At around the same time the MLB all-star festivities happen each year, fans often turn their eyes to changes the league ought to make. This year, however, the time has come to give the league a year off from our complaints and instead go after the sports media.
The change I propose is a major one, but easily implemented: the media should stop focusing on the Triple Crown statistics, especially for hitters. When baseball took its place as the national pastime of the United States, it made sense to focus on obvious numbers like batting average, homeruns, and runs batted in. It still makes sense to appreciate those statistics -- RBIs, in particular -- but we also know now that on-base percentage and slugging percentage tell us far more about a batter than his number of homeruns and his batting average do.
On-base percentage, or OBP, is just what's its name implies: how often the batter gets on base when he makes a plate appearance. To calculate it, take the numbers of hits and walks and divide it by the number of at-bats and walks. Players with high on-base percentages make fewer outs and score more runs. Slugging percentage measures how often a player puts the ball into play and what happens when he does. It is calculated by dividing the batter's total bases by his number of at-bats.
If John and Joe are both batting .300, but John slugs .400 and Joe slugs .550, John is mostly a singles hitter; Joe probably puts most of his shots in the outfield, producing homeruns and doubles. Numerous studies have shown that OPS (On-base Plus Slugging) or SLOP (Slugging percentage times On-base Percentage) is the most accurate and effective way to measure hitters.
For instance, if you read that Barry Bonds is hitting .350, you know that he's doing very well at the plate, but if you see that his on-base percentage is over .600, you realize that nearly two-thirds of the time he makes a plate appearance, he puts himself in position to score and his team doesn't get an out.
When you see that Bonds has 20 homers, it's clear that he's not just hitting for average, either. But looking at batting average and homeruns doesn't differentiate Barry very strongly from, say, Manny Ramirez. The Boston slugger is batting .340 and has 20 HRs -- almost the same as Bonds. In fact, Ramirez has 60 RBIs to Barry's 40, so going on the Triple Crown statistics, you'd say that Ramirez is the more dangerous hitter. You'd be very wrong.
When I was young, my father told me about a Yankees game he'd seen many years before. Mickey Mantle was at the plate, and the pitcher was being cautious not to leave anything up for him to hit. In fact, one of his pitches bounced off the dirt before it even hit the plate. Mick, my dad told me, caught the pitch on the bounce and knocked it over the wall. I don't know if the story's true, but that's the way pitchers play Bonds, too. That he has a batting average at all is remarkable.
Bonds, as of June 29, had 165 at-bats and 109 walks, 57 of them intentional. Ramirez had 268 at-bats and 48 walks, including 10 intentional passes. Bonds had 16 strikeouts -- three fewer than his 19 homeruns -- and Ramirez had 56. Barry had grounded into three double plays; Ramirez, into 10. Bonds, with 126 total bases, 109 walks, two hit-by-pitch and three stolen bases, had made his way over 240 bases less than halfway through the season. Ramirez, in the same time, had 177 total bases, 48 walks, 2 HBP, and a stolen base, for a total of 228.
240-228 isn't a big difference, but Bonds only had 276 total plate appearances; Ramirez had 321. That's a long way of saying that Bonds was slugging .764 and had an OBP of .612; Ramirez was slugging .660 and had a .442 OBP. If you give Bonds pitches to hit, he's more likely to knock one into McCovey Cove -- more than 11.5% of his at-bats produce homeruns -- than he is to strike out. Bonds, with 58 hits and 109 walks, had gotten on base more often than Ramirez -- in fewer plate appearances -- and had scored 59 runs, third-best in the major leagues (Ramirez, with 46 runs, was tied for 37th).
Ramirez is an extremely good hitter and my purpose here isn't to insult him or imply that he's overrated. If you look at the Triple Crown statistics, Ramirez seems to be having a better season than Bonds, but if you examine more meaningful statistics -- OBP, slugging percentage, runs, and RBIs -- then it becomes clear that Bonds is having another legendary season while Ramirez is "only" having an excellent one.
Casual fans have gotten used to the Triple Crown numbers -- 100 years of tradition will do that -- but emphasizing OBP and slugging percentage instead of batting average and homeruns will give fans a deeper appreciation of the game. That isn't to say the other statistics should go away, but if the newspaper or television report is only going to give me one or two statistics, I'd rather see slugging percentage than batting average.
The pitching Triple Crown -- wins, ERA, and strikeouts -- receives far less attention, but I wouldn't be the first to suggest that wins have more to do with what team you play for than how good you are. Just ask Freddy Garcia. WHIP -- Walks plus Hits per Inning Pitched -- on the other hand, is arguably the best tool we have for measuring a pitcher's effectiveness.
With the rise of fantasy sports, we pay more attention to statistics than ever before. Doesn't it make sense to focus on the ones that matter?
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