RBI in Baseball: When a Run Batted In Is Credited
RBI in baseball means run batted in. Which MLB plays credit one, why a bases-loaded walk counts and a double play does not, and the records for RBIs.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Baseball Stats & Positions23 min read
- Rule in the official rulebook
- 9.04
- Official statistic since
- 1920
- Season record
- Hack Wilson, 191 in 1930
- Career record
- Hank Aaron, 2,297
Mark Whiten hit four home runs in the second game of a doubleheader at Riverfront Stadium on September 7, 1993, one of them a grand slam. The St. Louis Cardinals outfielder drove in 12 runs that night against the Cincinnati Reds, matching a single-game record another Cardinal, Jim Bottomley, had set in 1924. Every one of those 12 was a run batted in, and every one of them was obvious. Most RBIs are not that tidy.
RBI in baseball stands for run batted in. Under Rule 9.04 of the Official Baseball Rules, the scorer credits one to a batter for each run that scores as a result of his plate appearance: on a hit, a home run (where he also drives himself in), a sacrifice fly or bunt, a ground ball out or a fielder's choice, or a walk, hit by pitch or catcher's interference with the bases loaded. A batter gets no RBI when he grounds into a force double play, when the run scores on a wild pitch, passed ball, balk or steal, or when the run needed an error to come home, with one narrow exception for errors before two are out. The rest of this page goes through each case, the box score, the benchmarks and the records.
What RBI stands for and what it counts
A run batted in is a credit to the hitter, not to the runner. The runner who crosses the plate is credited with a run scored. The batter whose plate appearance sent him home gets the RBI. On a home run, the batter is both, so a solo shot puts one in the run column and one in the RBI column of the same player's line.
The statistic exists to answer a natural question: who drove the run in? That is a question managers, writers and fans were asking long before anyone defined it formally, and it is one batting average cannot touch. A .250 hitter who keeps coming up with runners on third and putting the ball in play produces runs. A .300 hitter who hits singles with the bases empty may not.
RBI or RBIs
Both plurals are in common use, and neither is wrong. Purists argue that "RBI" is already plural, since it stands for runs batted in, and that "RBIs" doubles up. Most newspapers and broadcasters say "RBIs" because it sounds natural in a sentence. You will also hear "ribbies," which has been around for decades as dugout slang. This page uses "RBI" for the statistic and "RBIs" when counting them.
The credit belongs to one batter only
Every run that scores can produce at most one RBI, and it goes to the batter at the plate when the play began. If a runner scores from second on a single and the throw home gets away, letting a second runner come around, the scorer decides run by run which ones the single produced. A team can score five runs in an inning and have its hitters credited with anywhere from zero to five RBIs between them.
The scorer's decisions on these plays are part of the craft explained in our guide to how to keep score in baseball, which shows how an RBI is marked on a scorecard.
The plays that earn an RBI: hits, sacrifices, outs and home runs
Rule 9.04(a) lists the ways a batter earns one, and it is broader than many fans assume. The batter does not need a hit. He does not even need to avoid making an out.
| Play | Runner scores | RBI to batter? |
|---|---|---|
| Single, double or triple | Any runner who scores because of the hit | Yes, one per run |
| Home run | Every runner on base, plus the batter | Yes, including one for himself |
| Sacrifice fly | Runner tags from third and scores | Yes |
| Sacrifice bunt | Runner scores from third on the bunt | Yes |
| Groundout to an infielder | Runner scores from third as the out is made at first | Yes |
| Fielder's choice | Fielder throws to retire another runner and a run scores | Yes |
| Force double play | Runner scores from third | No |
Hits and home runs
The simple cases. A double that scores two runners is two RBIs. A grand slam is four. A bases-empty home run is one, and that is the only way a batter drives himself in.
There is a limit on walk-off hits. When the home team wins in the bottom of the ninth or in extra innings, the game ends the moment the winning run scores, and the batter is credited only with the bases needed to drive it in and the RBIs that actually counted. A bases-loaded double that ends a tied game is scored as a single and one RBI, because only the winning run counts. A walk-off home run is the exception: every run counts, and the batter gets an RBI for each. The scoring rules for those endings are on our page about walk-offs in baseball.
Outs that still drive in runs
This surprises newer fans most. A batter who grounds out to second base with a runner on third and the infield playing back, scoring the runner, gets an RBI. So does a batter who hits a fly ball deep enough for the runner on third to tag and score; that is a sacrifice fly, and it also spares the hitter an at-bat. A sacrifice bunt that scores a runner on a squeeze play counts the same way.
