Baseball is often called the unofficial national game or a national pastime of the States. As with any other game, it also started as a time pass with no properly developed rules, first officially played in North America later gained popularity in the Caribbean as well as Asia. Sports enthusiasts don’t need much introduction to the game, but it is more than entertainment. It uses statistics more than any other sport to evaluate the performance of the players.
A field of study called sabermetrics was also developed as a statistics and analytical tool for baseball. OBP, SLG, OPS, WHIP, and WAR are popularly used statistics to analyze baseball players’ skills. These terms have gained more popularity than terms like batting average as the evaluation just became easier with these statistical numbers.
The article provides everything you need to know about OPS like its meaning, calculation, and more.
The Importance Of On-base Percentage And Slugging Percentage
Table Of Contents
- 1 The Importance Of On-base Percentage And Slugging Percentage
- 2 How Is OPS Calculated?
- 3 Components Of OPS
- 4 What Is A Good Slugging Percentage?
- 5 Performance Metrics
- 6 Advanced Metrics
- 7 How Does OPS Compare To Other Metrics?
- 8 Youth And High School Baseball
- 9 Sum Up
- 10 FAQs and Common Questions
What Is OPS?
OPS is the abbreviation for on-base plus slugging, which is a baseball statistic or sabermetric used to calculate the batter’s skills. It calculates the efficiency of a batter to reach the base and also their ability to hit. OPS can measure a player’s skills better than batting average. It is one of the easily understandable statistics in baseball. An OPS of .800 is considered above-average.
What Does OPS Stand For?
OPS stands for on-base plus slugging. It is the added total of on-base percentage and slugging percentage. On-base percentage is the batter’s ability to reach base per plate appearances. The slugging percentage is the number of bases per at-bat.
What Is OPS In Baseball Terminology?
OPS in baseball is the sum total of on-base percentage and slugging percentage of a player. That means the player’s ability to reach base and the quality of the hits produced are calculated. These two are the most needed offensive skills in baseball. It is more effective than the traditional methods of calculating a player’s skills as it takes more than one statistic. OPS covers OBS, SLG, plate appearances, walks, strikeouts, and slash lines together to better analyze the overall performance into numbers.
How Is OPS Calculated?
OPS is calculated by adding on-base percentage and slugging percentage of the baseball player.
OPS Baseball Formula
OPS = OBP (on-base percentage) + SLG (slugging percentage)
OBP = H + BB + HBP
AB + BB + SF + HBP
SLG = TB
AB
Where H stands for hits, BB stands for bases on balls or walks, HBP equals times hit by pitch, AB for at-bats, SF for sacrifice flies, and TB for total bases.
Therefore, OPS = AB (H + BB + HBP) + TB (AB + BB + SF + HBP)
AB (AB + BB + SF + HBP)
OPS Formula Calculator
Many online sites calculate the OPS of any player or for yourself if you give the number of hits, bases, runs, and other details.
Components Of OPS
What Is The On-Base Percentage (OBP)?
OBP is the frequency of the batter reaching the base per plate appearance. It is also called on-base average. This includes hits, walks, and hit-by-pitches and does not include fielding errors, fielder’s choice, uncaught third strikes, fielder’s obstruction, or catcher’s interference. It is the ratio of the batter’s times of base to the sum of at-bats, bases on balls, hit by pitch, and sacrifice flies. Times on base is the sum of hits, bases on balls, and times hit by pitch.
OBP Formula
OBP = Hits + Walks + Hit by Pitch
At Bats + Walks + Hit by Pitch + Sacrifice Flies
= H + BB + HBP
AB + BB + HBP + SF
What Is A Good OBP In Baseball?
Players can have OBP that are solid to exceptional. A solid OBP is .340, a very good is ranked .360, and great is above .360. An exceptional player would have an OBP of .400 or higher. Ted Williams, who has .482 is considered the all-time leader in on-base percentage.
What Is Slugging Percentage (SLG)?
SLG is the productivity of the batter at the base. It is the number of bases per at-bat of a player. SLG is considered one of the best ways to calculate the power of a player as it includes singles, doubles, triples, home runs, and at-bats.
SLG Formula
Slugging percentage = Total Bases
At-bats
SLG = (1B) + (2 x 2B) + (3 x 3B) + (4 x HR)
AB
1B, 2B, and 3B are singles, doubles, and triples respectively, HR is home runs, and AB is at-bats.
What Is A Good Slugging Percentage?
SLG of .450 or higher is considered above average, and .500 to .600 are considered great players. 4.000 is considered the maximum possible slugging percentage and some players have achieved this for a short period, but nobody ever has retired with such a higher percentage. Babe Ruth holds the highest career slugging percentage of .690.
