The Unimportance of “Productive Outs”

It’s something we saw quite a lot last year. The Diamondbacks at bat, with a runner on third and one out. But the hitter was unable to get the man home, either striking out or not being able to deliver a sacrifice fly/RBI ground-out. Cue weeping, wailing and the gnashing of teeth in the Gameday Thread. But here’s the dirty little secret. While of course it “matters” at that moment - scoring the run is better than not scoring it - the reality is that there is little or no correlation between the teams that are good at making productive outs and overall success. This cropped up earlier this week, because of a Tweet from Jerry Weinstein, who was bench coach for Team USA at the 2022 Tokyo Olympics.

…