Tony Pena Jr. has 184 ABs and his OPS+ is -1

[inari]

Food for thought. Neifi Perez, Jose Macias, Tom Goodwin, Todd Hundley, whoever you wanna bring up... they have nothing on that. I'm challenging someone to prove that Pena isn't the worst regular in major league history.

[rocket]

Food for thought. Neifi Perez, Jose Macias, Tom Goodwin, Todd Hundley, whoever you wanna bring up... they have nothing on that. I'm challenging someone to prove that Pena isn't the worst regular in major league history.

 

how about the fact that he's tied for first in era+...ALL TIME?

[OleMissCub]

Whoa...

 

that's really all I can say.

[javy knows my name]

What's even sicker is that the Cubs picked a guy up this year with a worse OPS and NONE of TPJ's defensive prowess. It worked out ok, but still.

[CubColtPacer]

What's even sicker is that the Cubs picked a guy up this year with a worse OPS and NONE of TPJ's defensive prowess. It worked out ok, but still.

 

Edmonds did not have less than a .375 OPS when the Cubs picked him up.

[SouthSideRyan]

He was talking about Jon Lieber.

[javy knows my name]

What's even sicker is that the Cubs picked a guy up this year with a worse OPS and NONE of TPJ's defensive prowess. It worked out ok, but still.

 

Edmonds did not have less than a .375 OPS when the Cubs picked him up.

I think he had a -10 OPS+ somewhere along the way

[SouthSideRyan]

What's even sicker is that the Cubs picked a guy up this year with a worse OPS and NONE of TPJ's defensive prowess. It worked out ok, but still.

 

Edmonds did not have less than a .375 OPS when the Cubs picked him up.

I think he had a -10 OPS+ somewhere along the way

 

He had a negative OPS+ (Cubs stats only) about a week into his Cub career.

[javy knows my name]

What's even sicker is that the Cubs picked a guy up this year with a worse OPS and NONE of TPJ's defensive prowess. It worked out ok, but still.

 

Edmonds did not have less than a .375 OPS when the Cubs picked him up.

I think he had a -10 OPS+ somewhere along the way

 

He had a negative OPS+ (Cubs stats only) about a week into his Cub career.

My bad

[17 Seconds]

It's too bad he hit that one home run.

[Brett]

Food for thought. Neifi Perez, Jose Macias, Tom Goodwin, Todd Hundley, whoever you wanna bring up... they have nothing on that. I'm challenging someone to prove that Pena isn't the worst regular in major league history.

 

how about the fact that he's tied for first in era+...ALL TIME?

 

Seriously? That's wild.

[RedIvyCub]

Food for thought. Neifi Perez, Jose Macias, Tom Goodwin, Todd Hundley, whoever you wanna bring up... they have nothing on that. I'm challenging someone to prove that Pena isn't the worst regular in major league history.

 

how about the fact that he's tied for first in era+...ALL TIME?

 

Seriously? That's wild.

 

TJ did well out of the bullpen the other night. He hit 91 on the gun actually and retired the side 1-2-3. Maybe he should consider pitching since Aviles has obviously stolen his job away. Cannot be any worse than the likes of Jimmy Gobble and Joel Peralta.

[Derwood]

through 30 AB's in Oakland, Murton posted a -27 OPS+ before being demoted

[Vanilla Ice]

they need to make him a pitcher

[Hairyducked Idiot]

Someone explain to me how you can have a negative OPS+?

[wolf stansson]

Someone explain to me how you can have a negative OPS+?

If a 268 ops+ is possible (Bonds in 2002), the inverse of that would be -32 ops+

[ConstableRabbit]

Someone explain to me how you can have a negative OPS+?

Basically, you're more than 100 "points" below what the average player is producing. So like Wolf said... you can go over 200, so you can go below 0.

 

yeah, it means you're pretty awful

[Hairyducked Idiot]

Someone explain to me how you can have a negative OPS+?

Basically, you're more than 100 "points" below what the average player is producing. So like Wolf said... you can go over 200, so you can go below 0.

 

yeah, it means you're pretty awful

 

That doesn't make sense, because OPS+ is a normalization, right?

 

It's OPS/LeagueAverageOPS*100*park factor, right?

 

None of those numbers should be negative, so how is the result negative?

[Derwood]

Someone explain to me how you can have a negative OPS+?

Basically, you're more than 100 "points" below what the average player is producing. So like Wolf said... you can go over 200, so you can go below 0.

 

yeah, it means you're pretty awful

 

That doesn't make sense, because OPS+ is a normalization, right?

 

It's OPS/LeagueAverageOPS*100*park factor, right?

 

None of those numbers should be negative, so how is the result negative?

