Comments on: Barry Bonds — Too Many Intentional Walks http://blog.davidwadler.com/2004/09/27/barry-bonds-too-many-intentional-walks/ Rants, Ramblings, and Ruminations! Sun, 06 Jul 2008 17:23:02 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.2 by: David http://blog.davidwadler.com/2004/09/27/barry-bonds-too-many-intentional-walks/#comment-2856 Wed, 06 Jul 2005 05:58:57 +0000 http://blog.davidwadler.com/2004/09/27/barry-bonds-too-many-intentional-walks/#comment-2856 Kelly, Thanks for reading...and writing. To answer your question, you're right -- OPS is way off kilter. However, while it's a crude instrument, it's better than conventional metrics like HR and RBI when evaluating offensive performance. There are a couple of nice things about OPS, which I suspect account for its use: 1) It's easily computed. OBP and SLG are readily available. Adding the two numbers is easy. Once you introduce multiplication (and possible decimals) into the equation, many more eyes will glaze over. 2) 1.000 is a nice number. In a given year, the top few players will have register an OPS over 1.000. A bunch of all-stars will be in the .900 range. Many good players will be in the .800s, etc. There are a host of other statistics that take into account park factor, defense, value relative to position, etc. But OPS does a decent job giving you an idea about how good a player is. For more on the relative values of OBP and SLG, look here: http://www.pankin.com/sabr34.pdf -David Kelly,

Thanks for reading…and writing. To answer your question, you’re right — OPS is way off kilter. However, while it’s a crude instrument, it’s better than conventional metrics like HR and RBI when evaluating offensive performance. There are a couple of nice things about OPS, which I suspect account for its use:

1) It’s easily computed. OBP and SLG are readily available. Adding the two numbers is easy. Once you introduce multiplication (and possible decimals) into the equation, many more eyes will glaze over.
2) 1.000 is a nice number. In a given year, the top few players will have register an OPS over 1.000. A bunch of all-stars will be in the .900 range. Many good players will be in the .800s, etc.

There are a host of other statistics that take into account park factor, defense, value relative to position, etc. But OPS does a decent job giving you an idea about how good a player is. For more on the relative values of OBP and SLG, look here: http://www.pankin.com/sabr34.pdf

-David

]]> by: Kelly http://blog.davidwadler.com/2004/09/27/barry-bonds-too-many-intentional-walks/#comment-2855 Sun, 03 Jul 2005 04:02:31 +0000 http://blog.davidwadler.com/2004/09/27/barry-bonds-too-many-intentional-walks/#comment-2855 Okay, I don't know you at all, but a google search led me to your blog. And with all your OPS talk, I thought I'd leave this for you...I know it always bugs me. In the insightful and wonderful book Moneyball, Paul Depdesta said that he felt that on-base percentage was worth three times as much as slugging percentage, because an OBP of 1.000 means you score an infinite amount of runs. If you have a Slugging of 1.000, it means you hit a single, and the result in terms of runs scored is much less than infinity. And I get all that. But I still think that makes OPS way off kilter. Because in terms of team OPS, it seems that one point in slugging is the of same value as one point on-base percentage, which (according to Paulie), it's not. So there..that's my brainchild, for you to look over. Who knows if you'll ever read this or not, but if you do, write me back at --address removed--. Okay, I don’t know you at all, but a google search led me to your blog. And with all your OPS talk, I thought I’d leave this for you…I know it always bugs me.

In the insightful and wonderful book Moneyball, Paul Depdesta said that he felt that on-base percentage was worth three times as much as slugging percentage, because an OBP of 1.000 means you score an infinite amount of runs. If you have a Slugging of 1.000, it means you hit a single, and the result in terms of runs scored is much less than infinity. And I get all that. But I still think that makes OPS way off kilter. Because in terms of team OPS, it seems that one point in slugging is the of same value as one point on-base percentage, which (according to Paulie), it’s not.

So there..that’s my brainchild, for you to look over. Who knows if you’ll ever read this or not, but if you do, write me back at –address removed–.

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