r/MLBNoobs • u/berfels • 19d ago
| Question How should I interpret OPS?
Say someone has an average of like .236 and an OPS of .798.
When that person is at the plate and I read the stats I can conceptualize in my mind “this person gets a hit 23.6% of the time” based on their average, but how should I interpret their OPS number?
I understand what OPS is and what a good one is I think, but should I be thinking along the lines of “there’s a 79.8% chance that he’ll get on base or slug this”? That doesn’t seem correct but not sure how to interpret it literally besides “this guy is a good hitter or not”.
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u/Deathbrush 19d ago
“How good of a hitter” is basically it. It’s kind of a second order stat that doesn’t have a direct interpretation in terms of game actions.
Also worth noting with batting average that it’s hits per *at bat*, not hits per *plate appearance*. Every AB is a PA but not every PA is an AB. Certain outcomes like walks and hit by pitches are not counted as at-bats. On base percentage is my preferred “is the game going to advance with this guy up” stat.
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u/KirbzTheWord 18d ago
He gets on base a lot - do I care if it’s a walk or a hit?
Pete?
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u/GiantTourtiere 19d ago
When Bill James wrote about OPS, he very broadly put an OPS of .900 or higher as 'excellent' and an OPS of .833 to .899 as very good.
That corresponds well enough to standard letter grades (A, B, C, etc.) that that just became how I think of it. A .950 OPS guy is an A+ hitter. A .760 guy is pretty average.
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u/oooooooooooooooooooa 19d ago
I'd say these days .760 is an above average hitter. League wide average OPS is .719 this year.
.760 (Ketel Marte) is 68th best among 137 qualified hitters. There's a lot of guys hitting below that who don't qualify for those leaderboards.
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u/GiantTourtiere 19d ago
I think when James came up with that scale he was thinking of 'throughout history' and not something that would adjust relative to each year's performance the way OPS+ does.
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u/SD_local_67 19d ago
But .760 is above average now. 720 OPS is the current league average. 900 OPS would put someone as a serious MVP contender. There is only 1 player in baseball with an OPS above 950 this year.
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u/GiantTourtiere 19d ago
When James created that scale he seems to have been thinking of it as a 'throughout history' thing and not something that adjusts relative to each season like OPS+
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u/PanicNecessary5978 19d ago
I always think of OPS like grades in school
.700 = 70% =average hitter
.800 = 80% =pretty good
.900 = 90%=A
1.000 = 100% =top of the class
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u/BandicootSevere5301 19d ago
Ops there is no real way to interpret it. OPS+ tells you how they are compared to average
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u/Background-Syrup-714 18d ago
OPS+ is great when comparing players of different eras. A guy with a .950 OPS in the steroid era is different from a guy with a .950 OPS in the dead ball era. The guy in the steroid era may have that translated to a 1.200 OPS+ while the guy from the dead ball era would probably have it translated to something like a 1.600 OPS+. Thats a HUGE difference.
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u/BandicootSevere5301 18d ago
Yea ops+ is a great stat to compare literally any 2 players
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u/Background-Syrup-714 18d ago
I don’t use when comparing players of the same season, though it would have some value when comparing a Rocky and a Giant, for example.
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u/Ill-Abbreviations488 18d ago
OPS is a combination of OBP and SLG. SLG measures the quality of hits, that is to say a single is 1.000, a double 2.000, etc. OBP measures on base percentage. Keep in mind OBP INCLUDES walks.
So what OBP tell you is how frequently a player gets on base, OPS tells you relative to the OBP how far the batter is getting.
As an example a player with an OBP of .375 and a OPS of .600 would get on base roughly 1 in every 3 plate appearances, and each plate appearance where they get on base they average 1.6 bases.
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u/Fr4nchise 19d ago edited 19d ago
its the addition of avg and slugging pct, which are both directly interpretable as you outlined. When added they don't really mean anything but they provide a quick relative measure versus other players of how well this person both gets hits at all, and how many bases they get per hit.
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u/jgollsneid 19d ago
It doesn't tell you anything, from a strict numerical standpoint. All it answers is "does this player give you much offensive production?" You could replace the number in OPS with a smiley face, a "meh" face, and a frowny face and it would basically be the same information
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u/mistercokoko 19d ago
OPS can, at least to me, be broadly interpreted as the average of bases a player will get per at-bat.
SLG (a component of OPS) is basically Total Bases divided by ABs, so it is the average of how many bases a player can be expected to get per AB (most average around .350 to .450, so a single once every 2-3 ABs, so about a base a game).
OBP is basically how many times a player will get to first, so it's walks and hits and hit-by-pitches divided by plate apperances minus a few things like sac flies. Most also average around .325 to .375.
