[Sancho Panza]

Nice work, Pirata.

[Pirata Morado]

Don't want you to feel more depressed, just wanted to update the chart. I added a reference line at .700 OPS

[Chaos_Effect]

This season just continues to get more and more depressing with each new statistical analysis I look at.

[BattingPractice]

Edgar OPS
1995 - 1107
Career - 933

Big sigh. He would break the top of Pirata's chart. Will we ever see a hitter like that again in the Seattle dugout?

[Pirata Morado]

We don't have one .800 OPS hitter. Not even the low PA guys. There is some contagious thing in the dugout.

[Chaos_Effect]

Pirata Morado, on 16 May 2012 - 12:50 PM, said:

We don't have one .800 OPS hitter. Not even the low PA guys. There is some contagious thing in the dugout.

I mean it just has to be institutional. This kind of thing doesn't just happen, unless of course we are actually cursed by some low OPS demon or something.

[Pirata Morado]

Another update, our best OPS hitter is John Jaso.

[anunderwaterguy]

Pirata Morado, on 16 May 2012 - 12:50 PM, said:

We don't have one .800 OPS hitter. Not even the low PA guys. There is some contagious thing in the dugout.

Well at least someone is hitting over .800 OPS now: Vargas has an .833 line after his one interleague game.

[Pirata Morado]

Chart updated to yesterday's game.

[muddyfrogwater]

It makes sense to believe that OPS is slightly flawed. Any way to come up with a meaningful expression that combines batting average, isolated base on balls, and isolated power? To properly weight the equation I'd say that power is the most valuable, followed by batting average, and then base on balls. Just determining how much more valuable each of the three key components is, would be the tricky part. BTW Santa only comes to Seattle in June.

[Sandy - Raleigh]

muddy ... the instinct says power is most valuable.

But the math says OBP is FAR more valuable than power. The reason is that what OBP is really measuring is the ability to NOT make an out.

In truth the various runs created models that attempt to incorporate all aspects of offense all agree on the simple reality that OBP (the combo of average and walk rate) is the single most important aspect of the basic measures.

To give an example ... two players in 2011 who had very similar OPS scores - but one was OBP centric and the other slugging centric. What do their runs created numbers say?

Adam Jones: .280/.319/.466 -- .785 -- RC/27 = 5.0
Y. Escobar : .290/.369/.413 -- .782 -- RC/27 = 5.5

or how about

Vernon Wells: .218/.248/.412 -- .660 -- RC/27 = 3.2
Ichiro Suzuki: .272/.310/.335 -- .645 -- RC/27 = 3.8

But, there is a simple reason why power "feels" more important. It is because hard hits ... screaming liners or HRs have a drastically higher emotional impact than watching someone take ball 4 and walk to first. And one of the reasons OPS actually correlates to runs so much better than slugging or OBP alone is because it "accidentally" folds in the lions share of OBP (batting average) twice. Since BA is a large chunk of both OBP and Slugging, OPS "coincidentally" captures the flavor that OBP is more important than slugging.

I personally like "Total Average" better than OPS because it incorporates SB/CS (total average is basically bases per out), but since most speed guys tend to run just enough where their caught stealings cancel out their successes, (depending on the math guy that magic number is somewhere around a 2/3 success rate), it is actually rare that base stealing changes the runs created ranking much.

In the end, the Total Average list maps close enough to the RC and RC/27 lists that it doesn't much matter which you use. They all end up saying mostly the same thing in regards to who is more productive than who.

[Sandy - Raleigh]

Since this is an OPS thread, I thought this breakdown might be of interest to some: (99 PAs or more)

Player ---- Age - OPS
Ichiro ------ 38 - .666
C. Figgins - 34 - .534
M. Olivo --- 33 -- .583
Kawasaki -- 31 -- .502
B. Ryan ---- 30 -- .538

J. Jaso --- 28 -- .812
J. Smoak - 25 -- .709
M. Saunders 25 - .762
D. Ackley -- 24 - .679
K. Seager -- 24 - .794
J. Montero - 22 - .722

Feel free to discuss the critical need for veteran leadership.

[muddyfrogwater]

well heck yea it's more emotionally powerful. Dinger puts a run on the board and clears the bases. OBP is a component of two variables combined. We're talking about three components. Batting average, Base on Balls, and Isolated power. You've grabbed two of the components and left me with power alone. How about I say Power and base on balls is more valuable than batting average? Or vice-versa?

[muddyfrogwater]

Isolated power easily weights itself. Do the math and you'll find that more homers gives a higher number, Same with Base On Balls. More base on balls gives a higher number. However, batting average is much more dependent on total bases for its weight. This is where slugging lacks. I believe singles and doubles are over weighted, while triples and homers are under weighted. Base on balls are clearly over weighted. I want OPS to give a clearer picture.

