Harold Reynolds has opinions on OPS

Time to FireJoeMorgan this shit. Best part the article came directly from ken tremendous, as i'm following ken on twitter, cause i luv twitter!

It's been real interesting in the last couple years as I've watched how the importance of statistics has taken over how to analyze a baseball game.
Why do black people make it a habit to write exactly how they speak. Nothing better than starting a published article than with a grammatically incorrect run-on sentence. In the words of Chris Rock, "Black people love to keep it real. Real dumb".
Not all statistics work. Some do, some don't. And one of the stats that has become real popular is OPS. On-base plus slugging. All of a sudden, it's this stat that defines whether a guy is a good ball player or not.
Real: being or occurring in fact or actuality; having verified existence; not illusory
Really: truly: in accordance with truth or fact or reality
Harold, you are looking for the adverb really, not real.

Actually wOBA defines whether a guy is good or not, but ESPN won't implement wOBA for another 25 years
If you're a power hitter then the situation will dictate what a pitcher does with you - either walk you or pitch you real careful. So more than likely you're going to end up on base and therefore your on-base percentage goes up. This in my mind has become the stat the everyone thinks is the be all and end all. It is not.
How can people who played professional baseball be so oblivious to the game of baseball. Real weird. So, getting on base and not making outs because you are a power hitter who pitchers are afraid to pitch to does not make you a good player. I can't wait to hear what does!
If you have a guy like Adrian Gonzalez, for example, his OPS is going to be high - he's got a lot of home runs and walks a lot...because you're not going to pitch to him. Power guys like Giambi and Dunn have always had high OPS because no one wants to pitch to them. But it takes two hits to score them from first.
OMG, why does every discussion have to involve Adam Dunn. He hates baseball and proves it by walking and hitting 500 foot homer runs. Moral of the story, no matter how high your OPS, you can only be a good player if you have guys behind you who can also hit. Remember that year(2001) when Sammy Sosa had 94 more RBIs than the next closest guy on the team and an OPS of 1.174? Yeah, worst season ever!
Big power hitters swing and miss and strikeout. Or they hit home runs and walk. And at the end of the year their OBP is always going to be higher than most of the other guys on the team because they clog the bases.
I don't care to look up Harold Reynold's career stats, but i'm guessing he excelled at not clogging the bases. He clogged the bases so rarely that he almost never scored runs or other frivolous things have no affect on baseball games. You know what helps unclogg bases? Sac bunts. I seriously want to find the guy who first used the term "clogging the bases" and punch him in the face. I will assume it was Tim McCarver.
A few years ago this stat grabbed my ear when someone said that Ichiro doesn't walk enough. So I said, "What do you mean?" And they said his OBP could be so much higher if he walked more. The guy gets 200 hits a season! And he scores over 100 runs. I think that speaks for itself.
What if we lived in a hypothetical world where Ichiro did draw 70 walks per year? How many runs would Ichiro score then? Ah, who cares. He gets 200 hits and 100 runs. No need to improve and maximize your ability. That would be real stupid

2 comments:

RD said...

How about I'm the only one on your blog besides the writers. The blog roll is for those that are truly worthy. I'll put you on but it may get taken off later lol. Put me on yours too.

David "MVP" Eckstein said...

Very funny stuff. LOLed quite a bit

Few notes:
-Reynolds walked 9.1% of the time for his career. The current league average is 9.0%.

-I despite Reynolds' assumption that all big power hitters are TTO guys. Pujols, Miguel Cabrera, El Caballo, Chase Utley and HanRam (to name a handful) would all like to disagree. And you have a problem with guys like Carlos Pena, Adam Dunn, Evan Longoria or even Big Hurt back in the day, then you have some clear emotional issues to work out because they've all been MVP caliber players. Also, what about Ryan Howard? Where do you stand there, Harold Reynolds? ESPN loves Ryan Howard, but he's a big power guy who walks a lot. Is your mind now blown?