By the Numbers

Which ones actually matter?

There is a classic saying that says, “numbers don’t lie”. Well that’s just not true. I’m not saying numbers aren’t great, they are, and I’m not saying we should decide what is true based on experience and how something looks. We SHOULD use statistics when it comes to sports but, we need to carefully choose which ones we use. Throughout the 20th and 21st century we have discovered so much in science, technology, statistics, and history and, as time has progressed we have used our new information to decide how we analyze and talk about those fields. However, when it comes to baseball, America’s pastime, we haven’t. There are many new statistics that exist to evaluate how talented a baseball player is and somehow we still focus on batting average!

Batting average is simply an archaic stat and while it is true that batting average is a very easy to measure and easy to understand stat, it doesn’t illustrate the value of a hitter. First off, it equates home runs to singles and in a game of baseball, where the objective, from an offensive perspective, is to score runs there is no reason you should be equating a HR to a base hit. A .300 hitter who hits 8 home runs actually might not be as valuable as a .250 hitter who hits 35 home runs. For example, look at Chris Davis in 2015 who batted .262, but hit 47 home runs. That year he was ninth in the MLB in OPS! Secondly, batting average doesn’t take into account how well a player hits with runners in scoring position. For example, in 2013 Allen Craig batted an incredible .454 with runners in scoring position last season, but only batted .262 with the bases empty and .315 overall. Craig helped his team immensely that year as a hitter and batting average just didn’t show his contribution. Finally, batting average doesn’t take into account walks and hit by pitch. Having a good eye in baseball is important as it wears down pitchers, puts a runner on base, and in many situations is just as valuable as a single.

While I have heard arguments that we should be using complex statistics like WAR or WOBA, I am not even going to get into those complicated statistics. Rather, I will introduce, a simple alternative to the old fashion statistic of batting average, OPS. OPS is the sum of a players on base percentage which is how many times a player gets on base (including walks and hit by pitch) and slugging percentage which measures the total bases (so a home run would be four bases and a single would be one) over the amount of at bats. It is a simple stat to use (I have given a table on the bottom to explain what good and bad OPS’s look like) and does a much better job at determining the strength of a hitter than batting average does.

So, next time you are watching a baseball game and you hear Ken Rosenthal say “here comes Josh Donaldson to the plate, his batting average is a not great .284”, do a quick check of what his OPS is (chart on bottom) and remember that numbers don’t necessarily tell the full story.

OPS-Rating

Excellent

1.000

Great

0.900

Above Average

0.800

Average

0.710

Below Average

0.670

Poor

0.600

Awful

0.570