The logic is consistent. The batter did something with the ball, the run scored because of it, and the out was the price. Rule 9.04 credits the outcome rather than the quality of contact.
Fielder's choice
When the fielder elects to throw somewhere other than first, say to second to force a runner, and a run scores from third in the meantime, the batter is credited with the RBI. The fielder chose a different out, but the batter put the ball in play and the run came home on it.
Bases-loaded walks, hit by pitches and catcher's interference
Three ways to drive in a run without the bat touching the ball, and all three depend on the bases being full.
With runners on first, second and third, any award of first base to the batter forces every runner up one base. The runner on third has nowhere to go but home. Rule 9.04(a)(2) credits the batter with the RBI when he is forced to become a runner with the bases full, whether through a walk, being hit by a pitch, or an award for interference or obstruction.
The bases-loaded walk
The most common of the three. A hitter who takes ball four with the bases loaded drives in a run without swinging. It is a legitimate RBI and appears in the box score like any other, which bothers some fans, but the rule's reasoning holds: the batter's plate appearance forced the run home, and laying off four pitches outside the zone with the bases full is a skill under that pressure. Intentional walks with the bases loaded are rare for exactly this reason, though managers have occasionally done it to keep the ball out of a great hitter's hands. Barry Bonds was walked intentionally with the bases loaded in 1998, and Josh Hamilton in 2008.
Hit by pitch
Same outcome. The batter is awarded first, every runner moves up, and the runner from third scores. The batter gets the RBI. A hitter who leans into a pitch to force a run home is still credited, though the umpire can refuse to award first base if he judges the batter made no attempt to avoid the ball. The rules on that judgment are in our guide to the hit by pitch rule.
Catcher's interference
Rarer, and odder. When a catcher's mitt touches the bat during a swing, the batter is awarded first base. With the bases loaded, the runner from third is forced home and the batter gets an RBI, even though his plate appearance is charged as neither an at-bat nor a hit. How the award works, and the manager's option to take the result of the play instead, is covered in our page on catcher's interference.
When the bases are not loaded
None of these awards produce an RBI unless a runner is forced home. A walk with runners on second and third moves nobody, because first base was open; the runners stay where they are. A walk with runners on first and third forces only the runner on first. The runner on third can stay put and nobody scores. Only the full bases create the force at the plate.
The plays that do not earn an RBI: double plays, wild pitches and steals
Rule 9.04(b) names the double play specifically. When a batter grounds into a force double play, or a reverse force double play, and a runner scores from third on the same play, the run counts but the batter gets no RBI. The reasoning is that the batter has just cost his team two outs, and crediting him with a run driven in would reward the worst outcome available.
A reverse force double play is one in which the first out is a force, usually of the batter at first base, and the second is a tag of a runner who no longer had to advance because that first out removed the force. The rule treats it the same as an ordinary force double play.
Runs that score on the pitcher or catcher
Several ways a run crosses the plate involve no action by the batter at all, and none of them produce an RBI.
| How the run scores | RBI? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Wild pitch | No | The pitcher's misplay advanced the runner |
| Passed ball | No | The catcher's misplay advanced the runner |
| Balk | No | The runner is awarded home by the umpire's call |
| Stolen base of home | No | The runner advanced on his own |
| Force double play | No | Rule 9.04(b) withholds the credit |
| Error the run needed | No | Unless the runner from third would have scored anyway |
The balk is the one that trips fans up most, because the batter is at the plate and the run scores during his plate appearance. But a balk is a call against the pitcher, and the batter did nothing to cause it. Our explainer on the balk rule goes through what the pitcher did wrong.
The two-out ground ball
Here is the case most fans miss. With two outs and a runner on third, a batter hits a routine ground ball to shortstop. The throw sails over the first baseman and the run scores. No RBI. Had the throw been accurate, the inning would have ended and the run never counted. The error was the only reason the runner reached home, so the batter gets nothing for it. Whether that run counts against the pitcher's ERA is a separate question, answered in our page on earned and unearned runs.
Errors and the official scorer's judgment
The general rule is simple: if the run needed the error, there is no RBI. The exception is where the scorer earns their pay.
