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OBP....and its importance


Sports Guy

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Maybe this is just semantics ... but let's try to clarify. In essence OBP and SLG are virtually equal in "importance" in the context of correlation to runs created (according to the chart). The factors you mention, of different weights (1.8 cited in the article the chart came from), really are technical adjustments because of different denominators, double counting, etc. To me the "more important" issue is which metrics correlate best to runs created.

Let me put it this way: to my understanding, if you have two players whose OPS's are equal, the one who has the higher OBP and the lower SLG is the one who produces more runs. Just to give an example:

Michael Cuddyer, .276/.342/.520/.862, 5.89 RC/27

Victor Martinez, .303/.381/.480/.861, 6.58 RC/27

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Let me put it this way: to my understanding, if you have two players whose OPS's are equal, the one who has the higher OBP and the lower SLG is the one who produces more runs. Just to give an example:

Michael Cuddyer, .276/.342/.520/.862, 5.89 RC/27

Victor Martinez, .303/.381/.480/.861, 6.58 RC/27

Interesting. Your example does show clearly that in this comparison of individual performance, OBP is indeed more important. Yet the chart which measures team performance shows a different result, that OBP and SLG are of basically equal importance. (In both examples, "importance" in terms of correlation to RC).

I wonder if this difference in applying OPS boils down to that: individual vs. team context. Or if we're missing something else ... ?

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Let me put it this way: to my understanding, if you have two players whose OPS's are equal, the one who has the higher OBP and the lower SLG is the one who produces more runs. Just to give an example:

Michael Cuddyer, .276/.342/.520/.862, 5.89 RC/27

Victor Martinez, .303/.381/.480/.861, 6.58 RC/27

That is a bad example because Martinez has almost a 30 point increase in BA. That is like 15 more hits.

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Walks are vastly overated. Give me hitters with higher BA's and more homers and walks aren't even much of a factor.

Fortunately, not everyone of your era thought the same way. One of my favorite quotes:

"Ohhhhh, wait ... a ... minute! That was my favorite right there, on-base percentage! Don Buford wasn't getting to play under Hank Bauer, he'd get in a ball game every now and then and feel like he had to get three or four hits. I told Buford, 'I'm willing to play you as long as you have a .400 on-base percentage.' All of a sudden he becomes a regular, and he's walking a hundred times and hitting right around .300."

-Earl Weaver

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I think that OBP is the key stat in baseball and it is what the game is about on the offensive side of the ball. You need to get on base to score runs last time I checked. Mauer's career OBP is .409 and that is what makes that kid great. The fact that he provides that type of spark while playing gold glove caliber catcher is a huge bonus.

I think we look at too many stats and make the game and our judgement about a guy being a great player such a daunting task. If you watched Babe Ruth play everyday would you really need to see his stats to know he was better at hitting than anyone else? What about Koufax pitching?

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Then, in reality a walk isn't as good as a hit. It is only better than an out (in most cases). Note: a sac fly would actually be better than a walk in some instances.

Absolutely right. No one here is arguing that a walk is as good as a hit. We're all focusing on how much better a walk is than an out. Remember, if the guy doesn't walk, there's a 70% chance (for very good hitters) that he makes an out. Since the difference between an out and a walk is so much greater than the difference between a walk and a single, any rational person would take a walk in almost any circumstance. I will grant you that there are probably times when taking a walk is not better than swinging away with a 70% chance of making an out. I just can't enumerate them.

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That's a fascinating chart, and it's interesting how all the fancy-schmancy offensive stats really add very little to what you get out of OPS. Bu this seems inconsistent with the well-accepted notion that OBP is more important than SLG. Or is this chart not really addressing that point.
Maybe this is just semantics ... but let's try to clarify. In essence OBP and SLG are virtually equal in "importance" in the context of correlation to runs created (according to the chart). The factors you mention, of different weights (1.8 cited in the article the chart came from), really are technical adjustments because of different denominators, double counting, etc. To me the "more important" issue is which metrics correlate best to runs created.
Let me put it this way: to my understanding, if you have two players whose OPS's are equal, the one who has the higher OBP and the lower SLG is the one who produces more runs.

I don't recall the details, but I don't think they got the 1.8 factor for OBP just as a result of mucking around with "technical adjustments" that don't really matter. I think they got it by some sensible evaluation of the relative contribution of OBP and SLG to production. It wasn't just a technical footnote, it was a weighting factor.

A factor of 1.8 is not a small thing. It says that OBP carries almost twice the weight of SLG. I don't see how it can simultaneously be true that OBP is almost twice as valuable, and yet there is no meaningful difference when you don't include that factor. The graph shows OBP as being insignificantly less valueable than SLG, which is way different than almost twice as valuable. Something about this doesn't add up.

