The Diminishing Skill Of Getting On Base

When the famed Baseball Abstract came out in the 1980’s, Bill James introduced the concept of OPS, writing that a player was a great offensive player if he could get on base 35% of the time while maintaining a .450 slugging percentage.

The reasoning was the player had the ability to get on base frequently and the slugging percentage measured how the player could advance runners, getting extra base hits, which is measured by slugging.

That made an 800 OPS the gold standard for hitters. That number started to be regarded as the measure of offensive success, but that led to younger baseball analysts thinking players with a .300 on base percentage and .500 slugging percentage were great hitters.

Those players generally tend to be guys who swing for the fences in most at bats, with high strikeout, low walk rates (hence the low on base percentage). Joey Gallo is the poster boy for us, with people telling us Gallo was an offensive force, piling up 800 OPS figures with batting averages of .209 (.333 OBP, 2017) and .206 (.312 OBP, 2018).

We know it is not fashionable to say this anymore, but no one who hits under .220 is a good hitter.

In 2024, the major league average OPS is 714, an on base percentage of .313 paired with a slugging percentage of .401.

Just a few years ago, good teams had several players that fit the .350/.450 model. For example, the 2015 Kansas City Royals that won the World Series had Eric Hosmer, Alex Gordon, Lorenzo Cain, Kendrys Morales, and Ben Zobrist.

The 2016 Indians had Jose Ramirez, Tyler Naquin, and Carlos Santana who did it, while Jason Kipnis and Francisco Lindor were very close.

Right now, the Arizona Diamondbacks lead the majors in runs scored and they have three such batters: Ketel Marte, Jake McCarthy, and Joc Pederson. The Yankees have scored the next most runs and they have just two in Aaron Judge and Juan Soto.

We watch the Orioles when they were in town and thought their lineup was pretty solid top to bottom, but they also have only two in Gunnar Henderson and surprisingly Ryan O’Hearn.

This year’s Guardians’ team, 13th in the big leagues in runs scored have just one in Steven Kwan (382/480/862). The next closest is kind of a surprise in David Fry (369/441/810). The Guards are 17th in on base percentage at .310, just below the league average.

The reason for that is that Kwan and Fry are the only Cleveland players who can get on base at a 35% or better clip. Among players with over 200 plate appearances, they do have three hitters who are slugging .450 or better–Ramirez, Josh Naylor, and Kwan.

Our point is the Guardians do not have a lot of real good hitters and the offense could be better if they had more hitters who got on base more often. On the other hand, the art of getting on base seems to be on the decline in the sport, and that’s a shame.

As James also said, the game is measured by the number of outs, not a time clock (pitch clock not withstanding). A 1.000 slugging percentage can be achieved by going 1 for 4 with a home run. If you have a 1.000 on base percentage, your team keeps batting in the first inning.

Sorry. There Is Room For “Old School” Baseball.

We want to apologize to anyone who will be offended by this piece.

We have been very free about our age. We started following the Cleveland Indians in 1965 as a youngster and baseball became and still is our favorite sport. However, the way the sport is viewed now is kind of disturbing.

We were talking with some longtime friends about the game about a week ago, and one of them said they remembered when a guy who hit .250 was considered an average player, a JAG (just another guy) in today’s vernacular.

We brought up that someone asked us if we thought Dave Kingman (302/478/780, 442 career home runs) was a good player back in the day. Kingman played from 1971-86. We replied no, and that no one else thought he was good either. He made just three all-star teams in his career.

When Bill James wrote The Baseball Abstract, it changed our view of the game. We grew up thinking you had to have speedy players at the top of the order, batting average was king, etc. But reading that book, we realized the job of the leadoff man was to get on base, no matter how good a defender you are, you have to be able to hit, and many other things.

The advanced statistics started by the sabermetric movement have value, no question about it. However, it should not be the only prism the game is viewed through, and James himself will tell you that.

Batting average isn’t meaningless. It measures how many hits a batter gets in his at bats. It may be less important than on base percentage, but it shouldn’t be ignored.

Someone once told us that analytics get used as a fallback for when something is tried, and it doesn’t work. Coaches or managers can say “the numbers” said it was the correct decision. Sometimes it’s true, but people need to realize that sometimes it isn’t.

The game is still about getting 27 outs and scoring more runs than your opponent. One of the reasons that sacrifice bunting has all but disappeared from the sport is that James and other pointed out that the number of outs in a game is precious and a team shouldn’t give one up unless it provided a huge advantage.

The way MLB has promoted itself hasn’t helped. They focus on the raw athleticism of today’s players, which is nice, but as former player John Kruk once famously said “I’m not an athlete, I’m a baseball player”.

There is considerable focus on hitting the ball hard or the speed of pitches, neither of which helps to win a game. Now, we agree that if you hit the ball hard consistently, you will very likely succeed in the sport, but it isn’t a necessity.

For example, Whit Merrifield, Charlie Blackmon, and Geraldo Perdomo all rank near the bottom of average exit velocity, but all three are solid offensive players. Meanwhile, Kansas City’s M.J. Melendez is in the top 10 in this category. He has a 713 OPS.

It probably bodes well for Melendez’ future, but that’s why it should be a supporting statistic.

Strikeouts aren’t a big deal anymore, but when there is a runner on third with less than two out it is. How many times in today’s game do you see a team get a leadoff double and the runner never moves. The “get ’em over and get ’em in” rules no longer apply.

Hopefully, the new rules enacted by the sport this year start reversing the launch angle era and get back to the fundamentals of the sport. We don’t want to take away from the entertainment and showmanship in the game these days, but playing the right way isn’t a bad thing.