What Is The Relationship Between OBP And SLG?
OBP calculates a player’s ability to reach base per plate appearance and SLG calculates the power of the hitter by calculating the number of bases per at-bat. Both these calculate certain caliber of the players but won’t get to the fact of understanding the full potential of a player. By calculating both these statistical values together, a player’s hits, walks, hit by pitch, at-bats, sacrifice flies, bases of singles, doubles, and triples are calculated. The final statistical value is OPS, which is considered the most effective way of calculating a player’s skills in baseball.
Performance Metrics
What Is A Good OPS In Baseball?
An OPS of .700 to .800 or higher is considered to be above average. Players who are considered to be excellent scored an OPS of .900 and above. Some players were able to score 1.000 and above and are considered elite.
What Is An Average OPS In Baseball?
The league average can vary depending on points from year to year. But generally taking the above-average on-base plus slugging in Major League Baseball is .700 throughout the league. Any player who can score .700 and above is considered the top third of all hitters in Major League Baseball.
What Is A Good OPS In Baseball For High School?
High school baseball varies from college or major league baseball as the size of the ground, innings, and rules differ. Even though OPS is calculated, batting average and OBP are still considered better indicators of the player’s skills to suit the rules of the game. 0.600 AVG, SLG of above 1.000, and 0.700 OBP are considered great scores in high school baseball.
What Are The Best OPS In Baseball?
Legendary players in baseball have marked their places in history. The sabermetrics reveals the statistics of their game throughout their career. The following are some of the best players of baseball.
MLB OPS Leaders
Babe Ruth is said to be the greatest hitter of all time and holds the highest OPS of 1.1636, which is the highest ever calculated. Ted Williams is considered one of the greatest Major League players. He retired with an OPS of 1.1155. Lou Gehrig had a baseball career of OPS 1.0798, and Barry Bonds retired with an OPS of 1.0512 are some of the greatest MLB players.
Highest Career OPS Players
Babe Ruth had the best career span of OPS of 1.1636. Ted Williams had an OPS of 1.1155. These two are the most-heard names while talking about baseball.
Lou Gehrig, Oscar Charleston, and Barry Bonds are the following ranks after Ted Williams. Aaron Judge is the active leader of the New York Yankees in MLB and is tied for 10th rank in OPS.
What Are The Average And Best Slugging Percentages?
Slugging percentage (SLG), also called slugging average, calculates the batting productivity of a hitter. Babe Ruth scored .690, the highest career SLG in MLB. It is represented with a decimal following three numbers but spoken as the numbers without the decimal. The slugging percentage is a value from 0 to 4 but a major league player’s SLG would most probably be less than 1 as the majority of at-bats will be 0 or 1.
Average Slugging Percentage
An SLG of .430 is considered a good or above-average score. Scoring above .500 is considered exceptionally good.
Slugging Percentage Leaders
Babe Ruth holds the record for the highest slugging percentage .847 in Major League Baseball until 2001 when Barry Bonds scored .863. Josh Gibbon scored .974 in Negro League Baseball in 1937.
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Advanced Metrics
What Is OPS+ (Adjusted OPS)?
OPS+ is a scaled version of OPS. It not only adds on-base percentage and slugging percentage but also considers park factors and league factors. OPS+ is also called adjusted OPS because it is an advanced stat of OPS as it calculates the player’s home ballpark dimension or altitude which was not included in OPS. The value of OPS is usually below 1 and those who scored an OPS above 1 are legends. But for OPS+, a score of above 100 is considered more than the average score. A player with more than 120 OPS+ score is excellent and scoring above 150 only occurs rarely.
How Is OPS+ Calculated?
Multiply the sum of the on-base percentage by the park-adjusted on-base percentage and the slugging percentage by the park-adjusted slugging percentage minus 1.
OPS+ = 100 x (OBP/lgOBP + SLG/lgSLG – 1)
lgOBP is the park-adjusted OBP and lgSLG is the park-adjusted SLG of the league.
OPS+ Leaders 2024
Aaron Judge and Mike Trout scored 173, the highest OPS+ of 2024. Juan Soto, Shohei Ohtani, and Bryce Harper scored 160, 157 and 143 respectively. These are the first five ranks of adjusted OPS of 2024.
How Does OPS Compare To Other Metrics?
Baseball uses statistics more than any other sport. There are lots of traditional stats like batting average, RBI, winning percentage, ERA, fielding average, and many more. These stats lacked the value of something and as a result, newer statistical calculations evolved paving the way for even a new field of study sabermetrics.