[muddyfrogwater]

It's real easy to assign the numbers 1, 2, 3, & 4, when figuring slugging. However, some consideration should be taken into account. how about .8 for a single .7 for a base on balls 1.5 for a double and so on and so forth. Do you see where I'm going with this? 1 2 3 & 4 don't cut it. Improper weighting.

[Huindekmi]

These aren't really new concerns. They've been studied and discussed and, for the most part, resolved. If you don't like OPS (On Base Plus Slugging Percentage) and think that the On Base portion should not be considered on par with the Slugging part, then stop using the quick and easy short hand stat.

wOBA is the stat you are apparently looking for. It's a different calculation and it does weigh a walk differently than a single. Heck, it even rates Hit By Pitch and Reached on Error differently.

Here's how you calculate it:

(0.72xNIBB + 0.75xHBP + 0.90x1B + 0.92xRBOE + 1.24x2B + 1.56x3B + 1.95xHR) / PA 

That gives you a takes into account the contributions getting on base and the ability to move runners from hitting the ball harder or inducing an error. You'll note that a home run in this calculation is 2.7x more important than a walk. So, that's probably not the result you're looking for, as getting on base is still the most important part. It's just reality.

For those not familiar with wOBA: a good hitter would have a wOBA around .340, the best around .400. The league average for the AL this season is currently .318.

Here's the list of Mariners players with more than 40 plate appearances this season.

PLAYER     wOBA    OPS
--------------------------
Saunders   .348   .798
Jaso       .343   .793
Seager     .341   .786
Montero    .307   .718
Smoak      .306   .695
Ackley     .302   .676
Liddi      .296   .680
Wells      .295   .664
Ichiro     .290   .655
Carp       .273   .614
Figgins    .246   .534
Olivo      .245   .583
Ryan       .244   .529
Kawasaki   .215   .502

You'll note that the OPS ranks the players almost the same as wOBA. The only outlier... Olivo, who is considered equivalent to Ryan and Figgins in wOBA but is valued more in OPS.

[Sandy - Raleigh]

muddyfrogwater, on 05 June 2012 - 09:12 PM, said:

well heck yea it's more emotionally powerful. Dinger puts a run on the board and clears the bases. OBP is a component of two variables combined. We're talking about three components. Batting average, Base on Balls, and Isolated power. You've grabbed two of the components and left me with power alone. How about I say Power and base on balls is more valuable than batting average? Or vice-versa?

My bad. When I was saying "power" I was referring to Slugging percentage, not ISO.

So, I was comparing BA + Isolated walk to BA + ISO power ... but was brutualy unclear about that.

So .. to clarify ... OBP is more important for run scoring than Slugging average.

The advantage of OPS is it is "simple" to calculate --- just add two stats readily available for decades. The mathemeticians hate it, because the way it is assembled is so inane. But, in the end, it generates lists that are ordered nearly identically to those of far more 'mathematically acceptable' models, (like RC/27 or wOBP or Total Average). The irony is that OPS actually tends to "slightly" over-weight sluggers. As I noted in my example, two players with identical OPS scores, the OBP-centric of the two is actually more valuable, while OPS (viewed alone) ranks them the same. So, the "more rigorous" methodologies that utilize things like weighted averages, etc., all tend to support the basic notion that sluggers are a tad over-rated by OPS ... but the amounts are small, so the complaint is more in the land of "quibble" than anything else.

[Pirata Morado]

I'm liking this discussion. Sandy and Huindekmi are absolutely right, any other stat will get you to a similar conclusion, that's why I surrendered and use OPS too, because of its simplicity. The point of the chart is rather to compare how is a certain OPS gotten to. For example compare Smoak and Ackley, their OPS is almost the same in the chart (their pictures are about at the same level), but notice how differently each got to it. You see a higher navy and gray bar for Ackley, meaning that he hits for better average and has better ISOBB, but Smoak neglects that difference by having a better SLG. The objective of the chart is to get a sense of how different players can be despite their similar OPS's.

[Pirata Morado]

Another comparison, Olivo and Ryan have practically the same OPS, but it's clear that they are very different players. Ryan gets there thanks to a very healthy ISOBB (if only he had a decent AVG and decent SLG), while Olivo is quite the opposite, his ISOBB is almost zero, but his SLG helps him get there. That was all the point of the chart.

[DocMilo]

Sandy - Raleigh, on 05 June 2012 - 05:53 PM, said:

J. Jaso --- 28 -- .812
J. Smoak - 25 -- .709
M. Saunders 25 - .762
D. Ackley -- 24 - .679
K. Seager -- 24 - .794
J. Montero - 22 - .722

Feel free to discuss the critical need for veteran leadership.

Look at all that veteran leadership on the way in the next two years!