The Rays and DRC+, the new statistic from Baseball Prospectus

Baseball Prospectus rolled out a new statistic this week called Deserved Runs Created, as well as a league-adjusted DRC+ that allows you to compare players against league average (100). Let’s take a look at the stat, and what it tells us about the Rays.

In case you’d rather do the reading yourself before I get into the summation, here’s the journey you should take:

A hitter’s DRC+ of 100 is average, 120 is good, and 145 or higher is excellent.

So what is DRC+?

DRC+ measures all of a player’s contributions at the plate. The model then isolates how much of the outcome should be credited to the hitter, then weights those contributions on the value he provided. Then, the DRC+ model adjusts for…