Rule 9.04(a)(3) says that with fewer than two outs, when an error is made on a play on which a runner from third base would ordinarily score, the batter gets the RBI anyway. The idea is that the batter's contact was already enough to score the run, and the fielder's mistake did not change that.
What the exception covers
The clean example is the dropped fly ball. One out, runner on third, a fly ball to medium-deep center field. The center fielder drops it. Had he caught it, the runner would have tagged and scored on a sacrifice fly. Since the run would have come home either way, the scorer credits the batter with the RBI and charges the fielder with an error on the catch.
A ground ball to second with the infield back and one out is the same kind of case. If the second baseman boots it and the runner from third scores, the scorer asks whether a clean play at first would still have let the run in. With the infield back and a runner breaking on contact, it usually would, and the batter gets the RBI.
What it does not cover
With two outs the exception never applies. Any play that would have been the third out ends the inning before the run counts, so an error that lets the runner score is always the reason the run scored.
With the infield in, a ground ball that should have produced an out at home is different too. If the third baseman fields it, throws home in time and the catcher drops the throw, the run scored only because of the error. No RBI.
- Count the outsWith two outs, a run that scores because of an error never earns an RBI, because the clean play would have ended the inning.
- Ask whether the runner was on thirdThe exception applies to a runner who would ordinarily score from third base.
- Imagine the clean playPicture the fielder making the routine play and ask whether the run would still have scored.
- Credit or withholdIf the run would have scored anyway, the batter gets the RBI. If it needed the misplay, he does not.
- Score the error separatelyThe fielder is still charged with an error whether or not the batter receives an RBI.
A simplified reading of Rule 9.04 of the Official Baseball Rules. The scorer's judgment on each step is final unless the league reviews it.
Disputed calls and changes after the game
Scorers get these decisions wrong, or at least questionably right, and MLB allows clubs to ask for a review. A team or player can appeal a scoring decision to the league office within a short window after the game, and the league can change it. RBIs move this way occasionally, usually by one. The process exists because hits, errors and RBIs all feed into arbitration cases and award voting, and a player has an interest in the scorer's call.
Where RBI sits in the box score
The traditional batting line in a box score reads AB, R, H, RBI: at-bats, runs scored, hits and runs batted in. Modern box scores add walks, strikeouts and the running season average, but those four columns have led the line for about a century and still come first in most newspaper and website formats.
Here is how a few lines might look for a lineup in an invented game:
| Batter | AB | R | H | RBI |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leadoff hitter | 5 | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| Second hitter | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Cleanup hitter | 4 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Fifth hitter | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Ninth hitter | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
Read the shape. The leadoff hitter scored twice and drove in no one, which is his job. The cleanup hitter drove in three, which is his. The ninth hitter scored without a hit, meaning he reached on a walk, an error or a fielder's choice and was driven in by somebody else.
Why team RBI totals fall short of runs
Add up a team's RBI column over a game, or a season, and the total is nearly always a little below its runs. Every run that scores on a wild pitch, a passed ball, a balk, a steal of home, an error the run needed or a force double play is a run without an RBI attached. In most seasons a team's RBI total trails its run total by a few percent. A team whose gap is large has scored more of its runs on the opposition's mistakes.
Below the batting lines, the box score notes the details: doubles, home runs with the inning and the number of men on base, sacrifice flies, and in many formats the number of runners each team left in scoring position. Those notes are where an RBI's context lives.
What a good RBI total is: 100 and the Triple Crown
For most of the last century, 100 RBIs has been the benchmark for a run-producing season. A hitter who reaches it is said to have had a big year at the plate, and the number shows up in contract talk, Hall of Fame cases and award voting. It is a convention rather than any official threshold, and it rests on round-number appeal as much as anything.
A rough ladder fans use for a full season:
| RBIs in a season | How it is usually read |
|---|---|
| 130 or more | Among the league leaders in most modern seasons |
| 100 to 129 | Big run-producing year, the traditional benchmark |
| 80 to 99 | Solid production from a middle-of-the-order bat |
| 60 to 79 | Ordinary for an everyday hitter, depending on lineup spot |
| Under 60 | Low for a regular, unless he bats at the top or bottom of the order |
That ladder assumes a hitter who plays most of the season in the middle of a lineup. A leadoff hitter with 65 RBIs may have had an excellent season. A cleanup hitter with 65 probably did not.
