Adjusted adjusted OPS
dallasactuary
Posts: 4,185 ✭✭✭✭✭
Everyone knows that OPS is the sum of on base percentage and slugging average, and that OPS+ (adjusted OPS) converts OPS to a number centered at 100 for average by taking account of ballpark factors. OPS+ has the same flaws as any rate statistic, but it is the king of the rate stats.
But OPS+ measures what it measures (OBP, SLG, and ballpark effects), and while it measures most of what matters, and nearly everything that matters for a lot of hitters, there are some other things that it does not measure that are very important for a lot of other hitters. With recognition to @1948SwellRobinson who said something in another thread that got me thinking about this, I made some additional adjustments to OPS+ for a group of people as follows:
- A walk with the bases empty is identical to a single. For the players below I moved their bases-empty walks from the Walk column to the singles column. This has no effect on their OBP, but it increases their SLG.
- A stolen base turns a single into a double (I assumed all SB were of second base). I moved that many singles to the doubles column, increasing the SLG.
- A caught stealing eliminates the single that put the runner on base. I moved that many singles to outs, reducing OBP and SLG.
- A GIDP already counts as an out for the hitter, but it also eliminates the single that put the lead runner on base. I moved that many singles to outs.
Using the adjusted OBP and SLG I recalculated OPS+ to get OPS++.
It is a fact that OPS+ undervalues walks, so one would expect that adjusting a random player's OPS+ in this manner would result in an upward adjustment, as it did for all but one of the players I looked at. I started with Jim Rice, because all great baseball discussions start with Jim Rice. For Rice's career he had an OPS+ of 128; making the adjustments above, his OPS++ is 126. Rice gets virtually no adjustment for SB/CS because he didn't attempt many SB, and he gets a small upward adjustment for bases-empty walks because he was allergic to taking a walk. He gets a larger downward adjustment for his GIDP, because that's what he did best. The net result is an OPS++ lower than his OPS+ - 126.
Here's a list of players from Rice's era (broadly speaking) and their career OPS+:
Here's a list of the same players and their OPS++:
OPS+ measures what happens to the hitter in his at bat. OPS++, by improving how bases-empty walks are valued, better measures what happens to the hitter, it also measures what happens to the doubled-up runner ahead of him, and it measures the effect of SB and CS. OPS++ is still a flawed measurement, but it's a better stat than OPS+.
And note that I didn't include anyone who started with a higher OPS+ than Rice - Morgan, Schmidt, Singleton, etc. - since we already knew they were better than Rice. The players I did look at are the ones who you might think Rice was better than if you looked at their OPS+, and you'd be wrong.
Comments
I'm just about ready to start getting ready for bed. The Celtics lost Game 2. I have a headache. But at least I have you guys. I check the forum one last time and find this. I like that "all great baseball discussions start with Jim Rice" line. Touche
I'll have to sleep on this one.
Edited to add: I removed that gross tmi bit
I like it. It puts it into laymen's terms and that is the way to advance understanding of more advanced methods. As you and I both know, all of those things are already accounted for in stuff like Run Expectancy, but those measurements are scoffed at because they aren't fully understood and are more complicated than just dividing hits by at bats to get simple things like batting average.
So this way of tabulating in a more common sense type of understanding is really good.
Can you do Bobby Bonds with your method?
He may be the most underrated player in the history of baseball because people overstate the negative value of a strikeout(compared to a contact out) and they completely ignore the value of a base on balls.
I checked Bonds initially, but he had an OPS+ higher than Rice to begin with so I didn't include him. Bonds had an OPS+ of 129, and an OPS++ of 162. And while knowledgeable fans already knew Bonds was a better player than Rice, this is a good way to show just how much better he was.
Without necessarily any connection to Rice, here are a few more players I found interesting:
Joe Morgan: 129 => 178
To this day, I don't think enough fans realize just how great Joe Morgan was, and how the "Big Red Machine" was just called "the Reds" until Morgan arrived.
Lou Brock: 109 => 144
Probably the most consistently underrated HOFer of the modern era. Yes, his 109 OPS+ is somewhat pedestrian, but a singles hitter who turns nearly half his singles into doubles and just about never grounds into a double play is a hell of a lot more valuable than his OPS+ alone indicates.
