WAR Against OPS

by Lawrence S. Katz

Steven Katz ed.

Not Wins Against Replacement. That’s a subject for another day. I’m talking about another kind of war - one I’ll start here against OPS, the combination of On Base Percentage (OBP) plus Slugging Average (SLG). This sum is exalted for its ability to reduce a player’s skills at the plate to a single number. The idea, of course, is to measure the ability of a player to both get on base – On Base Percentage - and hit for power - Slugging Average. According to the conventional wisdom (try Bill James himself), by combining statistics with established and unassailable track records for measuring two important hitting skills, a reliable measure of a player’s offensive value emerges.  According to this thinking, for every player, an OPS of .800 or higher is very good and an OPS of .900 is great.

With W.A.R. still perceived by many people as too complicated and convoluted, OPS has overtaken Batting Average as the single most important index of all-around offensive prowess. Given inside-baseball’s near-universal acceptance of the stat, my war was probably lost before it starts. But my memory of the failure of the Game Winning RBI stat keeps hope alive.  

Let’s examine the flaws of this superstat:

1.  OPS mixes apples and oranges.  Some things belong together: Peanut butter and jelly; hydrogen and oxygen; hot dog and mustard. Some things do not. Yes, OBP and SLG are easy to understand, easy to calculate, and time-tested measures of a hitter’s ability. But that doesn’t mean they should be clumped together. On Base Percentage measures the ability to reach base, Slugging Average measures power, and the two have little to do with each other.

What do Tony Gwynn and Reggie Jackson have in common? Their OPSes were almost identical - Jackson at .846 and Gwynn one point higher at .847. They’re both in the Baseball Hall of Fame for their achievements at the plate. But they were polar opposites in terms of the actual skills they brought to their respective clubs. Gwynn got on base a lot. Reggie Jackson hit a lot of home runs. By most measures – balls put in play, runners moved over, run production, whatever - the two players had little in common. OPS might be the last stat a general manager would look at in trying to figure whether a player was the right fit for his club.

 2.  OPS is not a balanced offensive measure. It is not “transparent,” if you'll excuse the overused term.  Since Slugging Average tends to be 50-150 points higher than On Base Percentage, OPS will always be top-heavy on the slugging side. (Consider the difference in the two denominators; the maximum On Base Percentage is 1.000 while the maximum Slugging Average is 4.000.) All skills being equal, the scale is tipped heavily in favor of long-ball hitters against the guys who get on base more. With Slugging Average carrying the day, OPS is not a balanced measure of overall offensive ability. Thus, OPS may be the only stat where deconstruction becomes an essential tool of analysis. Only when baseball fans break down a .767 OPS into a .310 OBP and a .457 SLG, or into a .380 OBP and a .387 SLG, can they gauge a player’s real value.   

3.  OPS is actually a throwback statistic. Statistics are the lifeblood of the game. The range of ways to gauge performance has been expanding since the first diamond was laid out. The recent explosion of new ways to measure success and failure is breathtaking. A Nineteenth Century record book would fit neatly into the palm of your hand. In the mid-Twentieth Century, the career records of several players could fit on a single page. Now, the statistical life of even the most obscure player consumes several pages. Like most everything else in the real world, overall achievement is judged by many standards over an expanse of time. The worth of everything (stats included) lies in context. Is OPS an irony? Or is OPS a return to a simpler time? Are we actually wearying from the abundance of new measurements of performance?

4.  Simply put, it just isn't useful. So let's replace it with something that is. The number doesn't mean anything. The number seems benign, but it doesn't actually represent anything tangible. Sure, it's easy to calculate, but that's really the only thing going for it. And compared to the mathematics involved in modern advanced statistics, modifying the OPS equation into something that represents meaningful, concrete information about a player's performance should be a breeze. In place of OPS, I propose a Total Bases Average (TBA) that would present a number signifying how many bases a batter earned per plate appearance. Total bases, including base on balls and hit by pitches, divided by plate appearances. That's simple enough. And best of all, it actually tells you something clear and meaningful about a player's offensive production.

I urge the baseball establishment to get rid of this irrelevant statistic.  If you're itching to see how OBP and SLG look together, you don’t need a separate column on a stat sheet; simply add the two numbers on your own. I'm just not sure why you would.

Is It Really Time to Eliminate the Hall of Fame Morals Requirement?

When the subject of moral standards comes up in connection with the Baseball Hall of Fame, does your mind wander to a Rogues Gallery unfairly enshrined with Christy Mathewson and Lou Gehrig?

