Batting average is an outdated method of determining
a hitter's ability at the plate. Walks are totally
discounted from batting average, which downplays their
importance. Sure, if you draw a walk, you can't
drive in that runner from third, but the important thing
is that YOU DIDN'T MAKE AN OUT! Not making an out
is the single most important thing you can do to help
your team score. If walks were simply a matter of
chance, and not an indication of skill, then most
players would draw walks at about the same rate.
We all know that doesn't happen. There are far too
many "Bible hitters" in the major leagues - they live by
the commandment "Thou shalt not pass."
All hitters who are skilled enough to make it to the
major leagues should be able to discipline themselves to
lay off most pitches out of the strike zone. They
should have a personal interest in doing so, even if
they couldn't care less about helping their team;
hitters who won't swing at pitches out of the strike
zone wind up getting more pitches thrown in the
strike zone. Does anyone think most hitters can
easily drive a pitch up by their eyes? Or a pitch
six inches off the ground and six inches outside?
If I was a pitcher and was facing one of these guys who
routinely draw fifteen or twenty walks over the course
of a full season, that guy wouldn't see a strike from
me. Maybe if I walked him the first two times at
bat in a game he might start seeing some strikes, but
other than that, no way.
Think of it this way: You are the GM of a major
league team, and you are looking to acquire a left
fielder. Both guys you are considering are 28
years old, and both have batted exactly .310 over the
past four seasons. Both guys have identical
slugging averages, and both guys steal bases at the same
rate. Both are also equally skilled in the field.
However, Player A has drawn 440 walks over the course of
the past four years, and Player B has drawn sixty.
Which one are you going to overpay to play for your
team? Is there any question which one is the
superior hitter?
Change the situation around a bit, and say that
Player A has hit .300, with 50 doubles, 30 homers, and
100 walks each of the past four seasons. Player B
has hit .330, with 15 doubles, 10 homers, and 15 walks
each of the past four seasons. If you're a big fan
of batting average, you hurry up and sign Player B to a
big contract. If you have any working brain cells
in your head, you sign Player A, since you know that
batting average is only a small part of the story.
A much better indicator of a hitter's skill than
batting average is "OPS" which is a combination of the
hitter's slugging percentage and their on-base
percentage. This statistic not only tells you how
often a hitter doesn't make an out, but it also tells
you what they do when they hit safely. If you are
a fantasy baseball player you've probably heard of OPS
already. If you get all your information listening
to sportscasters and reading the newspapers, you might
not have. If you listen to the sportscasters on
most stations, you are inundated with idiotic
statistics, such as when a player comes to bat with the
bases loaded and the dipshit announcer says: "Uh,
oh! This guy is trouble! Last year he hit
.750 with the bases juiced!" What the announcer
doesn't tell you is that last year that particular
player came to the plate four times with the bases
loaded, and hit two singles and a double. A good
job, to be sure, but in the world of statistics that is
what's known as a small sample size and it is
most certainly not even a vague indicator of future
performance.
To find a player's OPS simply take their on-base
percentage and add it to their slugging percentage.
The result can be graded like a test, with a .900-1.000
being the equivalent of an A, an .800-.899 being the
equivalent of a B, and .700-.799 being the equivalent of
a C. If you add a player's numbers and get an OPS
around .619, then you are looking at shortstop Rey
Ordonez's 2002 statistics and you can see for yourself
why he never should have made it to the major leagues,
no matter how good his glove is. If you add a
player's numbers and get an OPS around 1.381, then you
are looking at the 2002 stats for Barry Bonds and
probably still wondering how it is, even with the
otherworldly numbers he puts up, that he is being paid
$20 million per year for playing a game.
