“Making The Case for Speed-Adjusted OPS”

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

Anybody who is a baseball statistics nerd (and judging by the fact that you clicked on this
video, you are probably a baseball statistics nerd) knows that, when it comes to judging the
offensive abilities of a Major League Baseball player, the OPS stat and its related OPS+ stat rule
the roost. These statistics have become so ubiquitous among hardcore baseball fans that
discussions about a player’s OPS have eclipsed the more traditional key offensive baseball stat,
the player’s batting average, in the lion’s share of debates about which player should be the MVP
and whether or a player is worth signing in free agency or trading for.
If you do not know what OPS is, allow me to give you a brief summary of what the
statistic is, how it is calculated, and why it is meaningful. If you already know, then you can go
ahead and skip to this point in the video.
OPS stands for “On-base percentage plus slugging,” and as the name suggests, it
combines a player’s on base percentage with their slugging percentage. On-base percentage
measure how often a player gets on base when they come up to bat, and is calculated by adding
up the player’s hits, walks, and hit by pitches and dividing it by the total number of plate
appearances that player has. The result is a percentage that lets you know how often that player
gets on base. Let’s say a player comes up to bat five times in a game, and he gets hit by a pitch,
walks, singles, grounds out, and strikes out. That would be three times he gets on base over five
plate appearances, for an on base percentage of .600 for that game.
A player’s slugging percentage is the average amount of bases that a player gets each at
bat. It is calculated by adding up a player’s singles, doubles multiplied by two, triples multiplied
by three, and home runs multiplied by four, and dividing that number by the total number of at
bats the player has. It’s also worth noting that the numerator in this equation is called “total
bases.” The result is a number between 0 and 4 that tells you how many bases that player
averages per at bat. Let’s say a player hits a single and a home run in four at bats, that would be
one for the single, and four for the home run. That gives us five total bases over four at bats, for a
slugging percentage of 1.25. I know what you are thinking, Ryan, that is not a percentage, its just
average amount of bases per at bat. My answer is: you are totally correct, but I did not name the
stat.
OPS simply adds these two numbers to create an all-encompassing offensive statistic that
measures both the batter’s ability to get on base and also how many bases he gets when he does
get on base. It takes into account contact, power, and plate discipline, and as such has become
the gold standard of our brave, new, statistic literate baseball world. OPS does a great job of
condensing multiple data points about a player’s offensive performance into one easily digestible
number, which may be part of the reason why it has become so popular.
CHAPTER TWO: THE SPEED-ADJUSTED OPS
Now we move on to the main point of this video: not to make an explainer on OPS or to
sing its praises, but rather to point out a limitation of OPS: its oversight in not accounting for
speed on the base paths. OPS only measures what a player does offensively at the plate and what
happens immediately after the ball is put into play, but these moments are not the only ones
where players have the opportunity to advance closer to home plate and give their team a better
chance to score runs.
Players also have an opportunity to advance on the basepaths on their own by stealing
bases. A player may hit a single and then steal second base and, in so doing, effectively turns
their single into a double. Similarly, a player may hit a single, attempt to steal second, get thrown
out by the opposing catcher, and effectively turn their single into an out with no runner on base.
Players also have an opportunity to hurt their teams chances of scoring when they ground
into double plays, but speedy players have the ability to mitigate the damage by beating out the
throw at first where slower players would not and get doubled up. These are three different
scenarios where the player affects their teams position on the basepaths that is not included in the
supposedly all-encompassing OPS stat.
To adjust for speed, one only needs to make some slight tweaks to the slugging
percentage formula. Instead of only calculating total bases divided by at bats, you would add
total bases plus stolen bases minus caught stealing minus the times the player grounds into a
double play and divide that number by at bats. Take this speed-adjusted slugging percentage, add
it to an unmodified on base percentage, and arrive at your speed-adjusted OPS.
By the way, I did not invent this statistic nor is this a novel idea. There is a brief article
on a website called A Very Simple Game dot com from 2015 talking about a speed adjusted
slugging percentage state which I will link down below.
CHAPTER THREE: OTIS NIXON
The speed-adjusted OPS may not make a huge difference in the evaluations of most
Major League Baseball players, but there are a few examples of guys who were very adept at
stealing bases for whom OPS does a disservice by ignoring a huge part of their game.
