The Game Winning RBI

If you were a fan of baseball during the 1980s, you might remember a statistic that is no longer kept, the game winning RBI, or GW RBI.  GW RBI was an official MLB stat from 1980-1988 that recorded the number of RBI a player had that put his team ahead for good.  For example, say the game is tied 2-2 and a batter received an RBI that made it 3-2.  Then his team scored 2 more runs to make it 5-2 and the final score was 5-4.  The batter that drove in the 3rd run gets credit for the GW RBI even though his team needed all 5 runs to win.  With those rules in mind, I resurected this obsolete stat for the 2013 Tigers:

Player	GW RBI
Miguel Cabrera	15
Torii Hunter	15
Prince Fielder	14
Victor Martinez	9
Omar Infante	8
Alex Avila	5
Andy Dirks	4
Jhonny Peralta	3
Don Kelly	3
Brayan Pena	2
Ramon Santiago	2
Austin Jackson	1
Jose Iglesias	1
Max Scherzer	1

Not surprising, Miguel Cabrera tops the list, but his co-leader, Torii Hunter, might be surprising.  Also, despite having 30 RBI, Matt Tuiasosopo doesn't have a single GW RBI, not even when he was hitting .329/.447/.624 in the first half.  

The problem with this stat is similar with the RBI stat in general.  It depends too much on timing and the teammates getting on base.  Even as a "clutch" stat, it has it's weaknesses.  Most of the time, the player wouldn't know that his RBI was the game winning one until after the game unless he had a walk-off hit.  Oftentimes the first RBI became the game winning one and most people wouldn't associate the first few innings as "clutch" innings.  With this in mind, it's easy to see why Torii Hunter had so many GW RBI, being the 2nd batter in the game and having the opportunity to drive in the first run with Austin Jackson on base.  

You might notice that the Tigers have 84 wins, but only 83 GW RBI have been awarded.  This is because of the game on 9/10, the game winning run wasn't an RBI, but rather scored on the result of an error.  Victor Martinez got the first RBI in that game, but his RBI wasn't the "game winning" run as defined by the rules.  This confused me on how to score it, but I ultimately gave no one the GW RBI in this scenario.  Going back to the earlier example of the 5-4 game, it can be debated that the 5th run should be the GW RBI and not the 3rd.  With these issues, it's easy to see why this stat was discontinued.