dutchxperienz Posted May 28, 2007 Share Posted May 28, 2007 k, i know that obp=on base percentage, slg=slugging percentage, and ops=obp+slg, but i have a few questions. firstly, whats the difference between batting average and obp, or is there none? also, whats the significance of slg. if a player only gets 1 hit in 4 ab, he hit .250, but if that one hit was a hr, his slg is 1.000. so, how can slg be a good indicator of how a player has batted? lastly, ops seems useless to me. any explanations? cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krawhitham Posted May 28, 2007 Share Posted May 28, 2007 SLG is used to gauge power OBP includes walks where AVG does not OPS is crap Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RaptorQuiz Posted May 28, 2007 Share Posted May 28, 2007 AVG is the percentage of the time a player records a HIT during an official AT BAT. OBP is the percentage of time the player reaches base per PLATE APPEARANCE - so it includes walks, HBP, etc. Basically, average is a good indicator of how effective a hitter is, when he's pitched to - but OBP is a better indicator of how often a player can find a way to get on base. So a high OBP is good for a leadoff hitter, while a high average (not always accompanied by a high OBP) can be more valuable in the RBI slots. SLG comes in to play, since it measures the amount of hits recorded that go for extra bases (that's how it measures power)... so if you're looking for a player that can drive in runs, you look for a high AVG -AND- a high SLG. OPS is an attempt to combine someone's ability to get on base (OBP, which many consider more important than AVG) and SLG into one statistic, since a high OPS should indicate a hitter that could hit for both average and power, while finding a way to get on base. Some people like OPS, while others think it is a flawed measurement. Sorry for any errors, I did this off the top of my head. I'm sure somebody will come in here and make a way better explaination than I did. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dutchxperienz Posted May 28, 2007 Author Share Posted May 28, 2007 thanx for that, but then what is a good slg? and why would they even take the effort to calculate ops? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RaptorQuiz Posted May 28, 2007 Share Posted May 28, 2007 From wikipedia: In baseball statistics, slugging average (abbreviated SLG) is the most popular measure of the power of a hitter. It is calculated as total bases divided by at bats. SLG = (1B + (2 x 2B) + (3 x 3B) + (4 x HR))/ AB , where AB is the number of at-bats for a given player, and 1B, 2B, 3B, and HR are the number of singles, doubles, triples, and home runs, respectively. Walks are specifically excluded from this calculation. For example, in 1920, Babe Ruth was playing his first season for the New York Yankees. In 458 at bats, he had 172 hits, including 73 singles, 36 doubles, 9 triples, and 54 home runs, which brings the total base count to (73 + (36 × 2) + (9 × 3) + (54 × 4)) = 388. He had 458 at bats, so his total number of bases (388) divided by his total at-bats (458) is .847, his slugging average. The next year he slugged .846, and for 80 years those records went unbroken until 2001, when Barry Bonds hit 411 bases in 476 at-bats, bringing his average to .863, unmatched since. Slugging average is nearly always referred to as slugging percentage. However, this term is misleading for it is actually a weighted average not a percentage. The maximum numerically possible slugging average is 4.000, which has momentarily been achieved by several players who hit a home run on their first at-bat of the season. A few have achieved this on their first major league at-bat, giving them a momentary career slugging average of 4.000. Kevin Kouzmanoff, then playing for the Cleveland Indians, hit a grand slam off of Edinson Volquez on his first major-league pitch on September 2, 2006. He thus briefly achieved the best possible offensive percentage in every category, including some nonexistent categories such as "runs per pitch" (4.000). and On-base plus slugging, or OPS, is a baseball statistic which is calculated as the sum of a player's on-base percentage and slugging percentage.[1] Both the ability of a player to get on base and to hit for power, two important hitting skills, are represented, making it an effective way of measuring the offensive worth of a player. An OPS of .900 or higher in Major League Baseball puts the player in the upper echelon of offensive ability. Typically, the league leader in OPS will score near, and not necessarily below, the 1.000 mark. It should be noted that unlike many other statistics, a player's OPS does not have a simple intrinsic meaning, despite its usefulness as a comparative statistic. One fault of OPS is that it weights on-base average and slugging percentage equally, although on-base average correlates better with scoring runs. Magnifying this fault is that the component parts of OPS are not themselves typically close to equal numerically (league-average slugging percentages are usually 75-100 points higher than league-average on-base percentages). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dutchxperienz Posted May 28, 2007 Author Share Posted May 28, 2007 thanx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sean O Posted May 28, 2007 Share Posted May 28, 2007 OBP >>>> SLG. OPS is just a convenient way to compare players, but OBP is far more important. Simply, OBP is not making outs. Not making outs = more baserunners = more chance of runs. Things like OPS+ aren't very easy to calculate, but it's generally easy to say someone with a .900 OPS is pretty damn good, while someone with a .700 OPS better be a damn good defensive catcher. Even then, someone who has a .300/.350/.550 isn't as valuable as someone with a .300/.400/.500 line. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RaptorQuiz Posted May 28, 2007 Share Posted May 28, 2007 Statistics were being discussed. It was only a matter of time before the great SeanO showed up. I gotta tell you, SeanO - it was YOUR constant use of stats that got me to read MoneyBall. Seriously. And I loved it. ...which means you probably hate that book. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sean O Posted May 28, 2007 Share Posted May 28, 2007 Moneyball's great, I need to read it again. It is as important a book written on baseball as any over the last few decades. We couldn't have asked for a better text to describe the SABRmetric way of thought, that makes it relevant and interesting to everyone. Just remember, Moneyball is about exploiting inefficiencies in the system, not just for finding fat, ugly ballplayers. When defense is underappreciated, go there. When college pitchers are available in the draft, focus on them. Also, don't make outs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dutchxperienz Posted May 28, 2007 Author Share Posted May 28, 2007 im gonna order moneyball again after i lost my original, along with sum other baseball titles, which will give me even more to do over the summer :music1: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abc006 Posted May 28, 2007 Share Posted May 28, 2007 Slightly off-topic, but I think it would be interesting to see if you took the example from Moneyball for an altered OPS: OBP(3)+SLG. Basically, you take OBP as much as three times instead of one. The thinking is that if a team has an OBP of 1.000, they score an infinite number of runs. If a team has a SLG of 1.000 they can score as little as 1 run an inning - 4 singles or 1 homerun, etc. Therefore, OBP should be valued higher than SLG. Example - Traditional OPS in '06 for... Ryan Howard: 1.084 Albert Pujols: 1.101 "Altered" OPS for... Howard: 1.598 Pujols: 1.964 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sean O Posted May 28, 2007 Share Posted May 28, 2007 Taking abc's post to its logical extreme, then Barry Bonds' 2004 becomes 2.639. That's a pretty damn good year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan121 Posted July 28, 2007 Share Posted July 28, 2007 I didn't save it, but I remember reading someone put enough data together to show that the higher the OPS the higher RC/9 would be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DoubleD Posted July 28, 2007 Share Posted July 28, 2007 Well, yeah, that should be a given. One of the most basic formulas for RC is OBP*SLG*AB And in the more complicated ones, you're still using a players ability to get on base (basic foundation of OBP) and total bases (basic foundation of SLG). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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