"What Jefferson was saying was, 'Hey! You know, we left this England place
'cause it was bogus; so if we don't get some cool rules ourselves -
pronto - we'll just be bogus too!' Get it?"
-Jeff Spicoli, Fast Times At Ridgemont High
Everyone likes the batting average stat. You hear it all around - "What's his average?" people will ask. It's sort of a measuring stick for a player. Rod Carew hit .388 in 1977 - awesome! Mario Mendoza had a .215 lifetime batting average - yikes.
Batting average is just that - its how often a player gets a hit. I would venture to say it's the single most popular offensive stat. But sometimes you want more info when comparing players. More info? What kind of info? Let's look at a non-baseball situation. So you're daughter is heading out for the evening. "Who are you going out with" you ask. You're little darling replies with "just a friend". Oh, just a friend huh? "Sure go ahead" ... WHOA!! wait just a minute there Ma and Pa. Who is she going out with??!! Is it Lindsey Lohan or Mother Teresa? Now that's lack of info huh? As for batting average sometimes we need more meat in there. For instance what kind of hits were they? Were all of the hits singles or were there a good amount of doubles, triples and homers? As we all know doubles, triples and homers are more valuable than just singles. Also, what about walks? Drawing a walk is a proven skill that some players can perform better than others. The batting average stat does not take into account walks. We'll look at two stats - Slugging Percentage (SLG) and On Base Percentage (OBP).
When looking at SLG you need to know what this stat really means. SLG represents, on average, how many bases a batter advances per at bat. It may help to look at the formula:
SLG = 1B + (2*2B) + (3*3B) + (4*HR) / AB
SLG solves the "type of hit" problem and puts a weight on doubles, triples and HR's. That weight being how many bases are advanced. In 2011 the MLB average for SLG was .411. The best was Jose Bautista at .608 and the worst was Jason Barlett at .307.
OBP is in essence batting average with walks and hit batsmen thrown in. As discussed above, walks are important. You can think of OBP as how often a batter gets on base. In recent years getting on base has been recognized as an important skill. In 2011 the MLB average for OBP was .339. The leader in OBP was Miguel Cabrera with .448. The lowest was Vernon Wells at .248.
Which of these two stats is a better? It's been said that OBP is. Teams with higher OBP generally produce more runs.
There is another stat called OPS (On Base Plus Slugging). That is simply adding OBP and SLG. Frankly, I don't like it. I'm not a big fan of combining as many stats as we can to create one big stat. Here's why. Below are two players from the 2011 season
According to OPS they are the same player. But a look at SLG and OBP show they are not quite the same. McCutchen gets on base more than Cruz, yet Cruz appears to have more power. This is not to say 'Cutch is better than Nellie, or vice-versa, but I just want to show you need to look more into stats.
One last thing regarding batting average, SLG and OBP. Below are three graphs based on team stats. Please excuse my shaky Excel skills. The charts below all have runs (in blue) plotted in a line. Either AVG, OBP or SLG scattered (in red) are individually represented on each graph. As you can see OBP and SLG are more tightly knit to the runs line than batting average is, thus telling us OBP and SLG are more related to producing runs than batting average is (in some years OBP is actually closer to the runs line).
In some upcoming entries about offensive stats I'll talk about some of the more advance stats like wOBA (Weighted On Base Percentage), ISO (Isolated power) and RC (Runs Created). Hope you found this interesting.
Thanks for reading,
-Tom
When looking at SLG you need to know what this stat really means. SLG represents, on average, how many bases a batter advances per at bat. It may help to look at the formula:
SLG = 1B + (2*2B) + (3*3B) + (4*HR) / AB
SLG solves the "type of hit" problem and puts a weight on doubles, triples and HR's. That weight being how many bases are advanced. In 2011 the MLB average for SLG was .411. The best was Jose Bautista at .608 and the worst was Jason Barlett at .307.
OBP is in essence batting average with walks and hit batsmen thrown in. As discussed above, walks are important. You can think of OBP as how often a batter gets on base. In recent years getting on base has been recognized as an important skill. In 2011 the MLB average for OBP was .339. The leader in OBP was Miguel Cabrera with .448. The lowest was Vernon Wells at .248.
Which of these two stats is a better? It's been said that OBP is. Teams with higher OBP generally produce more runs.
There is another stat called OPS (On Base Plus Slugging). That is simply adding OBP and SLG. Frankly, I don't like it. I'm not a big fan of combining as many stats as we can to create one big stat. Here's why. Below are two players from the 2011 season
| OPS | SLG | OBP | |
| Andrew McCutchen | .820 | .456 | .364 |
| Nelson Cruz | .821 | .509 | .312 |
According to OPS they are the same player. But a look at SLG and OBP show they are not quite the same. McCutchen gets on base more than Cruz, yet Cruz appears to have more power. This is not to say 'Cutch is better than Nellie, or vice-versa, but I just want to show you need to look more into stats.
One last thing regarding batting average, SLG and OBP. Below are three graphs based on team stats. Please excuse my shaky Excel skills. The charts below all have runs (in blue) plotted in a line. Either AVG, OBP or SLG scattered (in red) are individually represented on each graph. As you can see OBP and SLG are more tightly knit to the runs line than batting average is, thus telling us OBP and SLG are more related to producing runs than batting average is (in some years OBP is actually closer to the runs line).
 |
| fig 1 - Batting Average / Runs |
 |
| fig 2 - OBP / Runs |
 |
| fig 3 - SLG / Runs |
Thanks for reading,
-Tom
No comments:
Post a Comment