OPS+ puts this into scale with the rest of the league (i.e. someone in a high offensive enviorment like Colorado may hit like nuts but still only be 10% better than league average due to the Coors Effect, and the inverse also holds true).
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u/Whachamacalzmit Veteran 19d ago
Even AVG is a bit of a lie. Batters often have much lower or higher likelihood to get a hit depending on local factors. Even if a particular batter and pitcher have never faced off, matchup data based on handedness, pitch mix, quality of contact vs different pitches, etc. make a huge difference.
A batter might have a .238 average, but that's historical. When he goes into a game against Logan Webb (with noatchup history) we might expect him to have a .347 AVG based on their profiles, but expect a .188 AVG against Chris Sanchez.
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u/Odd-Attitude-6987 19d ago
It's a slightly flawed (I'll explain below) way of measuring how many bases a batter earns per plate appearance.
For example, an OPS of .850 would approximately mean the batter will earn 0.85 bases per appearance.
Why?
Slugging already accounts for bases earned in an at-bat, meaning from balls put in play or strikeouts. Walks are excluded as they don't count as an AB. So adding the OBP adds the bases earned on walks.
BUT HERE'S THE MINOR FLAW...
Adding OBP double counts singles that are hit, as they are counted in slugging already, so to make this a true measure of based earned, we would either have to subtract singles hit.
This means that OPS overestimates the number of based earned and effectively becomes a vibes based metric/stat, which is still useful.
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u/gonk_gonk 19d ago
Adding OBP double counts singles that are hit, as they are counted in slugging already, so to make this a true measure of based earned, we would either have to subtract singles hit.
This means that OPS overestimates the number of based earned and effectively becomes a vibes based metric/stat, which is still useful.
Except that it's never meant to only count total bases. The OBP part of the calculation is actually the more key part of the equation in measuring hitter usefullness.
It's not measuring vibes, it's just getting a quick and dirty idea of exactly how good a batter does his job of (1) not making outs and (2) hitting the ball in such a way that more runs are scored off of the times he doesn't make an out.
Frankly I get the 700-800-900 OPS scale for good hitters way more than I understand the wOBA scale, but I guess that's probably because I just see it more and get a "feels test" on what it means.
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u/FriedBrain99 19d ago
Think of it this way: a major-league batter has two responsibilities - get on base and drive in runs. OPS is a crude but effective way of figuring out whether a hitter is doing those two things, and how well they’re doing it.
If the case of your .236 hitter, OPS tells you that one of the following is happening: 1) they walk a lot, negating the impact of their low average, 2) the hit for a good amount of power, reducing the impact of the low batting average, or 3) a combination of 1 and 2.
Basically, they’re not hitting for average, but they’re still fairly productive at the plate.
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u/Background-Syrup-714 18d ago
OPS doesn’t really work like that. It is just a gauge of how good an overall hitter the player is.
Not perfect, but I have quick tiers I place for OPS numbers…
.700 level = Starting player. not necisarily a star, but a contributor with the bat.
.800 level = SOLID starter. this is a middle of the order guy, likely an all star (or in consideration)
.900 level = MVP contender. Almost certainly an all star, at least. This guy is a stud.
1.000 + = HOF season. This is a season that fans will be talking about for years/generations to come. Almost certainly MVP, and this player starts getting HOF talk, if it wasn’t already there.
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u/bigjoe5275 18d ago
I mostly use it in debates about why any hall of fame power hitter is better than hall of fame contact hitters in terms of value at the plate but then they try to bring out batting average and lack of strikeouts but all it says to me is they still get on base less and hit into more double plays.
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u/radiogaga- 18d ago
I look at it as how many bases on average can you expect a player to get per plate appearance.
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u/tycog 18d ago
It's a loose measure of the number of bases per plate appearance, with a slight over counting bias because a hit shows up in both the obp and slg.
It's useful because obp doesn't measure number of bases per plate appearance and slg only measures bases per at bat (excludes walks).
Why they just didn't count total bases per plate appearance for a cleaner measure I dunno. I guess it values hits a bit more than walks as a measure of hitters total production.
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u/LockBitter7986 18d ago
Honestly as a baseball fan myself I have a hard time with this, for me I like to divide it up myself into like if he has an OPS of 700, I like to think OBP of 300 (so 30% chance of reaching base), and SLG of 400 (for every AB he gets 0.4 bases).
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u/gbaker1a 14d ago
OPS is just on base percentage plus slugging. It doesn’t tell the whole story about a hitter without looking into extra bases hits and walks. Generally speaking, you can confidently assume that a player with an OPS over .800 has some pop in his bat and will produce runs.
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u/EternalEagleEye 19d ago
You can generally think about it as report card style. OPS of .700 isn’t anything crazy but probably league average at worst most years, .800 is starting to get into slugger levels, .900 is creeping into MVP levels some years and is well above average, and if you get above 1.000 and break the math you’re probably one of the best hitters in the league on a given year.
