TheSportsReporterNY’s Blog

Sabermetrics is the scientific way of analyzing Baseball.

It started out as a normal Sunday afternoon in the beginning of March. Spring training games were playing in the background, courtesy of MLB Network, when a couple of my fraternity brothers were engaging in an online debate over the World Baseball Classic. Truth be told, the debate had more to do with nationalistic pride than actual baseball information, but that surely didn’t stop me from jumping in the mix. In an attempt to tweak my Dominican fraternity brother, Onyx, I made a remark that looked something like this:

 Roberto Clemente > Manny Ramirez.

What ensued was a good ol’ fashioned sports debate, supported by statistics from the good people at baseball-reference.com. We went back and forth over several mind-numbingly long emails (you would’ve thought we were debating America’s fiscal policy), essentially battling to a draw. Onyx was clinging to his argument that Manny’s offensive value more than make up for his defensive deficiencies, while I argued that Clemente’s offensive numbers were above average, and even though they weren’t Manny caliber, he more than held his own. I also argued that Clemente should (and does) get extra points, not only for playing the field, but playing the field at a tremendously high level. Clemente was as good a defender as Manny is a hitter. Conversely, Clemente was an above average offensive player, while Manny is a liability on defense, and should probably be a DH. I take Clemente; He takes Manny. It happens. It’s just a typical difference on baseball philosophy, one that isn’t going to be resolved over a few emails. The Jews & Palestinians will establish peace in the Middle East before these types of sports arguments are put to rest! I digress.

 During the course of the debate, I pointed out certain stats that, in my opinion, are obsolete when debating individual player performances. The stats that were used were Runs (# of times a player scores a run), RBI (Runs Batted In), .Avg (Batting Average= At-Bats / Hits). I was immediately hit with fierce resistance. How dare I challenge traditional stats? Who do I think I am? Some sort of Baseball professor? Well, actually, yes. That’s beside the point though.

 Strangely, the main opposition did not come from Onyx (although it isn’t that strange considering the fact that Onyx is a knowledgeable baseball fan), it came from another one of my dear brothers, Jorge (sadly, he has no relation to Posada).  This came as a surprise to me, because while he frequently challenges my baseball points, this seemed like a simple enough statement: “OPS is the best stat to determine a hitter’s offensive value.”

 That statement was taken from my email response, attacking the use of batting average to determine a hitter’s value. While it is the most commonly used statistic (by people who know as much baseball as I know quantum physics), it is deeply flawed because it gives you an incomplete picture of the player’s individual contribution.

Jorge wrote:

Your OPS argument is going to get thrown in a landfill in jersey or even
CT. somewhere.
Pete Rose career ops = .784/// the hits leader arguably the best hitter
ever
Ty Cobb career ops = .945 higher then Pete.

 Your stat seems to reward homers that’s it, your stat has a hundred more
examples of stupidity.

Interesting. There are a hundred examples to show OPS’ stupidity and he chooses the one that made the least amount of sense. It was like Christmas morning for me when I read that! First of all, yes OPS does reward homers, because is should. It rewards extra base hits with extra points, while a single only gets counted once. It makes sense that Ty Cobb had a higher OPS than Pete Rose, because while Rose had slightly more homeruns (160-117, so much for only rewarding homeruns, huh?) & doubles (746-724), Cobb more than doubled Rose in the triples department (135-295). He also got on base at a better percentage than Rose (Rose only had 317 more walks than Cobb despite playing in 527 more games-more than 3 full major league seasons).

It’s simple logic, really. OPS tells you so much more than batting average ever could. It does the job batting average is SUPPOSED to do. OPS basically tells you two things. How often a hitter is successful (the number of times he gets on base via a hit, BB, etc) and HOW successful he is (extra base hits). Batting average only gives you the average of hits to at-bats. It doesn’t tell you how often those hits are extra base hits or how many walks a player gets. In fact, batting average is a misnomer. It should really be called Hitting Average, because that’s all it gives you, an incomplete picture.

In other words, how can you make a real determination about a player’s offensive value when it leaves out much of what actually constitutes value? In baseball, a double is more valuable than a single; a triple more so than a double, and the homerun is king. Batting average, in its infinite wisdom, scores a single the same as a homerun! How astonishingly foolish! On top of that, it gives you absolutely no credit for a walk, like it never even happened. Since when do walks not count? It’s moronic at best.    

That doesn’t mean we should throw out the baby with the bath water. Batting average can be a useful stat in the same way stolen bases is, as a supporting argument. That’s assuming you actually want to make sense, of course. 

For more information on Sabermetric stats, visit this blog.