I have thought for some time that OPS has a built-in bias toward power hitters. Recently I have been thinking that this goes deeper than just
the oft-cited criticism that OPS erroneously treats OBP and SLG equally, when it should give OBP a higher weighting. As a result, of late I have taken to using the "Stat Trio" of Batting Average, On-base Average, and Slugging Average. Adam Dunn's career line of .248/.380/.516 reveals a serious flaw that his OPS of .896 obscures. If we were to go strictly by OPS, we would think that Dunn is the second-best Reds hitter of all time, bested only by Frank Robinson, and better than everyone else including Joe Morgan, Eric Davis, Ted Kluszewski and George Foster. Dunn's OPS, absurdly, is higher than that of Bill Terry, who was the last National Leaguer to hit .400, and who had a career line of .341/.385/.506. Don't tell me that's not better than .248/.380/.516.
What it boils down to is that great hitters should do all three things well: hit for average, get on base, and hit for power. Using the Stat Trio can be cumbersome, however, and it is difficult if not impossible to rank players using it. It would be handy if we could distill those three numbers down to one, and of course there is a simple solution, so simple I cannot believe that someone, somewhere, is not already doing this, although I can find no evidence of it through online searches. I call this number "absolute" average, or simply ABSO, an acronym for Average of Batting, Slugging, and On-base. To calculate it, you simply add up the three figures and divide by three.
ABSO = (B.A. + SLG + OBP) / 3
I created several Top Ten lists as ranked by both OPS and ABSO. The two All-Time (Retired) Top Ten lists are almost exactly the same, with Ruth, Williams, Gehrig and Foxx at the top, and pretty much the same group rounding out the list, except that ABSO prefers Ty Cobb over OPS's Mickey Mantle. The Active (or at least not yet officially retired) lists are also very similar, except that ABSO likes Albert Pujols over Barry Bonds at the #1 spot, and adds Vladimir Guerrero at #5 while moving Jim Thome down several spots and dropping Jason Giambi out altogether. On the Reds' all-time list, ABSO adds Hall-of-Famer Edd Roush at the #5 spot and drops Dunn all the way from #2 to #10, right behind Dmitri Young. And for this Reds season so far (through May 5), Dunn goes from #5 on the OPS list to #8 on the ABSO list.
| Ret. Top 10 OPS |
|---|
| # | Player | ops |
|---|
| 1. | Ruth | 1.159 | | 2. | Williams | 1.116 | | 3. | Gehrig | 1.074 | | 4. | Foxx | 1.034 | | 5. | Greenb'g | 1.014 | | 6. | Hornsby | 1.001 | | 7. | Mantle | .979 | | 8. | DiMaggio | .977 | | 9. | Musial | .976 | | 10. | Walker | .965 |
| | Ret. Top 10 ABSO |
|---|
| # | Player | abso |
|---|
| 1. | Ruth | .500 | | 2. | Williams | .487 | | 3. | Gehrig | .471 | | 4. | Foxx | .453 | | 5. | Hornsby | .453 | | 6. | Greenb'g | .442 | | 7. | Musial | .436 | | 8. | Cobb | .435 | | 9. | DiMaggio | .434 | | 10. | Walker | .426 |
| | Act. Top 10 OPS |
|---|
| # | Player | ops |
|---|
| 1. | Bonds | 1.051 | | 2. | Pujols | 1.043 | | 3. | Helton | 1.074 | | 4. | Ramirez | 1.001 | | 5. | Thomas | .978 | | 6. | Berkman | .975 | | 7. | Thome | .971 | | 8. | Rodrig'z | .965 | | 9. | Jones | .953 | | 10. | Giambi | .944 |
| | Act. Top 10 ABSO |
|---|
| # | Player | abso |
|---|
| 1. | Pujols | .458 | | 2. | Bonds | .450 | | 3. | Helton | .447 | | 4. | Ramirez | .438 | | 5. | Guerrero | .430 | | 6. | Thomas | .427 | | 7. | Berkman | .425 | | 8. | Rodrig'z | .424 | | 9. | Jones | .421 | | 10. | Thome | .417 |
