The Yankees opened their 1956 season on the road, at Griffith Park against the old Senators (now Twins). Mickey Mantle had two home runs that day, but Yogi Berra, batting immediately after Mantle in the lineup, managed to rack up five RBIs anyway, posting the highest RE24 of any hitter in the majors in an Opening Day game during the 1950s. Yankees/Senators 4/17/1956
RE24, you may recollect if you are regular High Heat Stats reader, is a measure of how much the result of a hitter’s plate appearance increased (or reduced) his team’s run-scoring chances in that inning. With a man on second and one out, the average number of runs scored in the rest of the inning will be about 0.72. With a man on second and two outs, that number drops to about 0.35, so a hitter who strikes out with a man on second and one out is given an RE24, for that PA, of -0.37. But if instead he singles and the man on second scores, the team’s run scoring expectation has increased to the one run that actually did score plus the 0.29 that will score on average given the new base-out condition of one out and no men on. So the hitter gets an RE24 credit, for his RBI single, of 1.29 minus 0.72, or .57. More on Opening Day RE24s after the jump. Continue reading →