The article accompanying the graph does not address this. It focuses on why OPS works as well as fancier things. That's not the part that doesn't add up. It naturally follows from the part that doesn't add up, but it doesn't address it. It would appear that a factor of 1.8 somehow just went "poof" into thin air, and the guy didn't even comment on that. Instead, he did some blackboard algebra, which usually works pretty well for intimidating folks so they'll say "Sure, OK" and shut-up, but he completely bypassed the puzzling and apparently-inconsistent part. I can't believe he didn't even mention that part, because that's what needs explaining, not the part that he did the algebra about. If you explain where the 1.8 went, then you don't really need to explain the other stuff. Maybe he didn't explain it because he doesn't know either...

EDIT: Never mind. Here's what he did... and didn't do. He looked at data for everybody, which is good. He also looked at data for 5 years, not just 1, which is also good. But what he didn't do is look and see how various ways of gauging hitters' contributions mapped to either hitter or team production over that time. Instead, he just added up everybody from each of the teams over 5 years and got himself a few buckets full of big numbers for each team-season. Which made all of the potentially important and interesting differences among hitters' performance factors completely disappear into the piles of summary team numbers. What he did tells us zip about the relative contributions of OBP, SLG, OPS, or any of the rest of it in terms of how different aspects of hitters' performance contribute. He just did a quick retrospective of how well each flavor of summary team numbers correlated with team runs, that's all. There's less in the way of useful information here than you might think at first glance from looking at his graph. In fact, I'm not sure if this tells us anything that has much useful value for applied purposes. This is the kind of thing that folks will misunderstand and misuse, thinking it tells us about the relative utility of different measures of hitter-value when it doesn't tell us any such thing. Looks to me like this doesn't help us understand anything much. I can see how maybe folks who are really, really into studying the finer points of summary team-stats (not hitter stats) could find it interesting but, other than that, it appears to be data that has little new information content. Unless you're really interested in the relative merits of different summary team stats, what it mainly shows is that team scoring tracks how well the team hits, not perfectly but pretty well, and we knew that already.

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rshack, you're right that it doesn't add up. Your point about the irrelevance of team stats, however, I would not agree with. At least in the context of the OP dealing with team runs and team OBP, it is relevant. This thread and the SLG thread each show some correlation between the single measure and RC; in reality there is even greater correlation between team OPS and team RC. I can't speak for Sports Guy but I think the implied question of the threads is, "What kind of players should the Orioles be looking for?"

It is confusing to look at individual contributions (favoring OBP) and collective team performance (favoring OPS), and come to a single conclusion. After all, you assemble a team by adding together individual players. While the riddle remains, it still seems relevant to ask, "What makes sense as a team approach to hitting (or building a roster)?" I don't think the team stat correlations can be ignored when addressing this question.

Even if you stick with the individual result, you still have to wonder why, in the team stats, the adjusted OPS' (using the 1.8 factor) is only marginally better than plain OPS (OBP + SLG).

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rshack, you're right that it doesn't add up. Your point about the irrelevance of team stats, however, I would not agree with. At least in the context of the OP dealing with team runs and team OBP, it is relevant. This thread and the SLG thread each show some correlation between the single measure and RC; in reality there is even greater correlation between team OPS and team RC. I can't speak for Sports Guy but I think the implied question of the threads is, "What kind of players should the Orioles be looking for?"

It is confusing to look at individual contributions (favoring OBP) and collective team performance (favoring OPS), and come to a single conclusion. After all, you assemble a team by adding together individual players. While the riddle remains, it still seems relevant to ask, "What makes sense as a team approach to hitting (or building a roster)?" I don't think the team stat correlations can be ignored when addressing this question.

Even if you stick with the individual result, you still have to wonder why, in the team stats, the adjusted OPS' (using the 1.8 factor) is only marginally better than plain OPS (OBP + SLG).

The team stats don't tell you what hitter stats tell you. I think it's fine to care about hitter stats, and fine to care about team stats. What's not fine is to look at the correlations found in team stats and conclude that tells you anything much about the value of individual hitter traits.

When they did the thing that produced the 1.8 factor, they were comparing how different aspects of individual hitting performance contributed to production relative to each other. It was a comparison between the two aspects of hitting. That's not what is going on here. He's just seeing how strong the correlation is between each team stat and total team runs. That's not telling you anything about how much the hitting-thing that each stat measures contributes to runs.

Look at it this way: Let's pretend we had a whole league of guys who had exactly the same hitting stats, they were perfect clones of each other. Let's say that their performance was consistent with OBP having that factor of 1.8 vs. SLG. OK? If that happened, then OBP would not have 1.8 times the correlation with runs as SLG. To the contrary, OBP and SLG would have the same correlation with runs. OBP would not correlate any better or worse than SLG did, even though OBP deserved the greater weight in helping to create those runs. If the players were all 5'10", then their height would correlate perfectly with runs too, but that doesn't mean you'd think you should hire only those hitters who are 5'10". While irrelevant-height and more-valuable-OBP and less-valuable-SLG all had the same correlation with runs, and therefore could predict runs to the same degree, that doesn't mean they all played the same role in contributing to those runs.

From what this guy did, we know that team-OPS has a tighter correlation with team-runs than either team-OBP or team-SLG. We know that team-OBP and team-SLG have virtually the same correlation. But that does not mean that OBP and SLG contribute to those runs equally.

