On base percentage (OBP) plus slugging percentage (SLG) produce OPS, which can be a large and impressive number. However, it has been known for more than sixty years that the addition of OBP and SLG exaggerates and misrepresents the value of each as an individual statistic. The basic problem is that they both include Hits.

In an earlier ezine article on the current MLB strikeout epidemic, the formula published in a 1954 edition of Life Hall of Fame General Manager Branch Rickey magazine GOODBYE TO SOME ELDERLY BASEBALL IDEAS offered to indicate how he scored strikeouts. It also reached definitive conclusions about OBP and SLG.

The formula for team offense included three, “measurable ingredients,” OBP, SLG and “clutch,” which he said, “is simply the percentage of men who reached base and scored.” The question he had to answer was, “But how do they fit together?” He concluded that OBP and clutch went “together with runs scored, but extra-base power had a lower correlation.” Their The dramatic devaluation of extra-base power that followed is a direct contradiction of the current approach to hitting.

Since both OBP and SLG included Hits, he subtracted them from SLG to arrive at the “isolated power” he had “used for years” to evaluate players. Even then, he had to “give less weight to the potency of the additional base” for the formula to work. To that end, only three-fourths of the percentage was used to arrive at a “2% margin of error” when the formula was correlated to runs per game, per team, over the previous 20 years. While “isolated power” recently reared its head again in the media, I haven’t seen it incorporated with other stats to produce a reliable and usable number.

Rickey’s next step was to apply the formula to individual hitters. He concluded that “clutch” was “strictly a device figure”. Adding OBP to “isolated power,” he listed the top 25 hitters from “1920, the year the animated ball was used” through 1953. The top five were Babe Ruth, .752; Ted Williams, .702; Lou Gehrig, .666; Jimmy Foxx, .642; and Rogers Hornsby, .634. However, he admitted that #23-Ty Cobb, .542; “He deserved to be higher because he beat you with more of his punch.”

That statement about Cobb is the problem with these numbers. If hitter A hits 30 more doubles than hitter B, he has that number included in his SLG. If Batter B has 50 more net stolen bases than Batter A, he does not receive credit for adding those extra bases. If Batter A hits 15 more double plays than Batter B, due to B’s foot speed, where do those missed bases appear? Also, Batter B can go from 1st to 3rd with a single to the outfield, or score from 1st with a double when Batter A can’t. Simply put, the entire velocity quotient is, and always has been, absent from the stats that assess a hitter’s offensive productivity.

Another stat to consider is the number of non-productive outs a hitter has, in addition to steals and double plays. With the strikeout epidemic continuing at a record pace, the difference between hitters’ strikeouts must also be considered as part of the calculations. No runner reaches base, no runner advances or scores on a strikeout. He has no potential value. None! Until a statistic is devised that takes into account all the negative factors as well as the positive ones, any formula will be incomplete.