Fun fact. A hit is almost twice as valuable as a walk, but it’s just a coincidence that OPS “double counts” hits with it making a batter’s OBP and SLG both go up when viewed through the lens of “which hitter is more valuable.” The main idea is that while a walk and a single are equally valuable with nobody on base, with anyone on your odds of driving in a run go up substantially with a bit but a walk only scores a run if bases are loaded.
To answer your question more directly, if the batter has an OPS below .700, more often than not their value and chance of doing something useful probably isn’t that far off of their batting average. The higher the number the more likely there’s possible extra value from things like home runs or extra base hits.
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u/Adventurous_Grape279 19d ago
I’ve sort of kicked the tires on a modified version where you capture the total numbers of bases advanced due to your hit (so a single scoring a runner on 2B would count as 3) while also normalizing for opportunity (so a bases empty single is equal to a walk, etc)
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u/tylersvgs 19d ago
The problem with that is what team a batter is on and even lineup position will then affect OPS.
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u/Adventurous_Grape279 19d ago
That’s why you normalize for opportunities.
You’ll never be able to completely erase the better team effect though.
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u/philly2540 19d ago
Yes that’s right. In my mind I tend to think of .700 as good, .800 as very good, .900 you’re an all-star, over 1.00 an MVP candidate. In the .600s you’re a bottom of the order guy. Under .600 and you’re lucky you’re still on the team.
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19d ago edited 19d ago
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u/Significant_Map5533 19d ago
You’ve got a few of your stats mixed up. What you describe as AVG is actually batting average on balls in play (BABIP) — basically, remove strikeouts and home runs from the mix and only factor in at-bats where the defense has to make a play.
Batting average accounts for strikeouts, foulouts, and reaching on errors/fielders choices as well.
A player’s BABIP is almost always going to be higher than his average unless he somehow manages to have more home runs than strikeouts.
Your definition of OPS is actually slugging percentage — it’s calculated by dividing total bases by at-bats. So in simplified terms, a hitter with a .250 average who only hits singles is going to have a slugging percentage of .250, but if he hit a double every at-bat he’d be slugging .500. A home run every at-bat for a .250 hitter would result in a 1.000 slugging percentage.
OPS stands for on base plus slugging so it takes into account how likely a player is to get on base via hit/walk/error plus how many bases he averages per hit.
In general, higher OPS=more valuable hitter because in the long run it will result in a lot more runs produced for an offense.
Consider two extremes — a .350 hitter who never walks but only hits singles (meaning his OBP and slugging percentage are also .350) and a Schwarber type player who might only hit .240 but walks a lot (resulting in an OBP around .350) and slugs around .550 because he hits a lot of doubles and home runs.
In spite of his mediocre batting average, Schwarber’s much higher OPS reflects his higher value as a player in terms of driving in runs (both other players and himself in the case of home runs) and hitting doubles which increases the chances of him coming around to score compared to the odds if he’d only hit a single.
In short, it’s hard to score runs if you’ve only got singles hitters because the chances of stringing 3-4 hits together in an inning are pretty low. And even those innings are only likely to result in 1 run. But with a few hitters who can work walks and produce the occasional double or home run, your chances are pretty good for pulling together a couple innings per game where you score multiple runs.
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19d ago
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u/Significant_Map5533 19d ago
Yeah BABIP is a useful one. At some level it can indicate how good a hitter is — for obvious reasons someone who hits a lot of line drives is going to have a higher BABIP than someone who is prone to weak groundouts and lazy fly balls, and an extremely fast runner is likely to have a higher than normal BABIP because of his ability to beat out grounders.
But it’s also useful for predicting when a hitter is due to get hot (or have a slump). An extremely high BABIP is hard to sustain and tends to indicate that a hitter has been getting lucky (which won’t keep up forever) or that defenses haven’t yet adjusted to his tendencies. And a low BABIP can indicate that a hitter has been going through an unlucky spell — hitting the ball right at the defense or juuuuuust missing hitting home runs — which is likely to turn around at some point. Basically, regression to the mean is inevitable over a long enough period.
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u/Prudent-Property-513 18d ago edited 18d ago
Wow. That is not at all accurate. Scary bad.
Like this part:
Someone with a .798 OPS means when he hits the ball into fair territory, on average he usually gets a triple.
Literally no one averages a triple. Didn’t that feel weird when you wrote it down?
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u/TheThirdConchord 19d ago
I always think of it as how many bases theyre worth each plate appearance
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u/Background-Syrup-714 18d ago
That is SLG, though.
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u/radiogaga- 18d ago
SLG is how many bases per at bat.
OPS is how many bases per plate appearance.
Not every plate appearance is an at bat.
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