBI %
2002	35	113	23	3	17.70
2003	91	283	59	13	16.25
2004	137	168	26	1	14.88
2005	22	275	59	8	18.55
2006	2	182	47	7	21.98