Alex Rodriguez Proves He Doesn't Understand Baseball

You'd think that, as one of the best players in Major League Baseball history, Alex Rodriguez would have a better understanding of how baseball teams score runs.

And yet, in a new interview, Rodriguez demonstrated a remarkable lack of awareness as to how modern baseball teams are built, the importance of batting average, runs batted in and runs scored, and where offensive production actually comes from.

"People are saying batting average doesn't matter," Rodriguez claimed. "RBIs doesn't matter. Well, Hank Aaron taught me, the two most important stats in baseball are RBIs and runs scored, because that's how you win. That's what Hank Aaron taught me. And I think it's a problem where you can sacrifice, hitting 20 home runs, if you want to strikeout, it's ok to strike out 200 times, it's ok to hit .190. But yet in the major leagues, when they say that batting average doesn't matter, or contact…the top five teams, the top five batting average teams are the best teams in baseball…It proves that the teams hitting for the highest average have the best records."

Yeah…this isn't correct.

Alex Rodriguez walks the red carpet on Sunday, May 25, 2025, ahead of the 109th running of the Indianapolis 500 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Alex Rodriguez Doesn't Understand Modern Baseball, Somehow

First, no one is saying batting average and contact doesn't matter. In fact, several front office executives have frequently spoken in recent years about the importance of targeting players who can make contact, since that's a valuable skill against the higher-quality pitching typically seen in the playoffs.

Second, it's not true that one small sample of data on teams with good batting averages "prove" anything about what makes for good teams. And third, Hank Aaron was one of the greatest players of all time, but that doesn't mean he had any idea how unimportant runs scored and runs batted in are at an individual level.

What's important in baseball isn't just getting hits, it's not making outs. This revolutionary idea was the basis for the Moneyball revolution, and is now practiced by all 30 teams. Obviously, you'd like to have hitters who excel at both getting hits and talking walks, but nobody wants their hitters striking out 200 times and hitting .190. It's just that modern front offices have realized that it's possible for a player who hits .270 to be better at producing runs than someone who hits .320.

For example, we can look at Miami Marlins infielder Xavier Edwards and compare him to Dodgers DH and pitcher Shohei Ohtani.

Edwards currently ranks sixth in baseball in batting average at .304. He also has just one home run, and rarely gets extra base hits. Advanced metrics can tell us that while he's an above-average hitter, it's just barely. Per Fangraphs, he's been worth six runs more than the average offensive player. 

Shohei Ohtani is hitting .284, which ranks 23rd in baseball. He's also hit 43 home runs and has a .629 slugging percentage. Ohtani's been worth 51.2 runs above average on offense. Beyond the stats, almost no sane baseball fan or player would argue that Xavier Edwards is a better or more valuable hitter than Ohtani. Because batting average is not the most important statistic. 

At a team-wide level, batting average matters, but it's because good teams generally have good players. Rodriguez has the correlation-causation relationship backwards. Still, even a look at a broader sample size shows he's wrong.

The Dodgers were fourth in batting average in the 2024 regular season, and they won the World Series. How? In part by getting through the NLDS thanks to holding the San Diego Padres to 24 consecutive scoreless innings. Those Padres led baseball in batting average. Whoops. The second place team, the Arizona Diamondbacks, missed the postseason entirely. So did the sixth-place team, the Boston Red Sox.

The seventh-best team by batting average, the Baltimore Orioles, scored one run in two games against the Royals, losing out in the wild card series. The Royals were just 10th in team batting average. The Braves finished 15th in batting average and made the postseason, though were doomed by injuries against the Padres in the wild card. 

Rodriguez also apparently didn't notice that the seventh best team by batting average this season is the Athletics, who are 54-68 and in dead last in the AL West. The Yankees, despite ranking just 14th in batting average, have been one of baseball's best offenses, scoring the third most runs at 611, compared to the Dodgers' 621 and Milwaukee's 620. How's that possible? Because batting average is not the most important determinant of offensive success.

Yes, runs scored and runs driven in matter, because scoring runs wins games. But runs batted in are a function of position in the lineup, and the ability of other players to get on base. Runs scored are a function of others driving you in. It's all connected to the ability to not make outs, and do as much damage with extra base hits as possible. This isn't complicated. But undoing inaccurate conventual wisdom apparently is.