Bill Buckner: 100 => 102
From the people who think he was a good player to the delusional who think he should be in the HOF, just about everyone overrates Buckner. His 100 OPS+ pegs him as an exactly average hitter, and his 102 OPS++ (I think but can't/won't prove) more accurately pegs him as a below average offensive force. Combined with his cringe-worthy defense, Bill Buckner was a well below average baseball player.
Tony Phillips: 120 => 143
Yeah, just a shot at Rice. Phillips was better.
Gene Tenace: 136 => 158
Yes, he was better than Rice, and we already knew that. Surprising to some maybe that he was this much better
Rice's best season in OPS+ was 1978 with a 157; his OPS++ that year takes a baby step up to 163.
Gene Tenace's best season in OPS+ was 1975 with a 145; his OPS++ that year takes a leap forward to 173.
If anyone wants to laugh at this comparison, and I know most of you want to, feel free to do so. But don't be a coward and just laugh, tell me which of the adjustments I'm making is wrong, and why it's wrong.
I think Rice was actually considerably better than Chili Davis. Davis was better at taking a walk, and miles better at not hitting into a double play (but who wasn't) but other than that Rice was consistently better.
https://stathead.com/tiny/LPOql
It's funny that the four players worst at hitting into double plays are all certain to be HoFers. Ernie Lombardi, Miguel Cabrera, Albert Pujols, and Rice. Those four plus Konerko, George Scott, and Joe Torre are so much worse than anyone else that it's kind of astonishing.
I understand that most everyone does think Rice was considerably better than Davis. What I don't understand is why they believe it. The difference between Rice and Davis, in stats like BA, SLG, OPS, is entirely due to those stats counting a bases empty single as more valuable than a bases empty walk and ignoring the historically high numbers of singles that Rice wiped off the board with his GIDP - also not reflected in OBP. I see a gap between them, with Davis on top.
The analysis I've done here shows that gap. Is there something I've done here that you think is invalid?
And by the way, have you ever compared Rice's road stats (double them) to Davis' total stats? They're nearly identical, and that's before accounting for GIDP, bases-empty walks, Davis' home park, Rice's better teammates (for R and RBI), etc. Take away Fenway, and I don't think it's possible to not see that Davis was better.
I admit to being biased on Rice. I've said before that he is my favorite player. Funny story, kind of. I remember reading a long comment by @dallasactuary early in my time here. By the time I got towards the end, I thought to myself something like "this guy really knows his baseball". Then I saw his signature line. Lol.
Your OPS++ doesn't even show that Davis was clearly better; 2.5% surely falls within the margin of error. It also only attempts to understand how good a hitter a player is. My link above attempts to be a more complete analysis than one number, no mater how useful the number is.
I don't know enough to know if the weights in OPS++ are accurate, but they are certainly plausible. But no one statistic is determinative of greatness.
I was surprised to see how clear the margin is between Cedeno and Rice. I didn't do a deep dive for the other players, but it's clear that neither Davis nor Rice belongs anywhere near the HoF.
What I see is Davis being better than Rice offensively (OPS++), that neither one of them could spell "defense", and that Davis played longer (which dragged down his OPS++ a bit). I also see, but did not address in any of these posts, that Davis was a better RBI man than Rice, once you normalize for the vast difference in RISP they were given. It's clear to me that Davis was better, but I'm OK if you want to call it a tie. What I'm not OK with is the statement that Rice was "considerably better" than Davis, because no matter where I look I see zero evidence of that (sorry, thisistheshow).
You will, of course, get no argument from me on that point.
Well, we'll disagree on defense. Rice was a good, not very good, but enough above average to be considered good, as a corner outfielder. Davis was below average as a young man at all three outfield spots whose decline was so bad that he was only trotted out to field ten times in his last nine seasons, one of those as pitcher. Plus, Davis simply never had a season close to Rice's 1978 or '79.
Of course it is sad that the worst of the Red Sox three main outfielders in the '70s is likely to be the only one enshrined.