A friend messaged this morning that he would not have guessed Ian Kinsler would be second in runs scored the last ten years, during the 20-teens. I can see three reasons for this:
- The decade featured a lack of great lead-off hitters and great sluggers.
- The best of the bunch played for poor offenses.
- Injuries and suspension limited playing time.
Andrew McCutchen finished third, having posted a much higher OBP than Ian Kinsler, and in fact played more games than Kinsler. He only cracked the 100 run scored barrier once, however. His low RBI and run totals show that he was not surrounded by great hitters, who could drive McCutchen home or be on base to score.
Joey Votto finished fourth, also playing for teams with poor offenses. Votto missed about a full season worth of games in combing 2012 and 2014, and with those game he finishes second.
Robinson Cano missed a great deal of time due to illness and suspension.
Nelson Cruz had a great home run decade, but didn’t score much otherwise.
As for a lack of lead-off hitters, look at the top OBPs of the decade. In the top 20, Matt Carpenter and Shin-Soo Choo are the only lead-off men there, and teams tried to move both out of that slot. There was no Rickey Henderson or Tim Raines in the group.
So Kinsler hit the sweet spot, doing a decent job of getting on base, and having Nelson Cruz or Miguel Cabrera hitting behind him for most of the decade.