What is baseball ops

The other component of OPS is slugging percentage SLG , which measures a player's ability to get hits, especially extra-base hits ie.

Slugging percentage is calculated by dividing the total bases TB a player achieves on hits by the number of official at-bats AB. A single 1B is one base, a double 2B is two bases, a triple 3B is three bases, and a home run HR is four bases.

The formula for slugging percentage is simple:. On-base plus slugging is simply the player's on-base percentage plus his slugging percentage. The formula can be written simply as:. A longer version of the OPS formula, with all of the components included, can be written as:. Many people consider OPS to be useful for measuring a batter's skills.

Of course this is even before we take into account each player's home park, etc. The best part is that we're not forced to use OPS anymore. There are plenty of other offensive statistics that use linear weights, or take into account the differences between slugging and on-base.

While we've discussed why OPS is calculated in a "bad" way, we have to acknowledge that it has one big advantage due to that calculation: it's pretty easy to figure out on your own.

Nearly every statistical outlet you turn to provides an on-base percentage and a slugging percentage, from gory math stats sites to your local TV broadcast. These numbers are everywhere. In addition, those two stats themselves are relatively easy to calculate from raw data. You can almost always find OBP and SLG splits for any particular circumstance, whether it's day-night, left-right, monthly, or whatever. And literally, all you have to do to calculate OPS is to add those two values together.

So OPS is simple to calculate, but it's not the best, most descriptive way to measure a player's ability. But how much do you "pay" for the simplistic answer -- are you still able to use OPS to effectively describe a hitter's offensive prowess?

I guess so. While OPS doesn't give you the right picture of how good a player's offense is, it's not like it takes you extraordinarily far afield. If a player has a high OPS, they're a good hitter.

If a player has a low OPS, they're a bad hitter. This is still accurate. Where OPS suffers is in the middle, not in the margins. OPS has one major contextual advantage over other statistics that can be used to determine a player's overall offensive value: the might of Baseball-Reference.

FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus are phenomenal statistical resources, but they probably still live in the shadow of the statistical monolith that is Sean Forman's wall of data. At the risk of sounding negative towards B-R, which is the best , I am of the opinion that it is not the best place to go to if you want the clearest, most detailed data regarding contemporary players and statistical analysis.

The metrics at B-R tend to fall on the side of simpler, older, and less-detailed compared to some of the things you can find at FanGraphs or Baseball Prospectus. That's not really a complaint! Number one through nine are an elite group of players with all who are retired being members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Do you like the on base plus slugging statistic? Do you enjoy discussing and debating advanced statistics such as this one?

Copyright Hosted by Hosting 4 Less. Part of the Baseball Almanac Family. Follow BaseballAlmanac Find us on Facebook. Career Leaders for On Base Plus Slugging The on base percentage statistic was originally created by Branch Rickey and Allan Roth in the 's as a means to measure the percentage of times a player reaches any base.

On-base plus slugging , or OPS, is a baseball statistic which is calculated as the sum of a player's on-base percentage and slugging percentage. An OPS of. Typically, the league leader in OPS will hover near the 1. These percentages are defined as. It should be noted that unlike many other statistics, a player's OPS does not have a simple intrinsic meaning, despite its usefulness as a comparative statistic.