OBP, Not making outs

There isn't much debate here about the importance of OBP, but this Case for OBP contains a couple of great points to use if you need to convince a non-believer.


We received tons of comments and Twitter feedback the last few weeks about how Mike Trout "wilted" or "collapsed" down the stretch. You see, he hit .289 in September. Putting aside that this is far from a poor batting average, Trout had a .400 on-base percentage in September. That was higher than his .399 mark for the whole season. Not to mention that as a leadoff man, Trout's job is clearly to get on base and score.

Here's another example, in trivia form: Name the winners of each batting title. It's pretty easy, right? The two MVPs, Miguel Cabrera and Buster Posey, were the batting champions.
Now name the two league leaders in OBP. I'll wait while you look it up and then act as if you knew off the top of your head.
It was Joe Mauer (.416) in the AL and Joey Votto* (.474) in the NL.
* Note: Votto was 26 plate appearances short of qualifying to technically win the batting title or OBP title (if there were one, which I'd love!). But giving him an out for each of those PAs knocks him down to .449, easily taking the crown.
Votto had Posey by a .474-.408 edge in OBP, so he made an out roughly 6.6 percent fewer times per plate appearance than Posey did, but Posey is the "batting champion."



And there's less luck involved in OBP since defense isn't involved. I wonder if "less" has been or could be measured.

Less luck because defense isn't involved as much.

To the extent that the strike zone is predictable (for example, when Joe West isn't behind the plate), walks come down to hitter and pitcher and nobody else. But even for someone like Adam Dunn, or late career (ie, post steroids-testing) Jason Giambi – Mendoza line hitters with generally high OBPs – batting average makes up the lion's share of OBP.

The same (less luck than in BA) can be said for SLG, too – maybe not quite to the same extent, since there are ballparks that give and ballparks that take away (and ballparks like Fenway that do both).

I think that either one is more meaningful than batting average, though. But there's an illusion of purity about batting average – OBP and SLG might both be more important to the actual business of scoring runs, but batting average is measuring the best "pure hitter." And it probably is as close as you can get to measuring that...but the problem is, that's not the object of the game.

Less luck because defense isn't involved as much.

To the extent that the strike zone is predictable (for example, when Joe West isn't behind the plate), walks come down to hitter and pitcher and nobody else. But even for someone like Adam Dunn, or late career (ie, post steroids-testing) Jason Giambi – Mendoza line hitters with generally high OBPs – batting average makes up the lion's share of OBP.

The same (less luck than in BA) can be said for SLG, too – maybe not quite to the same extent, since there are ballparks that give and ballparks that take away (and ballparks like Fenway that do both).

I think that either one is more meaningful than batting average, though. But there's an illusion of purity about batting average – OBP and SLG might both be more important to the actual business of scoring runs, but batting average is measuring the best "pure hitter." And it probably is as close as you can get to measuring that...but the problem is, that's not the object of the game.

Good points.

And I guess the answer my measurement question might be some combination of OBP and BABIP.

I'd argue batting average is less pure, since it completely ignores one component of scoring runs.

"These factors that contribute to scoring runs are approved by the powers that be, so we are going to count them. But this other component of scoring runs we sneer down our noses at, so we're going to ignore it."

Which is a roundabout way of agreeing with your point.

It ignores a component of scoring runs...because that's not what it's measuring.

It's as close as you can get to measuring "pure hitter" – not who has power, not who avoids making outs, just "who's good at getting hits." But, that's not the object of the game. So you're measuring guys on something that isn't quite what they are actually trying to do.

So in that respect, it's not pure. Ichiro's .350 and Wade Boggs's .350 aren't the same .350. Ichiro might be better in a game of "every pitch that ends in a hit is a point, and every pitch that doesn't end in a hit subtracts a point." That might make him a better "pure hitter" than Wade Boggs – but then, who cares? As a batter, Ichiro does not belong in the same conversation as Wade Boggs, now or ever.

Because it's right up there on the scoreboard: hits, runs, and errors.