What is OPS?
Simply add on-base percentage and slugging percentage to form OPS. This is a relative new statistic that is meant to combine how well a hitter can reach base, with how well he can hit for average and for power.
It is a stat sandwich. You know you like peanut butter and you like jelly so let’s put them together and make something new. One oddity to this is that OBP uses plate appearances and SLG% includes at-bats. It’s like adding denominators that are not common. It makes little sense but it is used stat at FanGraphs and Baseball Savant and other top sabermetric avenues.
Comparison chart
Excellent 1.000
Great .900
Above Ave. .800
Average .700
Below Ave .670
Poor .600
Awful .570
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Seven players have an OPS above 1.000. Each with over 3000 plate appearances and they are Bobby Bonds 1.051, Lou Gehrig 1.080, Rogers Hornsby 1.010, Jimmie Foxx 1.038. Hank Greenberg 1.017, Ted Williams 1.116 and Babe Ruth 1.164. the average number for all players in the Hall of Fame is .841.
You can fin several instances where players don’t reach to old coveted .300 batting average but reach a very respectable OPS. This stat is a good measure for a team collectively to measure offensive performance.
Another thing to pay attention to in eyeing OPS is the park they played in. At least break the player down with their home OPS against their away OPS. You will find this disparity among players that have half their game in Coors Field in Colorado.
This is still a measure of productivity that is better than batting average.
About the author– Tom Knuppel has been writing about baseball and sports for a few decades. As an avid St. Louis Cardinals fan he began with the blog CardinalsGM. Tom is a member of the United Cardinals Bloggers and the Baseball Bloggers Alliance. He also maintains the History of Cardinals website. More recently he has been busy at KnupSolutions and the primary writer of many sports at KnupSports and adds content at Sports 2.0. Tom is a retired High School English and Speech teacher and has completed over one hundred sportsbook reviews. He also can be followed on Twitter at tknup.
Feel free to contact Tom at tknuppel@gmail.com
