Your Baseball Education for the Day!

Professor speaking. As we go forward here, I thought it would be helpful to provide a sort of useful guide for the baseball terms that we throw around here so frequently. Hopefully this will allow all of us to speak the same statistical language and avoid confusion. I would put this in some kind of order....but I don't know the alphabet. Without further ado, here is your glossary!!! Batting Average (BA) -- This one is pretty simple and most people are familiar with it. It is calculated by taking a player's hit total and dividing by the number of at-bats the player had. A .300 average is considered good, but the best hitters can far exceed that total, and a .250 average is considered bad, and many hitters can dip below that total. I don't believe batting average is a great measure of the worth of a hitter, and neither do you if you think about. You have always thought this way, even if you have never expressed it. Player A: BA- .255 45 HRs 30 2Bs 100 RBIs 95 Walks Player B: BA- .320 7 HRs 25 2Bs 65 RBIs 30 Walks Which player would you rather have? Tim McCarver might say Player B if that guy is small and "plays the game the right way," which is why Timmy should be a fastfood drive-through guy instead of the lead color analyst of baseball on Fox every Saturday. I think I would take Player A, everytime. So can we all agree that batting average is not the best metric to value hitters and in fact is one of the worst? Wouldn't you rather look at other stats that more accurately guage a hitter's effectiveness? What? You want me to move on? Fine. On-Base Percentage or Average (OBP, OBA)-- If you haven't read Moneyball, an excellent book by Michael Lewis about the success of the Oakland A's despite having one of the lowest payrolls in baseball, you should read it immediately. It breaks down the value of OBP very effectively. OBP is the difference between Kevin Youkilis and Jeff Franceour. If you are a hitter, your primary responsibility and goal is TO NOT MAKE OUTS. OBP is the stat that measures how effectively a hitter avoids making outs. It is calculated by taking the amount of times a player reaches base without recording any outs divided by player's number of plate appearances. (Plate appearances are at-bats + walks + sacrifices in this case) Your 2006 leader in OBP was Mr. Barry Bonds with an impressive mark of .454. Basically, when Barry got to the plate he did not record an out about 45% of the time. That is very good. Slugging Percentage (SLG) This stat tries to express a hitter's ability to hit for power. This takes a player's total bases and divides by his amount of at bats. This puts extra value on extra base hits and especially home runs. Your 2006 leader in slugging percentage was Albert Pujols with a mark of .671. Albert Pujols is a stud. BA / OBP / SLG -- This is a fairly common way of displaying the three previous stats, when you see a split like this, you a probably looking at a hitter's batting average, on base percentage, and slugging percentage. OPS (On-Base Plus Slugging Percentage) -- Just what it sounds like, this stat combines a player's OBP and slugging percentage. Stat geeks will tell you that OPS is not a good stat because it equalizes OBP and SLG even though OBP is more important. (Did you know BIll James, a leading baseball stat man, thinks OBP is about 4 times more important than SLG?) I will use it because OPS has gotten a foothold in popular baseball terminology so it is more accepted than some crazy stuff I am gonna shoot your way later in this post. Albert Pujols was your 2006 OPS champion with a mark of 1.102. For his efforts, Albert was not selected as the 2006 MVP. VORP (Value Over Replacement Player) -- This is a bit different from the other stats because it is a counting statistic and not a percentage. VORP is an offensive only stat, and it attempts to calculate the number of runs a player is contributing above what a replacement-level player at the same position would if given the same percentage of team plate appearances. Basically, if you were injured or incapacitated or shot to the moon, how many runs would your team lose if they put a fringe major leaguer or AAA quality player in your place the whole season? That's VORP, baby. Your 2006 VORP leader was.....Albert Pujols, with a VORP of 85.4! Albert was worth 85 more runs than the replacement level player. By the way, every 10 additional runs is roughly equal to one win, so Albert accounted for nearly 9 extra wins over the course of the year. He still has not received the 2006 MVP award yet. And yes, I am bitter. David Eckstein -- He is a semi-average SS for the St. Louis Cardinals; the only person in baseball who is definitely NOT using human growth hormone. He is approximately 4 and a half feet tall and has to lie down in the dugout between innings to keep from passing out. He performs windmills to warm up before games, I am always worried that he will either take off or sever his arms completely. He also runs hard to first base on every play, like almost every other major league baseball player. Commentators will take this display of hustle, grit and heart and use it to somehow conclude David has a sort of baseball skill that is totally beyond his tangible assets. He is the midget and illegitmate albino twin of Derek Jeter.