It developed new and advanced analytic tools to calculate the ability of players. The most commonly used are OBP and SLG but even newer statistics are OPS, WHIP (walks plus hits per inning pitched), and WAR (wins above replacement). Modern statistics are more accurate as they find solutions for many errors made by traditional statistics.
OPS calculates the batter’s overall ability whereas WHIP calculates a pitcher’s ability. WHIP is the sum of walks and hits a pitcher surrendered divided by the number of innings pitched. WIN calculates the additional wins a player’s team has achieved after the player was substituted by a replacement-level player.
The traditional statistic for measuring a hitter’s success is batting average (BA), which is calculated by dividing the player’s hits by their total at-bats. OPS and BA are not similar as they show different measurements of the player. The batting average calculates a hitter’s ability to get hits while OPS calculates the ability to get on base and hit for power together. OPS gives better accuracy than the batting average as it considers more skills required for a batter.
Slugging Percentage vs. Batting Average
Batting average is an easy statistic as it only takes into account the hits a player gets and the number of times they get the chance to bat. Whereas slugging percentage measures doubles, triples, and home runs. It is the total number of bases a player gets per at-bats. The slugging percentage does not take all hits to the same value, as the value of singles and doubles are not equal when scoring runs. Therefore slugging percentage gets a better value considering power.
Importance Of OPS In Modern Analytics
OPS, unlike any other traditional statistics, does not only take a single skill to evaluate a player’s ability. It includes many other skills required for a player like hits, bases on balls or walks, hit by pitch, at-bats, sacrifice flies, and total bases. It is like statistics combining other simpler statistics. OPS makes baseball statistics or sabermetrics easier to a single value number than many values. Even a person who is new to baseball can easily understand OPS.
Youth And High School Baseball
Baseball is not just a sport for Americans. One of the major reasons for this is that the sport is familiarized from a very young age and later turned into a serious competition. The intensity of the game increases as the children age. The state offers great opportunities for the youth who excel in the game. The rules and materials used for the game vary in safety and quality.
Intermediate, Junior, and Senior League Baseball are youth baseball divisions of Little League Baseball. These are more advanced versions of Little League Baseball than the younger versions which are for very young children. Intermediate League is for children aged between 11 and 13, Junior League is for children aged between 12 and 14, Senior League is for 13 to 16 years old, and Big League is for children between 16 and 18. The size of the court, the number of innings and players, and the intensity vary for each age group. It is like a slow development to play in the National Leagues.
As students get into high school, these games develop a sense of teamwork, strategy, and skill development. High school baseball has seven innings and not nine as of college or major league. A game is considered complete in five innings so as to get a winner even in short-time schedules. It also has a 90-second time limit between innings and a 20-second pitch timer.
What Is An Average OPS In Baseball Youth?
The usual average OPS is .750, and this is considered even in baseball youth. The quality of the game varies depending on many factors other than major league games. However, SLG and OBP are taken separately into consideration in youth games.
What Is A Good OPS In Baseball Reddit For Youth Players?
OPS average for youth is also reported to be .750. The game would be less severe than for the seniors. OBP and SLG are also considered separately in youth players.
What Is OPS In Baseball High School?
OPS in high school baseball is the same as any other baseball league game. The average is taken to be .750 and any value higher than that is considered a good score.
Sum Up
OPS is an important statistic in baseball. It is one of the modern and most used statistics to evaluate a baseball player using a simple formula. OPS is the sum of on-base percentage and slugging percentage. OPS made baseball statistics easier than ever before. Even though it can evaluate a player’s ability more than traditional statistics like batting average, it has some faults too. OPS ignores defensive values and dimensions of the home ballpark and values both SLG and OBP equally.
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FAQs and Common Questions
Slugging or slugging percentage (SLG) in baseball is a statistical value of the ability of a player to get to the base per at-bat. The average value is .400 and the highest-scored player is Babe Ruth. he had a career SLG of .690.
Aaron Judge has an OPS of 1.159, Shohei Ohtani has an OPS of 1.036, Juan Soto has an OPS of .989, and Bobby Witt Jr. has an OPS of .977.
A player has to improve the number of hits as well as the strength of the hits to increase the score of OPS. It is the sum of on-base percentage and slugging percentage, so increasing both these values can increase OPS.
An OPS of .700 and above is considered an above-average score. .800 to .900 are very good scores. Scoring above 1.000 OPS is an extraordinary value.
OPS of .750 is a good score and scoring above 1.000 is exceptional. Only a legendary player can score 1.5 OPS.
