FanPost

OPS/3

So I was reading through Moneyball the other day and I came across this passage:

An extra point of on-base percentage was clearly more valuable than an extra point of slugging percentage - but by how much?  He (Paul DePodesta) proceeded to tinker with his own version of Bill James' "Runs Created" formula.  When he finished, he had a model for predicting run production that was more accurate than any he knew of.  In his model, an extra point of on-base percentage was worth three times an extra point of slugging percentage.(p.128)

DePo saw that adding OBP and SLG together meant they were of equal importance.  He knew this couldn't be true, that's why he created this formula.  So, I have calculated this value for a handful of A's players.  I call this value OPS/3 since the formula is a player's OBP plus 1/3 his SLG.

Player   OBP    SLG    OPS    OPS/3
Kendall  345    321    660    452
Johnson  355    451    806    505
Swisher  322    446    768    470
Ellis       384    477    861    543
Kotsay   325    421    746    465
Crosby   346    456    802    498
Bradley  350    484    834    511
Chavez   329    466    795    484
Payton   306    444    750    454
Kielty   350    395    745    482

Looking at these numbers, a few things jump out at me.  Kendall was widely considered to have had a terrible 2005 at the plate while JayPay was praised for picking up the offense.  Looking at their OPS, one could easily agree that Payton was a better hitter than Kendall this year, but if you look at their OPS/3, you see that their run production and, in turn value as a hitter is about equal.  The reason for this is that OPS/3 focuses much more on OBP, and Kendall is a much more patient hitter than Payton.
I wondered what the corellation between OPS and OPS/3 was, if a player had a high OPS it meant he had a high OPS/3. I figured if the corelation was high, then this whole experiment was a waste of time.  I found the r^2 to be .787 which is a poor correlation.  I know, I know, small sample size, but I still think there's something to this OPS/3 stat and we SABRANers should use it along side OPS not only because it's in Moneyball, our bible, but also cuz we should use the most accurate stat possible to calculate offensive production.  If it's good enough for DePo, it's good enough for me.