On-base plus slugging (OPS) is a sabermetricbaseball statistic calculated as the sum of a player's on-base percentage and slugging percentage.[1] The ability of a player both to get on base and to hit for power, two important offensive skills, are represented. An OPS of .800 or higher in Major League Baseball puts the player in the upper echelon of hitters. Typically, the league leader in OPS will score near, and sometimes above, the 1.000 mark.
- the numerator "H + BB + HBP" effectively means "number of trips to first base at least"
- the denominator "AB + BB + SF + HBP" effectively means "total plate appearances", but does not include sacrifice bunts
This is because though a batter makes a trip to the plate he is not given an "AB" when he walks (BB or HBP) or when he hits the ball into play and is called out, but the action allows a run to score (SF). As a result, the 4 counts (AB + BB + SF +HBP) are needed to calculate a batter's total trips to the plate.
On-base plus slugging was first popularized in 1984 by John Thorn and Pete Palmer's book, The Hidden Game of Baseball.[2]The New York Times then began carrying the leaders in this statistic in its weekly "By the Numbers" box, a feature that continued for four years. Baseball journalist Peter Gammons used and evangelized the statistic, and other writers and broadcasters picked it up. The popularity of OPS gradually spread, and by 2004 it began appearing on Topps baseball cards.[3]
OPS was formerly sometimes known as production. For instance, production was included in early versions of Thorn's Total Baseball encyclopedia, and in the Strat-O-Matic Computer Baseball game. This term has fallen out of use.
OPS gained popularity because of the availability of its components, OBP and SLG, and that team OPS correlates well with team runs scored.
An OPS scale
Bill James, in his essay titled "The 96 Families of Hitters"[4] uses seven different categories for classification by OPS:
Category
Classification
OPS range
A
Great
.9000 and higher
B
Very good
.8334 to .8999
C
Above average
.7667 to .8333
D
Average
.7000 to .7666
E
Below average
.6334 to .6999
F
Poor
.5667 to .6333
G
Very poor
.5666 and lower
This effectively transforms OPS into a seven-point ordinal scale. Substituting quality labels such as excellent (A), very good (B), good (C), average (D), fair (E), poor (F) and very poor (G) for the A–G categories creates a subjective reference for OPS values.
The highest single-season mark for a right-handed hitter was 1.2449 by Rogers Hornsby in 1925, 13th on the all-time list. Since 1935, the highest single-season OPS for a right-hander is 1.2224 by Mark McGwire in 1998, which was 16th all-time.[6]
Adjusted OPS (OPS+)
OPS+, adjusted OPS, is a closely related statistic. OPS+ is OPS adjusted for the park and the league in which the player played. An OPS+ of 100 is defined to be the league average. An OPS+ of 150 or more is excellent and 125 very good, while an OPS+ of 75 or below is poor.
The basic equation for OPS+ is
where *lgOBP is the park adjusted OBP of the league (not counting pitchers hitting) and *lgSLG is the park adjusted SLG of the league.
A common misconception is that OPS+ closely matches the ratio of a player's OPS to that of their league. In fact, due to the additive nature of the two components in OPS+, a player with an OBP and SLG both 50% better than league average in those metrics will have an OPS+ of 200 (twice the league average OPS+) while still having an OPS that is only 50% better than the average OPS of the league. It would be a better (although not exact) approximation to say that a player with an OPS+ of 150 produces 50% more runs, in a given set of plate appearances, as a player with an OPS+ of 100 (though see clarification above, under "History").
Leaders in OPS+
Through the end of the 2019 season, the career top twenty leaders in OPS+ (minimum 3,000 plate appearances) were:[7]
The only purely right-handed batters to appear on this list are Browning, Hornsby, Foxx, Orr, Trout, McGwire, Allen, Mays, and Thomas. Mantle is the only switch-hitter in the group.
* - Fred Dunlap's historic 1884 season came in the Union Association, which some baseball experts consider not to be a true major league.
** - Ross Barnes may have been aided by a rule that made a bunt fair if it first rolled in fair territory. He did not play nearly so well when this rule was removed, although injuries may have been mostly to blame, as his fielding statistics similarly declined.
If Dunlap's and Barnes's seasons were to be eliminated from the list, two other Ruth seasons (1926 and 1927) would be on the list. This would also eliminate the only two right-handed batters in the list.
Criticism
Despite its simple calculation, OPS is a controversial measurement. OPS weighs on-base percentage and slugging percentage equally. However, on-base percentage correlates better with scoring runs.[9] Statistics such as wOBA build on this distinction using linear weights. Additionally, the components of OPS are not typically equal (league-average slugging percentages are usually 75–100 points higher than league-average on-base percentages). As a point of reference, the OPS for all of Major League Baseball in 2019 was .758.[10]
Baseball statistics play an important role in evaluating the progress of a player or team.
In baseball statistics, on-base percentage (OBP) measures how frequently a batter reaches base. An official Major League Baseball (MLB) statistic since 1984, it is sometimes referred to as on-base average (OBA), as it is rarely presented as a true percentage.
In baseball statistics, slugging percentage (SLG) is a measure of the batting productivity of a hitter. It is calculated as total bases divided by at-bats, through the following formula, where AB is the number of at-bats for a given player, and 1B, 2B, 3B, and HR are the number of singles, doubles, triples, and home runs, respectively:
Runs created (RC) is a baseball statistic invented by Bill James to estimate the number of runs a hitter contributes to their team.
In baseball statistics, batting average against, also known as opponents' batting average, is a statistic that measures a pitcher's ability to prevent hits during official at bats. It can alternatively be described as the league's hitters' combined batting average against the pitcher.
Total average is a baseball statistic devised by sportswriter Thomas Boswell and introduced in the 1978. It was also described in his 1982 article "Welcome to the world of Total Average where a walk is as good as a hit". It is designed to measure a hitter's overall offensive contributions, on the basis that "all bases are created equal". The statistic was included in issues of Inside Sports.
Gross production average (GPA) is a baseball statistic created in 2003 by Aaron Gleeman, as a refinement of on-base plus slugging (OPS). GPA attempts to solve two frequently cited problems with OPS. First, OPS gives equal weight to its two components, on-base percentage (OBP) and slugging percentage (SLG). In fact, OBP contributes significantly more to scoring runs than SLG does. Sabermetricians have calculated that OBP is about 80% more valuable than SLG. A second problem with OPS is that it generates numbers on a scale unfamiliar to most baseball fans. For all the problems with a traditional stat like batting average (AVG), baseball fans immediately know that a player batting .365 is significantly better than average, while a player batting .167 is significantly below average. But many fans do not immediately know how good a player with a 1.013 OPS is.
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In baseball, wOBA is a statistic, based on linear weights, designed to measure a player's overall offensive contributions per plate appearance. It is formed from taking the observed run values of various offensive events, dividing by a player's plate appearances, and scaling the result to be on the same scale as on-base percentage. Unlike statistics like OPS, wOBA attempts to assign the proper value for each type of hitting event. It was created by Tom Tango and his coauthors for The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball.
On-base plus slugging plus runs batted in (OPSBI) is a baseball statistic calculated as the normalized sum of a player's on-base percentage and slugging percentage added to their runs batted in. Former Major League Baseball general manager, Jim Bowden, created this statistic. Hall of Fame outfielder, Babe Ruth, holds both the single-season and career OPSBI records.
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References
Thorn, John; Pete Palmer (1984). The Hidden Game of Baseball. Doubleday & Company. ISBN0-385-18283-X.
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