The OPS Debate

Right before the Major League Baseball trade deadline, the was a lot of talk about the relative value of players, and of course, statistics were brought up.

At this point, we would like to point out that we regularly purchased and read Bill James’ Baseball Abstract and found it fascinating, a different way of looking at the game and the players on the field.

So, we understand many of the sport’s new statistics, like OPS, and we usually list a player’s OPS when discussing his offensive prowess. We also look at WAR (Wins Above Replacement) in terms of a player’s profile, but our opinion is it is biased toward middle of the diamond players, Jose Ramirez’ current season notwithstanding.

By the way, that’s our opinion, so save the anger. But when Matt Chapman, third baseman from Oakland (we know not a middle infielder) measures to have the fifth highest WAR this season, it raises an eyebrow.

This isn’t to say Chapman isn’t a good player. He has an 830 OPS and is a great defensive player. He isn’t the 5th best player in the sport this season, and for that matter, Milwaukee’s Lorenzo Cain isn’t 6th either.

Let’s get back to OPS though. James’ original premise was a batter who had an on base percentage of over .350 and a slugging percentage over .450, therefore displaying an ability to get on base and drive the ball, is a very good offensive player.

Today, there seems to be a group of people who value players who have high OPS due to dominance in the slugging area, leading to players who have low batting averages/on base percentages getting a lot of playing time.

The players who has the highest OPS with out being over the .350/.450 threshold in each category are as follows:

Javier Baez 914 OPS (.333 OBP/581 slugging)
Khris Davis 863 OPS (.326/.536)
Gregory Polanco 862 OPS (.344/.517)
Xander Bogaerts 855 OPS (.342/.513)
Joey Votto 852 OPS (.425/.427)

Out of those players, which one would you like to have?

For us, it would be Votto, who by the way, also has the most distinguished career out of the group, although to be fair, he’s also the guy who has been around the longest.

One thing we would like to point out about the on base percentage and slugging percentage.

A player with a 1.000 on base percentage never makes an out, while a player with a 1.000 slugging percentage can arrive at that figure by going 1 for 4 with a home run.

And we would also add is making outs is the only way “time” is measured in a baseball game. A team only gets 27 of them, and players who make them frequently shouldn’t be as valuable.

Look at the strikeout to walk ratios of the first four players–

Baez 101 K/17 walks
Davis    116 K/38 walks
Polanco    91 K/48 walks
Bogaerts    72 K/31 walks

In watching these guys hit, our feeling in watching them against the Indians is that in a tight situation, you can strike Baez and Davis out. They swing at a lot of pitches out of the strike zone, and if we can see that, we are sure major league pitchers know it too.

We noticed in this summer’s amateur draft, the Indians went for players with good contact rates, that is to say, they didn’t strike out much.

This could be due to the success of Francisco Lindor and Jose Ramirez, players who are good hitter, and can develop power later.

A look at the bottom ten teams in MLB in on base percentage shows nine teams not in the post season picture (Arizona is the lone contender). As for slugging percentage, there are three teams above .500 (Giants, Phillies, and Rays) in the bottom ten.

What does it all mean? We believe many people look at the statistics first in making judgments about players, and they value the total OPS. We believe you have to see how the stat is compiled to determine the value of the player.

Just something we wanted to get off our chest.

Don’t Go Overboard on Browns Analytics

Since the Cleveland Browns made their moves last Sunday night, they have been the fodder for many jokes about their new “analytical” way of looking at football.

It didn’t help when they hired Paul DePodesta, a former baseball general manager with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

We aren’t saying that DePodesta is a bad hire, because by all accounts he is a very smart man, and certainly can be viewed upon as a man who knows something about being in good organizations.

No, the problem is that he was portrayed in the movie “Moneyball”, by Jonah Hill. That lead to a great number of jokes.

And while we would love to see a guy with success in the football business as the guy in charge of the organization, we don’t think the Browns will be run by people looking at minute statistical details.

Most of the numbers they will look at will just make sense, just as Bill James’ number crunching did when he came out with Baseball Abstract.

The analytics in drafting players may be used to show there is a better chance that a player coming out of a major conference is more apt to succeed in the NFL than a player out of a small college.

They could show what we have looked at earlier in this season, that team who can run the ball and can stop the run have better success in today’s professional football, even though it is dominated by the pass, than team who can do neither well.

It may also tell them you can’t try one running play in a half, like the Browns did in the first game against Cincinnati this year.

It will probably involve other more subtle things as well, but the numbers will be used to create a competitive advantage for the Browns’ coaching staff.

We can all agree they could use that.

The problem could be finding a coach and GM who is open to getting those numbers and understanding what they mean. That could cause the Browns to lose out on some coaches we would like to see here.

We have said before that we want someone with head coaching experience, and that person needs to be a tough-minded individual that will change the country club atmosphere that has permeated Berea.

Cleveland has hired several “player’s coaches” in a row. Mike Pettine, Rob Chudzinski, and Pat Shurmur would all be described that way, and that is too many to hold the job consecutively.

It’s time to bring in someone who will demand accountability, and who coaches like this is their last chance to handle the reins of an NFL team.

The other thing we think the analytics will show is the Browns need more draft choices, and as many high ones, as they can get to rebuild the roster quickly.

Our guess is that several of the veterans who have been here the last two seasons, will not be back.

If you are over 30 years old, we wouldn’t be too comfortable this off-season.

And we are fine with that. As we always say, the only thing worse than being bad is being bad and old.

You don’t need to be someone who studies numbers to know that is a bad combination.