Why Would You Add These Two Statistics to Make a Third?
August 21, 2007 by Geoff Young
Filed under News
The good folks at Walk Like a Sabermetrician have posted an article on the trouble with OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage) as a statistic (tip o’ the Knuckle Curve cap to Baseball Think Factory). This is a drum I’ve beaten at various points in the past, with limited success, but here is the problem in a nutshell:
What if we think about what OPS looks like if you write it with a common denominator? Now we have:
OPS = ((H+W)*AB + TB*(AB+W))/(AB*(AB+W))
That is a hideous equation that measures, um… what? Anyway, I agree with the overall sentiment:
OPS is a fine, quick …read more
