From: Will in New Haven on
On Jun 23, 4:50 am, Bink B <dung...(a)disney.com> wrote:
> John Gregory wrote:
> > On Tue, 22 Jun 2010, Will in New Haven wrote:
> > Our new friend came to us speaking in terms of counting stats.
> > If you followed further in the thread (maybe there was a
> > network latency issue preventing that), you'll see that I was
> > bringing him along toward a view that opportunity plays too
> > great a role when that's the yardstick for evaluating a player.
> > Heck, I even introduced the term OPS by the end; you may notice
> > he didn't find that especially persuasive.
>
> (referring to...)
> -another sabermetric stat called OPS+ puts Beltre as above
> -average (across all positions) for the period 206-2008.
>
> :-) That's only because I didn't know what it stood for (I do now) and I
> didn't know baseball went back to the year 206 :-)

Of course it does. Genesis starts with In the Big Inning.

>
> It's certainly more accurate then my original post which you set me
> straight on... I'm not sure I wanted that much detail as I was looking
> for a more general term to describe Adrian Beltre without giving away
> who it was. Didn't want bias.... anonymity didn't work did it? I had
> thought better than average hitter myself because of the power but he
> didn't get on base all that much.

Not getting on base is really, really bad because then you are making
Outs. A team gets so many Outs to generate its offense, so the Outs
you make are the cost of having you in the lineup. That is why TEAM
Onbase% is the best predictor of how many Runs a team will score and
why individual OB% is the best evaluator of hitting success, with
Slugging Average second.

My friend had said good to very good
> hitter and said Vin Scully announced AB's had a sensational career and
> that if I disagreed with Vinny that I was an idiot. Notice Vinny said
> career and my friend said hitter.

He was, during the period being discussed, an above-average offensive
contributor if you included the offensive contributions of middle
infielders, Catchers, Pitchers and reserve players. For someone
playing Third Base he was ok, nothing special. A great deal of offense
is expected of a Third Baseman today.

--
Will in New Haven
From: Tarkus on
On 6/22/2010 9:29 PM, John Gregory wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Jun 2010, Will in New Haven wrote:
>
>> Why not just do the OPS for the league and call that an average
>> player? Why count any counting stats or use BA at all. That stuff is
>> all in the OPS. Factor in park effect and mobility on the bases and
>> you have offense. Defensive value is almost completely a factor of
>> position played but how well matters also.
>
> And what exactly baseball skill does OPS measure?

RBI is a team stat as much as it is a player stat. It measures how good
your teammates hitting in front of you are as much as it measures how
well you are at knocking in runs. It's almost as dumb as the W-L
records for pitchers.

OPS measures individual accomplishments only, and does it pretty well.
From: John Gregory on
On Wed, 23 Jun 2010, Tarkus wrote:

>> And what exactly baseball skill does OPS measure?
>
> RBI is a team stat as much as it is a player stat.

I was mocking Maynard, the old buzzard. Sheesh. I
thought using the term philistine was a dead giveaway.
(Though I blew it with a typo.)

--
John Gregory ashbury at skypoint.com http://www.skypoint.com/ tilde ashbury
Thought for the moment:
Fine day to throw a party. Throw him as far as you can.

From: Will in New Haven on
On Jun 23, 10:47 am, John Gregory <ashb...(a)skypoint.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Jun 2010, Tarkus wrote:
> >> And what exactly baseball skill does OPS measure?
>
> > RBI is a team stat as much as it is a player stat.
>
> I was mocking Maynard, the old buzzard.  Sheesh.  I
> thought using the term philistine was a dead giveaway.
> (Though I blew it with a typo.)

You didn't say "Cordially, as always" Martha.

Good job, though.

--
Will in New Haven

From: Tarkus on
On 6/23/2010 7:47 AM, John Gregory wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Jun 2010, Tarkus wrote:
>
>>> And what exactly baseball skill does OPS measure?
>>
>> RBI is a team stat as much as it is a player stat.
>
> I was mocking Maynard, the old buzzard. Sheesh. I
> thought using the term philistine was a dead giveaway.
> (Though I blew it with a typo.)

I was half-asleep when I replied. Apologies.