Major League Baseball needs a simpler way to express complicated statistics to the casual fan.
For decades, hitters arriving in the batter's box were greeted by a scoreboard display or television graphic that listed the player's batting average, number of home runs and number of runs batted in.
Standards like the .300 hitter and the 100-RBI man were established across generations of fans.
Depending on the era, annual home run totals of 30, 40, 50 and 60 were viewed as benchmarks.
A pitcher's won-loss record and earned run average were two widely-distributed markers to gauge the effectiveness of a team's starting staff.
Much was made in 1971 about Baltimore's four 20-game winners: Jim Palmer, Dave McNally, Mike Cuellar and Pat Dobson.
Not anymore.
FIP and BABIP, short for Fielding Independent Pitching and Batting Average on Balls in Play, are better ways to measure a pitcher's performance and more importantly, predict future performance.
Throw in concepts and categories like spin rates, launch angles, exit velocities, win shares and ultimate zone ratings and the game becomes more convoluted and less enjoyable.
The stat game is becoming far too complex for young fans learning about the game.
Likewise, older fans are unable or uninterested in learning the sabermetrics of baseball.
Hearing an analyst on radio or television rattle off a long list of numbers without much context causes many listeners or viewers to change the channel.
Sounds like someone's reading from a phone book.
Traditionalists have been slow to embrace the more sophisticated view of the game despite MLB front offices embracing the new technology and terminology by hiring Ivy League grads, many of whom never played the game beyond Little League, for their analytics departments.
Here's the solution: One simple set of numbers, which everyone can calculate, to quantify performances by both hitters and pitchers on the baseball diamond.
OPS, or on-base percentage plus slugging percentage, is the simplest number to express a hitter's performance at the plate.
On-base percentage is a far more telling statistic than batting average because it credits the hitter for earning a walk, getting hit by a pitch or otherwise reaching base.
Slugging percentage is a straightforward statistic and easy to compute.
To calculate slugging percentage, one takes a player's total bases (one total base for a single, two for a double, three for a triple and four for a home run) and simply divides by his number of at-bats.
Barry Bonds, in his historic 2001 MLB season, achieved a slugging percentage of .863 which exceeded Babe Ruth's long-standing mark of .847 set in 1920.
Adding on-base percentage to slugging percentage, a strange way to express a meaningful number, produces a cumbersome total that needs simplification.
And here's the brilliance of this new idea: Instead of expressing an on-base percentage or slugging percentage with a three-digit decimal to the thousandths, simply lop off the thousandths column to express the numbers as a two-digit value.
A player with a .323 on-base percentage, that's the 2019 MLB average, reaches base slightly more than 32% of the time.
League average for slugging percentage stands at .437, a number needed to calculate OPS.
This season's average OPS is .760, expressed as 76 on our new scale.
The top two players in the National League this season are validating OPS as a worthy scale.
Christian Yelich and Cody Bellinger, engaging in a duel for National League MVP honors, are 1-2 in the league with numbers of 1.121 and 1.085, respectively.
On our scale, Yelich would be accorded a 112 rating with Bellinger earning a 109.
Mike Trout is the undisputed star of our easy-to-understand scale.
This season, Trout has earned an OPS of 1.110 (111) against a career number of 1.001 (100).
And so, we have the standard for our new measure.
If Mike Trout has accomplished an OPS rating of 100 over his nine-year career, then we have the yardstick by which to judge other players.
A rating of 100 is brilliant and a rating of 76 is league average.
The scale looks a lot like the grading system established at elementary schools nationwide where 90-100 would earn an "A" grade or All-Star status, 80-89 would earn a "B" grade and be considered solid but not spectacular, 70-79 would earn a "C" or satisfactory, 60-69 would earn a "D" or barely passing, and 59 or lower would earn a failing grade or in this case, a trip to the minor leagues.
Better yet, a pair of numbers expressed together could highlight a player's yearly performance against his career standard.
So Trout's numbers of 111/100 would list his yearly stats over his career stats and show the most talented hitter in the game today is enjoying an outstanding season, even by his lofty standards.
Trout's big-name teammate, Albert Pujols, is a different story.
The 39-year-old Dominican shows numbers of 73/93 (year/career) to illustrate the steep decline in his recent play.
So the answer is now clear the next time a wiseguy asks, "If Mike Trout is so good, then why have the Angels not won a playoff game during his time in Anaheim?"
The smart-aleck response: Trout's brilliance is offset by the overweight, slow-footed, past-his-prime Albert Pujols.
More precisely, baseball is about both run production and run prevention.
And pitching has not been a strong point for the Halos this decade.
The last starting pitchers to represent the Angels in the All-Star Game were C.J. Wilson and Jered Weaver in the 2012 season.
No starting pitcher in the current Angels rotation strikes fear in the heart of opponents with OPS-against numbers listed in parenthesis: Patrick Sandoval (73), Andrew Heaney (75), Griffin Canning (75), Dillon Peters (81) and Jose Suarez (94),
Each of the last two seasons, the Angels have won exactly 80 games.
This season, the team is on pace for, you guessed it, another 80 victories.
You can call the Halos consistent or you can call them middle-of-the-road, both labels apply.
Bottom line: Baseball is a team game and not even the sport's best player can overcome a truly mediocre franchise.
