And I can prove it.
In light of all the hooplah surrounding the revolution in baseball statistics (and even well prior to the release of Brad Pitt’s Moneyball), Matt and I have developed a new advanced baseball metric. It’s called Outs Per At Bat.
It’s pretty stupid.
OPAB is a figure designed to gauge how bad a player is. We found it funny that “Grounded into Double Play” (GIDP) is a recorded statistic, and effectively suggests the number of plate appearances in which a batter actually manages to generate two outs, even though he’s just one player.
Key factors weighing in on OPAB:
- GIDP. Mentioned above.
- Walks. These are considered “Plate Appearances,” not “At Bats,” and as such don’t count adversely towards a player’s score in the category. These are not counted directly, but typically lead to lower AB totals and smaller denominators (one could argue, Plate Appearances – Walks (and other stuff) = At Bats).
- Sacrifice Hits (bunts), Sacrifice Flies. These, too, don’t count towards a player’s At Bat total. So, remarkably, the batter generates an out without accumulating an at bat.
We calculate the statistic as follows: (At Bats – Hits + SH + SF + GIDP) / At Bats. Lower scores (IE, fewer outs per at bat) are better.
As it turns out, Cardinals’ centerpiece Albert Pujols is among the league’s worst in OPAB. While leading the league in GIDP’s for the 2011 season, Pujols generated an abysmal .763 OPAB. Eeeugh. In comparison, Cardinals regular guy outfielder/utilityman Allen Craig scored a .735 OPAB on the year. And you don’t see headlines and billion kajdrillion dollar contract deals going his way any time soon.
This year’s leader in OPAB among qualified batters? Jose Reyes stands at .683. In fact, he and Ryan Braun (.689) are the only two players I’ve found thus far (in my admittedly primitive and in all likelihood statistically insignificant research) with OPAB below the .700 mark.
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Update: I realized as of 7:30pm that the stat Caught Stealing ought also apply.
This results in a revised formula of: (At Bats – Hits + SH + SF + GIDP + CS) / At Bats .
As it pertains to the players mentioned above:
Jose Reyes—.696
Ryan Braun—.6998
Allen Craig—.735
Albert Pujols—.765
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In conclusion, baseball is great and basketball sucks.
Stats calculated based off of 2011 season totals, courtesy of fangraphs.com
What about where the player is instructed to SH or SF by the manager. He shouldn’t be punished for a teammate reaching 3rd.
Hey Matty,
1) Given the caliber of players mentioned in the above example, I don’t think we have to worry too much about managers ordering sacrifices.
2) The metric isn’t perfect, and like all stats in baseball, has some level of acceptable error built in. Consider how managers also order pitchers to pitch around batters. Those still count as walks, too.