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QUOTE=Sports Guy;2039892]Lots of talk around here about needing a big bat...I think we should be adding OBP moreso.

Let's look at some rankings from the last few years..OBP and runs scored(AL only):

2009:

1) Yankees...1st in OBP...1st in runs scored.

2) Boston...2nd in OBP...3rd in runs scored.

3) Angels....3rd in OBP...2nd in runs scored.

4) Twins...4th in OBP...4th in runs scored.

5) Tampa...5th in OBP...5th in runs scored.

6) Baltimore...8th in OBP...11th in runs scored.

2008:

1) Boston...1st in OBP....2nd in runs scored.

2) Texas..2nd in OBP...1st in runs scored.

3) Yankees...3rd in OBP...7th in runs scored.

4) Detroit...4th in OBP...4th in runs scored.

5) Minnesota...5th in OBP...3rd in runs scored.

6) Baltimore...8th in OBP...8th in runs scored.

2007:

1) Yankees...1st in OBP...1st in runs scored.

2) Boston...2nd in OBP...3rd in runs scored.

3) Angels...3rd in OBP...4th in runs scored.

4) Detroit...4th in OBP...2nd in runs scored.

5) Cleveland...5th in OBP...6th in runs scored.

6) Baltimore...9th in OBP...9th in runs scored.

Pretty telling stuff there...Moral of the story? Get on base and you score runs. Its that simple.

Is it really that simple?

Have you considered the possibility of the causation going both ways? Maybe you get a lot of walks partly because you have good hitters who are being pitched around. Especially power threats. How many guys did the O's have last season who hit 25 home runs? I think it's true that a weak-hitting team can help itself through patience, but only up to a point. You're not going to get but so many walks if you don't have intimidating hitters.

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QUOTE=Sports Guy;2039892]Lots of talk around here about needing a big bat...I think we should be adding OBP moreso.

Let's look at some rankings from the last few years..OBP and runs scored(AL only):

2009:

1) Yankees...1st in OBP...1st in runs scored.

2) Boston...2nd in OBP...3rd in runs scored.

3) Angels....3rd in OBP...2nd in runs scored.

4) Twins...4th in OBP...4th in runs scored.

5) Tampa...5th in OBP...5th in runs scored.

6) Baltimore...8th in OBP...11th in runs scored.

2008:

1) Boston...1st in OBP....2nd in runs scored.

2) Texas..2nd in OBP...1st in runs scored.

3) Yankees...3rd in OBP...7th in runs scored.

4) Detroit...4th in OBP...4th in runs scored.

5) Minnesota...5th in OBP...3rd in runs scored.

6) Baltimore...8th in OBP...8th in runs scored.

2007:

1) Yankees...1st in OBP...1st in runs scored.

2) Boston...2nd in OBP...3rd in runs scored.

3) Angels...3rd in OBP...4th in runs scored.

4) Detroit...4th in OBP...2nd in runs scored.

5) Cleveland...5th in OBP...6th in runs scored.

6) Baltimore...9th in OBP...9th in runs scored.

Pretty telling stuff there...Moral of the story? Get on base and you score runs. Its that simple.

Is it really that simple?

Have you considered the possibility of the causation going both ways? Maybe you get a lot of walks partly because you have good hitters who are being pitched around. Especially power threats. How many guys did the O's have last season who hit 25 home runs? I think it's true that a weak-hitting team can help itself through patience, but only up to a point. You're not going to get but so many walks if you don't have intimidating hitters.

Exactly. It all revolves around talent. Not wishing mediocre hitters like Ty Wigginton and Robert Andino would get more walks. :laughlol: Nobody pitches around crappola hitters. It would be stupid.

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Is it really that simple?

Have you considered the possibility of the causation going both ways? Maybe you get a lot of walks partly because you have good hitters who are being pitched around. Especially power threats. How many guys did the O's have last season who hit 25 home runs? I think it's true that a weak-hitting team can help itself through patience, but only up to a point. You're not going to get but so many walks if you don't have intimidating hitters.

How much power does Chone Figgins have?

What about Markakis? He isn't a big bat.

You don't have to have a lot of power to get walks...You have to be a disciplined hitter with a plan that doesn't involve hacking away at one of the first 3 pitches.

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It's about maximizing your ability to score runs. If you want to score runs, you have to get on base. As a team we have not been as good as we need to be in that department, due in large part to the number of undisciplined, free swinging hitters we have had over the years. I believe with hitters like Markakis, Reimold, and Wieters, we have the ability to be better in this department, but not enough.

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How much power does Chone Figgins have?

What about Markakis? He isn't a big bat.

You don't have to have a lot of power to get walks...You have to be a disciplined hitter with a plan that doesn't involve hacking away at one of the first 3 pitches.

Honestly, I think both are true. Hitters who are more feared usually will draw a lot of walks, but some guys just draw a lot of walks because they are disciplined.

One thing that surprised me a little last year was that Wieters did not have an especially high walk rate. In the minors he walked once every 6.5 plate appearances, in the majors it was once every 12.6 times. Is that because he was less disciplined, or less feared? Maybe a little of both, IMO.

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