Do you think it’s hypocritical to bar the door to Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens after Ty Cobb and Cap Anson have walked through?

 If so, do you want to see the morals requirement for enshrinement eliminated?

Would there be unintended consequences to scrapping the morals requirement?

 

Hall of Fame Voting Rule No.5:

“Voting shall be based upon the player's record, playing ability,

integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions

to the team(s) on which the player played.”

The 2013 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot included the names of two players – Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens – who, statistically, stand shoulder to shoulder with the most legendary figures of all time. But on January 9, 2013, for only the second time in 42 years, no candidate obtained the required 75% of the votes of the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA).  This came as little surprise.  Both have been connected to the performance enhancing drugs scandal.

The day the news broke, Robert W. Cohen, author of the 2009 book “Baseball Hall of Fame — or Hall of Shame?” told the New York Times: “Baseball has always had some form of hypocrisy when it comes to its exalted heroes,” he said. “In theory, when it comes to these kinds of votes, it’s true that character should matter, but once you’ve already let in Ty Cobb, how can you exclude anyone else?”

Commentators have noted over and over that Cobb was far from the only racist to be inducted, that Cap Anson was the single most responsible person for the establishment of baseball’s notorious color line, and that Tris Speaker and Enos Slaughter were both ruputedly members of the Ku Klux Klan.  They have noted that Orlando Cepeda was charged with drug dealing and Paul Molitor admitted to drug use. Scanning the Hall of Less-Than-Perfects, critics have even cited Rogers Hornsby as disqualified under Rule 5 because he was an inveterate gambler.

But life is not always fair. Have you ever been a juror in a criminal case? Or worse yet, the defendant?  As a criminal lawyer, in 40 years I’ve never raised the defense that others got away with the same thing.   

We live in times of ethical challenge, moral upheaval and social change.  Would it really make you feel good about striking the words “integrity, sportsmanship and character” from Rule No.5?

In 2011, Hall of Fame president Jeff Idelson sought to clarify rule No. 5: “Baseball has historically been held to a very high standard, right or wrong. There’s a certain integrity required when it comes to baseball’s highest honor, which is being inducted into the Hall of Fame. The character clause exists as it relates to the game on the field. The character clause isn’t there to evaluate and judge players socially. It’s there to relate to the game on the field. … The voters should have the freedom to measure that however they see fit.”

Bill James, author of the 1995 book “Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame?,” echoed Idelson’s point of view:  “[T]here’s a real distinction between a player who does inappropriate things not related to his job and a player who does inappropriate things that affect his job....Being inducted is an honor, not a paycheck you are entitled to. No one is entitled to be elected. The voters choose who to honor.”

It has been pointed out that the Baseball Hall of Fame is the only one with a morals requirement. But no one familiar with the differences between baseball’s Valhalla and the copycat versions would see this fact as a convincing reason to delete the requirement. Further, at least to present date, baseball has been more scandal-ridden than the other major professional sports.

Yes, morality, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.  Yes, there will always be controversy as to what it means to be “bad.”  But I’d much rather hear what you have to say about what’s bad and what’s not, than have you stop caring.

You say, “A whole generation of players was using steroids,” or “He was a sure-fire Hall of Famer without them anyway,” or “There are lots of other shady characters already in”?  A little street-wise cynicism has its place, it won’t rule the day on this subject. If Bud Selig agrees with you, he’s sure not saying. Too many people take this stuff far too seriously.

Idelson’s interpretation of Rule 5 reflects the consensus of the game’s power structure. And this is the generally-accepted interpretation of the BBWAA, who have rejected bad character affecting the game on the field (Shoeless Joe Jackson, Pete Rose and the steroids guys) but forgiven the frailties of the human condition (Wade Boggs, Robbie Alomar and the like) off the field.  The cynics are right in this respect: A strict construction of the rule might keep pretty much everyone out. But what we have, in fact, is a middle-of-the-road  interpretation of Rule 5. It’s controversial, but, notwithstanding the sparse crowds predicted for the July 26-29 Hall of Fame induction ceremonies, it’s working.       

Furthermore, are you absolutely certain there couldn’t come a day where even you would agree that a player was qualified based on performance, but unqualified based on the tactics he used?  

And besides, do you really want to stop the controversy? What fun would that be?

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Baseball as Child: It's the old story. We're not sure who the father is, but we know the mother. It's Washington.

