11 Responses to “When OPS Has Two Equal Halves”

1. Mark Says:
   January 24th, 2010 at 10:27 pm

   Such a random thing to qualify for, but I also found it interesting to sort by the stats themselves (or OPS, obviously) -- Kenny Lofton had the second highest, in a not-too-shabby season (which also included 70 stolen bases).

2. Jeff J. Says:
   January 25th, 2010 at 10:10 am

   I'd guess that Hofman's .351 or maybe Norm Siebern's .379 in context is more impressive than Lofton's .408

3. Allan Says:
   January 25th, 2010 at 2:51 pm

   But the real interesting one is the lowest one: Billy Urbanski's 286/286 in the still offensive-minded environment of 1935. That's a pretty bad season, although I haven't checked the OPS+ yet.

4. Mike Felber Says:
   January 25th, 2010 at 5:36 pm

   Nice. Butr where can I find a weighted" OPS +? Since I hear that nearly all experts consider the OBP significantly more important for a correlation with runs created, should we not all have that stat available routinely?

5. Thomas L. Says:
   January 25th, 2010 at 5:54 pm

   Boy, Bill Urbanski's .286 OBP and SLG season in 1935 was one to write home about!

6. DavidRF Says:
   January 25th, 2010 at 11:24 pm

   #4. Actually OPS+ does weight OBP more than SLG. OPS+ is not 100*OPS/lgOPS, but 100*(OBP/lgOBP + SLG/lgSLG - 1). So, it weights OBP more than SLG by a factor of lgSLG/lgOBP. Last year, that weight was about 1.27 or so. Not as large a weight as most of the experts propose, but better than nothing.

7. JohnnyTwisto Says:
   January 26th, 2010 at 12:48 am

   Fangraphs has recently added an indexed stat based on linear weights which does weight things "correctly." It is called wRC+. Billy Urbanski's 1935 was a 65 (60 by OPS+). 2009 leaders are here: http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=1&season=2009&month=0

8. JohnnyTwisto Says:
   January 26th, 2010 at 12:49 am

   But their glossary looks about as bad as the one here.

9. Mike Says:
   January 26th, 2010 at 6:38 pm

   Actually, seven Hall Of Famers, counting Earl Greasy Neale (Pro Football Hall of Fame). I know that's not what was meant, but that fact has about as much interest and relevance as people having the same Slugging and OBP

10. Tomepp Says:
    January 28th, 2010 at 5:43 pm

    Of course, these values are only "approximately equal" - equal when rounded to three decimal places. Unless their numerators and denominators were equal or integer multiples of a common factor (highly unlikely with 502+ PA), they are not truely equal. If we take the OBP and SLG to only two (or even one) significant digit, we can make the lists a lot longer.

11. Tomepp Says:
    January 29th, 2010 at 1:36 pm

    Note that someone with a .38451 OBP and a .38449 SLG would not make the list, while someone with a .38451 OBP and a .38549 SLG would - even though the former's numbers are 49 times closer than the latter's (.00002 difference vs. .00098 difference).

    What might be more "interesting" in a mathy sort of way is to list players with 502+ PA with the smallest differential between their true OBP and SLG. Of course, you'd have to do that in an exported spreadsheet which calcultes the true values, as the PI only uses the rounded-off approximations. (You could narrow the list by starting with players whose |OBP-SLG| <= .001; this will catch guys like the former player in the example above.)