For decades, hitters arriving in the batter's box were greeted by a scoreboard display or television graphic that listed the player's batting average, number of home runs and number of runs batted in.
Standards like the .300 hitter and the 100-RBI man were established across generations of fans.
Depending on the era, annual home run totals of 30, 40, 50 and 60 were viewed as benchmarks.
A pitcher's won-loss record and earned run average were two widely-distributed markers to gauge the effectiveness of a team's starting staff.
Much was made in 1971 about Baltimore's four 20-game winners: Jim Palmer, Dave McNally, Mike Cuellar and Pat Dobson.
Not anymore.
FIP and BABIP, short for Fielding Independent Pitching and Batting Average on Balls in Play, are better ways to measure a pitcher's performance and more importantly, predict future performance.
Throw in concepts and categories like spin rates, launch angles, exit velocities, win shares and ultimate zone ratings and the game becomes more convoluted and less enjoyable.
The stat game is becoming far too complex for young fans learning about the game.
Likewise, older fans are unable or uninterested in learning the sabermetrics of baseball.
Hearing an analyst on radio or television rattle off a long list of numbers without much context causes many listeners or viewers to change the channel.
Sounds like someone's reading from a phone book.
Traditionalists have been slow to embrace the more sophisticated view of the game despite MLB front offices embracing the new technology and terminology by hiring Ivy League grads, many of whom never played the game beyond Little League, for their analytics departments.
Here's the solution: One simple set of numbers, which everyone can calculate, to quantify performances by both hitters and pitchers on the baseball diamond.
OPS, or on-base percentage plus slugging percentage, is the simplest number to express a hitter's performance at the plate.
On-base percentage is a far more telling statistic than batting average because it credits the hitter for earning a walk, getting hit by a pitch or otherwise reaching base.
Slugging percentage is a straightforward statistic and easy to compute.
To calculate slugging percentage, one takes a player's total bases (one total base for a single, two for a double, three for a triple and four for a home run) and simply divides by his number of at-bats.
Barry Bonds, in his historic 2001 MLB season, achieved a slugging percentage of .863 which exceeded Babe Ruth's long-standing mark of .847 set in 1920.
Adding on-base percentage to slugging percentage, a strange way to express a meaningful number, produces a cumbersome total that needs simplification.
And here's the brilliance of this new idea: Instead of expressing an on-base percentage or slugging percentage with a three-digit decimal to the thousandths, simply lop off the thousandths column to express the numbers as a two-digit value.
A player with a .323 on-base percentage, that's the 2019 MLB average, reaches base slightly more than 32% of the time.
League average for slugging percentage stands at .437, a number needed to calculate OPS.
This season's average OPS is .760, expressed as 76 on our new scale.
The top two players in the National League this season are validating OPS as a worthy scale.
Christian Yelich and Cody Bellinger, engaging in a duel for National League MVP honors, are 1-2 in the league with numbers of 1.121 and 1.085, respectively.
On our scale, Yelich would be accorded a 112 rating with Bellinger earning a 109.
Mike Trout is the undisputed star of our easy-to-understand scale.
This season, Trout has earned an OPS of 1.110 (111) against a career number of 1.001 (100).
And so, we have the standard for our new measure.
If Mike Trout has accomplished an OPS rating of 100 over his nine-year career, then we have the yardstick by which to judge other players.
A rating of 100 is brilliant and a rating of 76 is league average.
The scale looks a lot like the grading system established at elementary schools nationwide where 90-100 would earn an "A" grade or All-Star status, 80-89 would earn a "B" grade and be considered solid but not spectacular, 70-79 would earn a "C" or satisfactory, 60-69 would earn a "D" or barely passing, and 59 or lower would earn a failing grade or in this case, a trip to the minor leagues.
Better yet, a pair of numbers expressed together could highlight a player's yearly performance against his career standard.
So Trout's numbers of 111/100 would list his yearly stats over his career stats and show the most talented hitter in the game today is enjoying an outstanding season, even by his lofty standards.
Trout's big-name teammate, Albert Pujols, is a different story.
The 39-year-old Dominican shows numbers of 73/93 (year/career) to illustrate the steep decline in his recent play.
So the answer is now clear the next time a wiseguy asks, "If Mike Trout is so good, then why have the Angels not won a playoff game during his time in Anaheim?"
The smart-aleck response: Trout's brilliance is offset by the overweight, slow-footed, past-his-prime Albert Pujols.
More precisely, baseball is about both run production and run prevention.
And pitching has not been a strong point for the Halos this decade.
The last starting pitchers to represent the Angels in the All-Star Game were C.J. Wilson and Jered Weaver in the 2012 season.
No starting pitcher in the current Angels rotation strikes fear in the heart of opponents with OPS-against numbers listed in parenthesis: Patrick Sandoval (73), Andrew Heaney (75), Griffin Canning (75), Dillon Peters (81) and Jose Suarez (94),
Each of the last two seasons, the Angels have won exactly 80 games.
This season, the team is on pace for, you guessed it, another 80 victories.
You can call the Halos consistent or you can call them middle-of-the-road, both labels apply.
Bottom line: Baseball is a team game and not even the sport's best player can overcome a truly mediocre franchise.
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