OPS does not tell you how much a player was affected by factors such as his home ballpark’s dimensions or altitude. OPS+ attempts to adjust for those factors to give you a context-neutral number.
Batting average, RBIs, and home runs are the most commonly referenced batting statistics. To this day, a player who leads the league in these three statistics is referred to as the “Triple Crown” winner. For pitchers, wins, ERA, and strikeouts are the most often cited traditional statistics.
Batting Stats. The next part of understanding baseball stats are the three main batting stats: batting average (BA, or AVG above), on-base percentage (OBP), and slugging (SLG). You will often see these represented as three stats side by side, separated by slashes, which has lead to the nickname of a “slash line,” like …
It’s easy: wRC+ is the single best way to quickly measure a player’s offensive production, better than batting average, OPS, or a triple slash line. That’s because wRC+ properly values everything a player can do at the plate, allowing you to compare across playing styles.
Definition. Slugging percentage represents the total number of bases a player records per at-bat. Unlike on-base percentage, slugging percentage deals only with hits and does not include walks and hit-by-pitches in its equation. Slugging percentage differs from batting average in that all hits are not valued equally.
Babe Ruth is the all-time leader with a career 1.1636 OPS.
450 slugging percentage is considered good and a . 550 slugging percentage is outstanding. Likewise, moving towards the extremes, a . 350 slugging percentage is poor and a .
BABIP is the most commonly used advanced statistic in baseball. Simply, it measures a player’s batting average on all non-home run balls they put in play. BABIP is commonly used as a “luck” statistic.
The Best Ways to Evaluate Hitters
For those who don’t know, OPS is “on-base plus slugging,” or a hitter’s on-base percentage (OBP) plus his slugging percentage (SLUG). Crude as it is, it is a better reflection of a hitter’s talent than the traditional trio of average, homers and RBI. Hitters exist to score runs.
3 Basic MLB Hitting Stats that Define a Great Hitter- 1.) On-Base Plus Slugging (OPS)
Avg.: Divide the number of hits by the number of at-bats to compute Avg., which is the player’s the batting average. ERA: Earned-run average, or ERA represents a pitcher’s overall effectiveness per 9 innings. To find an ERA, divide the pitcher’s earned runs by his innings pitched, and multiply the quotient by 9.
A player is awarded a run if he crosses the plate to score his team a run. When tallying runs scored, the way in which a player reached base is not considered. If a player reaches base by an error or a fielder’s choice, as long as he comes around to score, he is still credited with a run.
Career Fielding Percentage Leaders at Shortstop
Rank | Player | Fielding % as SS |
---|---|---|
1 | Omar Vizquel | 0.9847 |
2 | Troy Tulowitzki | 0.9846 |
3 | Freddy Galvis | 0.9837 |
4 | Jimmy Rollins | 0.9834 |
FIP stands for Fielding Independent Pitching. It is a statistic meant to measure a pitcher’s effectiveness, taking plays that would involve the defense trying to field the ball out of the equation.
Babe Ruth has the most career weighted runs created, with 2727 weighted runs created.
The formula for WRC+ is: wRC+ = (((wRAA / PA + League R / PA) + (League R / PA – Park Factor * League R / PA)) / (AL or NL wRC / PA excluding pitchers))*100.
The average wOBA in MLB changes every year, but the average wOBA is generally around 0.320. So, a good wOBA is anything above . 320, and the higher, the better. The best offensive players have wOBAs over 0.400.
Definition. A screwball is a breaking ball designed to move in the opposite direction of just about every other breaking pitch. It is one of the rarest pitches thrown in baseball, mostly because of the tax it can put on a pitcher’s arm.
The Fastest Pitch Ever: Aroldis Chapman’s 106 MPH Heater
On September 24, 2010, former Cincinnati Reds pitcher Aroldis Chapman, who hails from Cuba, delivered a 105.1-mph fastball, measured by Statcast, in a game against the San Diego Padres, which is recognized as the Guinness World Record for fastest pitch ever.
Outfielder Ty Cobb, whose career ended in 1928, has the highest batting average in Major League Baseball (MLB) history. He batted . 366 over 24 seasons, mostly with the Detroit Tigers.
As mentioned above, the average high school player will have a BABIP around . 340. However, most high school baseball teams have players that cover a wide spectrum of talent levels. Therefore, when a really talented player has a BABIP of .
So a good OBP is 5/4ths as much as a good BA, a good SLG is about 5/3rds as good as a good BA, and a good OPS is about 3 times as good as a good BA.
Baseball statistics play an important role in evaluating the progress of a player or team. Since the flow of a baseball game has natural breaks to it, and normally players act individually rather than performing in clusters, the sport lends itself to easy record-keeping and statistics.
If a pitcher keeps his opponents to roughly a . 250 average he is having decent success. If a pitcher keeps his opponents to roughly a . 200 average he is really dominating batters with either good velocity, good offspeed pitches, a deceptive delivery or any combination of the three.
But in the battle to be baseball’s best stat, WAR wins. While the advanced metric may be a bit perplexing to some and certainly isn’t as popular or widespread as ol’ reliables like batting average, or runs batted in or even more new-age numbers like on-base percentage, WAR has it over all of them.