In this article, we will discuss a well-known measurement in the baseball industry that has faced criticism but has managed to keep a secret hidden for over two decades. It is quite uncommon for something in the world of baseball to remain unnoticed for such a long time, but today, we have a special surprise for you. We will unravel the enigma surrounding the effectiveness of OPS, despite its apparent flaw.
OPS, short for On Base + Slugging, combines two different metrics – On Base Percentage (the number of times a player reaches base per plate appearance) and Slugging Percentage (the total number of bases achieved per at-bat) – in equal proportions. The act of adding two fractions with different denominators is generally frowned upon in mathematics, which has led some to discredit OPS entirely.
Before we disclose the answer to this mystery, let’s introduce another metric called wOBA, which stands for Weighted On-Base Average. Developed by Tom Tango, wOBA not only incorporates weighted slugging components but also aims to provide an unbiased evaluation of a batter’s offensive contribution. If you’d like to delve deeper into this topic, you can find more information on FanGraphs.
We will utilize wOBA as our benchmark for assessing how closely OPS measures a player’s offensive performance. Now, the question arises – just how effective is OPS as a performance indicator?
According to the Source baseballamerica.com