Posnanski on Epstein on Drew

Probably the best baseball writer working right now, Joe Posnanski, talks about J.D. Drew, Theo Epstein and the Red Sox, with this quote from Theo about Drew:

And the reason he scores a ton of runs is because he does the single most important thing you can do in baseball as an offensive player. And that's NOT MAKE OUTS. He doesn't make outs. He's always among our team leaders in on-base percentage, usually among the league leaders in on-base percentage. And he's a really good base runner. So when he doesn't make outs, and he gets himself on base, he scores runs -- and he has some good hitters hitting behind him. Look at his runs scored on a rate basis with the Red Sox or throughout his career. It's outstanding.

You guys can talk about RBIs if you want, I just ... we ignore them in the front office ... and I think we've built some pretty good offensive clubs. If you want to talk about RBIs at all, talk about it as a percentage of opportunity, but it's just simply not a way or something we use to evaluate offensive players.

Everyone who has read me on baseball for any length of time knows that this is exactly how I feel about it. It's very comforting to have a front-office that "gets it" the way this front office does.