The first example that we will look at is that of Otis Nixon’s 1991 season with the
Atlanta Braves. In 1991, Otis Nixon batted .297, had an on base percentage of .371, had a
slugging percentage of .327, and an OPS of .698, only a few points higher than the 1991
National League average of .689.
The biggest part of Nixon’s offensive game is the part that OPS ignores, though. Otis
stole 72 bases in 1991 and got caught stealing 21 times. Additionally, his speed contributed to
him only being doubled up five times. Essentially, Otis turned added another base to his hit or
walk, doubles into singles or doubles into triples, 72 times, and he turned an on base situation
into an out 21 times. The five times that he grounded into a double play also made his out not
just his, but also the baserunner’s.
When we adjust his slugging percentage for his stolen bases, his caught stealings, and his
double plays: we get a speed-adjusted slugging percentage of .441, up 114 points from his actual
slugging percentage of .327. Add this to his on base percentage, and his OPS goes from
being .698 to .812. This is an unbelievable jump and turns what seems to be an average offensive
player into a top offensive player at his position in his league for that season.
CHAPTER FOUR: THE CAREER OF RICKEY HENDERSON
 The second example that we will look at is Rickey Henderson. To be clear, Rickey is not
a guy who has been forgotten or who was not valued when he played, and he doesn’t need me
defending him or correcting his stats to put him into his proper historical perspective, but he is a
guy for whom OPS does not tell the full story of his career.
Rickey had an OPS of .820 over a career that spanned 25 years. That is already a great
number, but it does not even take into account the thing that Rickey Henderson was the greatest
of all time at: stealing bases. Rickey is the all-time Major League leader in stolen bases at 1406.
He also got caught-stealing an all-time record of 335 times a game, but hey, it comes with the
territory. These numbers come out to a ridiculous per 162 game average of 74 stolen bases and
18 times caught stealing. When you also factor in the 172 times that he grounded into a double
play, his non-speed-adjusted career slugging percentage of .419 becomes .501. Add this to his on
base percentage, and his career OPS becomes .902, an increase in over 80 points.
To put this into perspective, let’s compare Rickey with one of the contemporary baseball
greats: Freddie Freeman. Freeman has been one of the best hitters in baseball for the last ten
years or so, but he does not add much to his team by adding bases with his base stealing ability
or beating out double plays. Speed actually subtracts from his game, as his normal OPS of .895
becomes a speed-adjusted OPS of .880. That’s still a great number, but by valuing bases added
with speed, Freeman becomes a slightly less valuable offensive player. By looking at speed-
adjusted OPS, we see that it tells us that Rickey Henderson was a slightly more valuable
offensive player than Freeman, where the traditional OPS stat tells us that Freeman was for and
away more valuable.
CHAPTER FOUR: CONCLUSION
What was the point of all of this? Am I pushing for a paradigm shift in how front offices
and fans rate and value players? Am I trying to make the case that Rickey Henderson was a
better offensive player than Freddie Freeman? No. I think the point of this video is to challenge
people to think about statistics and how the numbers and variables that are used to create
statistics result in data that reflect what the creator of the statistic values, not an objective statistic
that gives an irrefutable number assessing the value of the player.
I do think that OPS under values players who make contact and steal bases in favor of
players who hit a lot home runs, but that does not mean that speed-adjusted OPS is any more
objective or more “correct,” it just adds another variable that I think OPS overlooks. OPS can
make or break careers, as front offices use the number to assess the player’s value, but I am not
here to tell front offices how to do their job, nor am I in any position to tell them that they’re
wrong when they have access to so much more data than I do. If nothing else, this is a fun
experiment to see what happens when you tweak the statistics to create a number that takes into
account something that you think the standard numbers overlook.
Thank you for watching. This is my first ever video of this kind, so I know the editing
and production quality may not be up to snuff, but I am glad you watched anyway. Tell me what
you think? Is speed adjusted OPS a better measure of a player’s offensive value? Am I a quack
and baseball heretic? Is there a better way to value speed in baseball statistics? Let me know in
the comments down below, and if you liked the video, consider sharing it with your equally
nerdy baseball fan friends. Goodbye.