|
| Alltime Reds OPS |
|---|
| # | Player | ops |
|---|
| 1. | Robinson | .943 | | 2. | Dunn | .896 | | 3. | Morgan | .885 | | 4. | Griffey | .879 | | 5. | Davis | .877 | | 6. | Foster | .870 | | 7. | Klusz'ski | .870 | | 8. | Young | .842 | | 9. | Seymour | .835 | | 10. | Casey | .834 |
| | Alltime Reds ABSO |
|---|
| # | Player | abso |
|---|
| 1. | Robinson | .415 | | 2. | Morgan | .391 | | 3. | Klusz'ski | .391 | | 4. | Seymour | .389 | | 5. | Roush | .386 | | 6. | Foster | .385 | | 7. | Griffey | .383 | | 8. | Davis | .383 | | 9. | Young | .382 | | 10. | Dunn | .381 |
| | 2008 Reds OPS |
|---|
| # | Player | ops |
|---|
| 1. | Bako | .920 | | 2. | Encarnac'n | .887 | | 3. | Votto | .816 | | 4. | Phillips | .803 | | 5. | Dunn | .785 | | 6. | Hairston | .777 | | 7. | Keppinger | .745 | | 8. | Freel | .742 | | 9. | Patterson | .696 | | 10. | Griffey | .681 |
| | 2008 Reds ABSO |
|---|
| # | Player | abso |
|---|
| 1. | Bako | .411 | | 2. | Encarnac'n | .385 | | 3. | Hairston | .370 | | 4. | Votto | .366 | | 5. | Phillips | .360 | | 6. | Freel | .355 | | 7. | Keppinger | .348 | | 8. | Dunn | .336 | | 9. | Griffey | .303 | | 10. | Patterson | .299 |
|
I believe all of these adjustments conform to our collective knowledge of the history of the game, and to what we see on the field today. Nothing against Mantle, but Cobb
ought to be in the top ten hitters. Pujols
is a better overall hitter than Bonds, whose OPS was pumped up by being pitched around or walked intentionally many many times during his pumped-up final years. Vlad
does belong in the top ten current hitters, despite his disdain for the strike zone, and for walking. Hall-of-Famer Roush
is one of the Reds' greatest hitters of all time, despite having limited home run totals due to playing in the dead ball era. Jeff Keppinger and Ryan Freel
have hit better than Adam Dunn so far this season. All these admittedly anecdotal indicators, taken together, tell me that absolute average is ABSO-
lutely a better offensive yardstick than OPS! Maybe someone with influence will adopt and popularize it.
This is a very simple but interesting stat and probably works at least as well as OPS. I like it.
I've been fooling around with something similar. Since BA is really part of OBP and slugging, I like to break it out like this:
BA
ISO = SLG - BA
EOBP = ( H + BB ) / PA
That way, three separate batting skills are roughly represented -
BA = contact
ISO = slugging
EOBP = plate discipline
Looking at the regressions, BA seems to be roughly twice as influential as the others so my stat is Total Batting Production (TBP)=
2*BA + ISO + EOBP.
I like the fact that your stat uses the familiar BA, OBP, SLG components though. It gives it a better chance of being accepted by others.
Lee
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Hi Lee, TBP looks interesting. I would point out that ((2*BA)+ISO) is equivalent to BA+SLG, so really the only significant difference between the two stats is in the OBP component.* I was initially confused by your formulation of EOBP; it looked like you were just excluding HBP from the calculation, which would have produced only a very insignificant difference between the two stats, but looking back at older posts on your blog, it appears that you really meant EOBP = ( HBP + BB ) / PA, which would produce a somewhat significant difference, I would think. I wonder which stat is the better run predictor.
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