 

perhaps the park factor makes it negative, meaning Murton's 3 for 30 line might be an OPS+ of 0 in certain parks, but in the parks he played in, those numbers end up being even worse than "0"

[Hairyducked Idiot]

Someone explain to me how you can have a negative OPS+?

Basically, you're more than 100 "points" below what the average player is producing. So like Wolf said... you can go over 200, so you can go below 0.

 

yeah, it means you're pretty awful

 

That doesn't make sense, because OPS+ is a normalization, right?

 

It's OPS/LeagueAverageOPS*100*park factor, right?

 

None of those numbers should be negative, so how is the result negative?

 

perhaps the park factor makes it negative, meaning Murton's 3 for 30 line might be an OPS+ of 0 in certain parks, but in the parks he played in, those numbers end up being even worse than "0"

 

Park factor is scaled from 0-infinity, too, so it can't be negative, either.

 

Someone (baseball-reference?) must be using a definition of OPS+ that is different from the one I'm used to, there is no other way to get negatives into the equation.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Here's how BR does OPS+

 

Adjusted OPS+ - It doesn't appear on the player pages yet, but OPS+ is OPS (see above) normalized for both the park and the league the player played in. See below for a full description.

 

...

 

Adjusted OPS+

 

This value is calculated differently from the Total Baseball PRO+ statistic. I chose OPS+ to make this difference more clear. PRO+ as best I can tell is

 

PRO+ = 100 * ( OBP/lgOBP + SLG/lgSLG - 1)/BPF

 

Where lgOBP and lgSLG are the slugging and on-base percentage of a league-average player, and BPF is the batting park factor. This takes into account the difference in runs scored in a team's home and road games, so it doesn't depend on how good an offense or defense a team has.

 

My method is slightly more complicated, but I think it is more correct. The BPF is set up for runs and the way it is implemented in PRO+ applies it to something other than runs.

 

1. My method Compute the runs created for the league with pitchers removed (basic form) RC = (H + BB + HBP)*(TB)/(AB + BB + HBP + SF)

2. Adjust this by the park factor RC' = RC*BPF

3. Assume that if hits increase in a park, that BB, HBP, TB increase at the some proportion.

4. Assume that Outs = AB - H (more or less) do not change at all as outs are finite.

5. Compute the number of H, BB, HBP, TB needed to produce RC', involves the quadratic formula. The idea for this came from the Willie Davis player comment in the Bill James New Historical Baseball Abstract. I think some others, including Clay Davenport have done some similar things.

6. Using these adjusted values compute what the league average player would have hit lgOBP*, lgSLG* in a park.

7. Take OPS+ = 100 * (OBP/lgOBP* + SLG/lgSLG* - 1)

8. Note, in my database, I don't store lgSLG, but store lgTB and similarly for lgOBP and lg(Times on Base), this makes calculation of career OPS+ much easier.

[haltz]

To probably state the obvious, the '- 1' at the end of the equation makes it so that the average is 100 instead of 200. So instead of a player with no value having a 0 OPS+, he'd have a -100 OPS+.

 

Felix Hernandez has a 1188 OPS+ this year with a 5.000 OPS, as opposed to his -100 OPS+ in 2006 with a 0.000 OPS.

 

The reason that it's broken into SLG and OBP is basically that it correlates better with runs/out. If it was just a straight ratio that would tell you that a 75 OPS+ is 75% of league average, but it would tell you less about production. There may more to it, but part of the reason is that there's an implicit weighting of OBP this way. For example, in a league/park with a .330 lgOBP and a .450 lgSLG, you'll get two different answers for extreme hitters. You know that player A (.400/.400) is more valuable than player B (.300/.500), but quick-and-dirty OPS tells you they are equal. OPS+ does not.

 

.400/.400 = 110 OPS+

.300/.500 = 102 OPS+

 

OPS+ doesn't work as well at the extremes as something like EqA, but it's better than straight OPS, or OPS/lgOPS*100.

Edited July 30, 2008 by haltz

[Hairyducked Idiot]

To probably state the obvious, the '- 1' at the end of the equation makes it so that the average is 100 instead of 200. So instead of a player with no value having a 0 OPS+, he'd have a -100 OPS+.

 

They have to do that because they split up OPS into its components.

 

When the stat was first created, iirc, it was just OPS normalized to a league average of 100 and adjusted for park effects.

 

Once you add that -1 into the equation, you have the potential for negative numbers, which was what had me befuddled before.

[haltz]

Yes, I get that. If they want the average to be 100 instead of 200 like I said. Anyway, I don't think it was ever like you are suggesting. People confuse it with ERA+ and think it's a straight ratio like other "+" statistics, when it's really not. Really, it's misnamed and could be improved relatively easily, but it's easy and Forman has it on BRef for free, so it's caught on quickly.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

Hmm, I think you are right, it never was calculated the way I thought. I did just assume it was like ERA+.