"First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League"

Sitting in the left field stands at Nationals Park at a Washington  – Minnesota game a couple of weeks ago, I wondered how many of the 28,000 fans understood D.C.’s role in baseball  history – and wondered how many realized that their team was playing the former Washington Nationals.

 

Writing about baseball’s amateur days, Harold Seymour says, in Baseball: The Early Years:  “Washington also caught the baseball bug. Government clerks formed the Potomac Club there in the summer of 1859, and that November, a second team, the Nationals, composed mainly of government clerks, joined them. These teams practiced and played each other in the backyard of the White House….In 1861, the 71^st New York Guards, later decimated at Bull Run, played the Washington Nationals behind the White House, and on the way home from Appomattox, the 133^rd New York Volunteers also took time out to play the Washingtons….[T]he Nationals managed to survive the war years. During an inter-city tournament in 1865, they took on the Brooklyn Atlantics and the Philadelphia Athletics before some 6000 (sic) fans. Government clerks were excused early to attend, and Andrew Johnson himself was on hand – the first president of the United States to see an inter-city match. The Nationals’ great tour of the Midwest in 1867 did much to arouse baseball interest….The Nationals’ 53-10 victory over the Cincinnati Reds was significant, because it had much to do with the reorganization of the Reds into America’s first outright professional team….”  The team’s exploits were covered by Hall of Fame sportswriter Henry Chadwick, who toured with the team.  

Soon, Washington was at the forefront of baseball’s venture into the world of play-for-pay. The District’s earliest professional baseball clubs included:

• Washington Olympics (National Association) (1871-1872)
• Washington Nationals (National Association) (1872)
• Washington Blue Legs (National Association) (1873)
• Washington Nationals (National Association) (1875)
• Washington Nationals (Union Association) (1884)
• Washington Nationals (American Association) (1884)
• Washington Nationals (National League) (1886-1889)
• Washington Senators (National League) (1891-1899)

The Washington Nationals, or Washington Senators, were 1 of the 8 charter teams of the fledgling American League beginning in 1901. The team was officially named the "Nationals" until 1956, but as early as 1905 it was generally referred to as the "Senators." In fact, the names “Nationals” and “Senators” were used interchangeably. Over the next 60 years, the Washington club struggled for respectability, only occasionally rising from also-ran to champion (1924 World Series victors, and 1925 and 1933 A.L. champs). The club’s reputation as a perennial loser reached exalted status with the wildly-successful Broadway musical Damn Yankees, the story of Joe Hardy, a man who sold his soul to the devil in return for leading the lowly Senators to an American League pennant. When Washington owner Calvin Griffith decided to move the franchise to Minneapolis-St. Paul at the end of the 1960 season, D.C. was given a consolation prize: an expansion team called – yes, the Washington Senators. And for another 10 years, beginning in 1961, the District remained home to major league baseball. The highlight, or at least most interesting season, of the expansion Senators was 1969, when the club experienced its only winning season (86-76), and skipper Ted Williams was named Manager of the Year.

Meanwhile, a little further west, Griffith’s Senators, now known as the Minnesota Twins, were rebuilding and becoming a team to reckon with in the A.L.

In 1972, the expansion Washington Senators moved to Dallas-Fort Worth and became the A.L. Texas Rangers.

To this day, Washington’s successors-Minnesota Twins and Texas Rangers still use some form of the Senators' red, white and blue colors.

Washington, D.C., the birth place of so many viable professional baseball clubs, spent the next 33 years in baseball purgatory.

“First in war, first in peace, and .500 in the National League"

Finally, in 2005, the Washington Nationals were reborn when, under the ownership of major league baseball, The Montreal Expos were relocated to D.C. and sold to new owners.  Three statues loom high inside the front gates of Nationals Park. These bold images symbolize Washington’s pivotal role in baseball history, dating back to the game’s inception. Pitching great Walter Johnson (1907-1927) symbolizes the original Nationals/Senators. Slugger Frank Howard symbolizes the expansion Senators. Hall of Fame catcher Josh Gibson symbolizes Washington as the second “home” of the Negro National League Homestead Grays (informally known as the "Washington Homestead Grays") from the late 1930s to the 1940s. As a member of that team, Gibson routinely rattled the fences of Washington’s Griffith Stadium. Obviously, none of these men played for the current franchise.

If it was nurtured in Washington, by any name it’s Washington baseball.     

The next time interleague play brings the Texas Rangers into National Stadium, I wonder how many people in the stands will realize that their team is playing the former Washington Senators?

 

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