One leg of the Triple Crown
The batting Triple Crown goes to a hitter who leads his league in batting average, home runs and runs batted in during the same season. It is one of the rarest achievements in the sport, because the three categories reward different kinds of hitter, and RBIs depend partly on the lineup around the hitter. Miguel Cabrera won it for the Detroit Tigers in 2012, the first since Carl Yastrzemski with the Boston Red Sox in 1967. Ted Williams won it twice, in 1942 and 1947, as did Rogers Hornsby.
The RBI leg is the one most often blocked by circumstance. A hitter can lead the league in average and home runs while a teammate batting behind him clears the bases and a rival on a better-hitting team piles up chances. Of the three legs, it is the one most dependent on the teammates batting in front of him.
Why analysts distrust RBI as a measure of a hitter
The objection is old and fairly simple. An RBI requires a runner on base, unless the hitter homers. The number of runners on base when a hitter comes up depends on who bats ahead of him, and the hitter controls none of that.
Put the same hitter in two lineups. In the first he bats cleanup behind three hitters who reach base 37 or 38 percent of the time. In the second he bats cleanup behind three hitters who reach base 29 percent of the time. Over a season, he might come to the plate with several hundred runners on base in the first lineup and far fewer in the second. With identical skill, his RBI total could differ by 20 or 30.
Lineup spot
The batting order makes the same point within one team. A leadoff hitter leads off the first inning with the bases empty every game, and in later innings he follows the eighth and ninth hitters, usually the weakest bats. Cleanup hitters follow the best on-base men in the lineup. Over a season, the cleanup spot sees far more runners on base than the leadoff spot does, which is why RBI leaders cluster in the third, fourth and fifth spots. Our guide to the baseball batting order covers how managers set those spots and what modern analysis changed about them.
What analysts use instead
The statistical community largely stopped using RBIs to rate hitters by the 1990s. A rate measure that does not depend on teammates, such as on-base plus slugging, explained in our page on OPS in baseball, or a runs-based measure such as weighted runs created, says more about the hitter himself. Wins above replacement, built from those measures plus defense and baserunning, has largely replaced RBIs in award arguments; our explainer on WAR covers what goes into it.
None of this means RBIs are fake. The runs were real. The objection is that RBIs describe what happened to a team with a particular hitter at the plate, and attributing all of it to him overstates his part.
Measuring the chance as well as the result
If the trouble with RBIs is opportunity, the obvious fix is to measure opportunity. Several statistics do.
Runners on base. The simplest: count how many runners were on base across all of a hitter's plate appearances. Some stat sites publish this, and it shows instantly whether a high RBI total came from a crowded basepath.
Percentage of runners driven in. Divide the runners who scored because of the hitter by the runners on base when he came up. This is a rate, so it controls for the number of chances. A hitter who drives in 17 or 18 percent of the runners on base is doing well, though the figure depends on where those runners stood; a runner on third with one out is much easier to drive home than a runner on first with two out.
RBI per opportunity by base. The more careful versions split the runners by base. Driving in a runner from first takes an extra-base hit; from third, a fly ball can do it.
Batting with runners in scoring position
Broadcasts lean heavily on a hitter's batting average with runners in scoring position, meaning on second or third base. It measures something real for one season: whether a hitter produced in those spots. It does not prove a hitter has a special skill in them.
Studies of hitters across many seasons have repeatedly found that average with runners in scoring position tracks a hitter's overall average closely over a career, and that a big gap in one season rarely repeats in the next. Some hitters do change approach with runners on, shortening the swing or trying to put the ball in play, and that shows up as fewer strikeouts. But the idea that some hitters reliably rise in the clutch while others reliably shrink has not held up well in the data. One season's split is mostly sample size, since a regular might get 150 or so at-bats with runners in scoring position.
That does not make the split useless. It just means it describes the season rather than predicts the next one.
Single-game and single-inning RBI records
Two players share the single-game record of 12 runs batted in, and both played for the St. Louis Cardinals.
Jim Bottomley did it first, on September 16, 1924, against the Brooklyn Robins at Ebbets Field. He had six hits that day, including two home runs, one of them a grand slam. The record stood alone for nearly 70 years, until Mark Whiten's four-homer game in Cincinnati in 1993. Whiten's game is the stranger of the two. He opened the second game of a doubleheader with a grand slam in the first inning and kept going, finishing with four home runs, which also tied the single-game home run record.
Fernando Tatis and two grand slams in one inning
The single-inning record belongs to another Cardinal. On April 23, 1999, at Dodger Stadium, Fernando Tatis hit two grand slams in the third inning against the Los Angeles Dodgers, both off Chan Ho Park. That is eight runs batted in during one inning, a major league record, and two grand slams by one hitter in one inning had never happened before and, through the 2025 season, had not happened since in the majors. Park stayed in the game for both, which is part of why the record has never been threatened. A modern manager would rarely leave a pitcher in that long.
Eleven-RBI games are on the books too, by Tony Lazzeri of the Yankees in 1936 and a few others, though the list below the top is long enough that it changes when researchers rework old box scores. Even a ten-RBI game happens only a handful of times a decade.
The season and career RBI records
Hack Wilson's 191 for the Chicago Cubs in 1930 is the single-season record, and it has held for nearly a century. For most of that time the record book said 190. In 1999, after researchers combing through 1930 game accounts found that one of Wilson's RBIs in a July game had been wrongly credited to Charlie Grimm, MLB officially changed the total to 191.
The 1930 season was an extreme run environment, with the National League as a whole batting .303. Wilson drove in his 191 while hitting 56 home runs, then a National League record.
The table below is a selection of landmark seasons, not a numbered ranking: Gehrig had two other seasons above 170, and Chuck Klein of the Phillies drove in 170 in 1930.
| Hitter | Team | Season | RBIs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hack Wilson | Chicago Cubs | 1930 | 191 |
| Lou Gehrig | New York Yankees | 1931 | 185 |
| Hank Greenberg | Detroit Tigers | 1937 | 183 |
| Jimmie Foxx | Boston Red Sox | 1938 | 175 |
| Manny Ramirez | Cleveland Indians | 1999 | 165 |
| Sammy Sosa | Chicago Cubs | 2001 | 160 |
Gehrig's 185 is the American League record. The top of the list is dominated by the 1930s, when scoring was high and lineups were built to put runners on in front of the big bats. Ramirez's 165 in 1999 is the highest total since 1938. These totals are stated through the 2025 season, and in a modern game with more strikeouts and fewer balls in play, the top of the season list looks out of reach.
Career
Hank Aaron's 2,297 runs batted in is the career record, and it has stood since he retired in 1976. Albert Pujols, who retired in 2022, is second with 2,218. Babe Ruth is credited with 2,214 by the count Baseball-Reference uses; his total is listed slightly differently in some references, because RBIs before 1920 were reconstructed by researchers rather than recorded officially at the time.
Aaron's record came from longevity and consistency more than any single towering season. He played 23 seasons, from 1954 to 1976, and was a steady run producer in nearly all of them. Gehrig, by contrast, piled up his total in about 17 seasons, and his career ended early.
How RBI became official, and the game-winning RBI that was dropped
Runs batted in were tracked before they were official. Newspapers and statisticians counted them at various points in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the sportswriter Ernie Lanigan is often credited with popularizing the figure in the New York press before World War I. But no league kept them as an official statistic.
In 1920 both the American and National Leagues made RBI an official statistic, and it has been kept continuously since. That timing matters for the record book. Every RBI total before 1920, including Ruth's early years with the Red Sox and the careers of players such as Cap Anson and Ty Cobb, comes from researchers working back through box scores and game accounts. The work has been careful, and the figures in the major references are close, but they differ slightly from one source to another for exactly that reason.
The game-winning RBI, 1980 to 1988
MLB added an official statistic called the game-winning RBI in 1980. It went to the batter who drove in the run that gave his team a lead it never gave up. The idea was to identify clutch production. The execution was poor.
The definition credited a first-inning sacrifice fly in a game that ended 11-1 the same as a two-out, ninth-inning hit in a 3-2 game, because both produced the run that put the team ahead for good. Fans and writers noticed quickly that the stat often rewarded whoever happened to bat in the first inning of a blowout. Keith Hernandez of the Cardinals and Mets became the statistic's career leader, and he was a fine clutch hitter by most accounts, but the number did not prove it.
MLB dropped the game-winning RBI after the 1988 season. It is a useful cautionary tale for any new statistic: a name that promises to measure something important is not the same as a definition that does. The ordinary RBI has the opposite problem. Its definition is careful and has survived for over a century with only small amendments. What it measures is narrower than its reputation, and the hitter at the plate is only part of the story.
The rest of our guides to the game's rules and numbers are collected on the baseball section of the site.