Friday, September 25, 2009
How is this possible?
Posted by Dan NovickThis is a repeat of an earlier post. Hopefully, the comments will work this time.
Usually when one of us here at THT Live links to a post it's because there is something provocative in the writing of the post that we'd like to either point out or elaborate on. This isn't really one of those times, but I'd like to point something out anyway. This morning at Beyond the Box Score, Sky Kalkman gave us some trivia questions to ponder from Baseball Reference. The answers to questions three and four are what confused Sky, myself, and I'm sure several other people. Here they are:
Questions:
3. Which is better according to OPS+ and ERA+, the Padres offense or their pitching?
4. Which is better according to OPS+ and ERA+, the Rockies offense or their pitching?
Answers:
3. Their hitting, and it's not even close. Their OPS+ is 95 with a league average of 94 (explain that to me) while their ERA+ is 84 with a league average of 101.
4. They're equally impressive, with their OPS+ at 100 with a league average of 94 and their ERA+ at 106.
Sky doesn't quote ERA+ in question four, which is also confusing since he quotes it as 101 in the previous question. I had always thought that the league average OPS+ and ERA+ by definition had to be exactly 100. If an OPS+ 115, for example, is supposed to be 15% better than league average, then what's going on here? If almost everybody is below average, then what's average?
Anybody know what's going on here?
Dan Novick is a lifelong Yankees fan, and still gets the chills every time Enter Sandman plays from the Yankee Stadium speakers. He welcomes comments and questions via e-mail.
Could it be park adjusted some how? That’s just a shot in the dark, but that would explain the drop in league average OPS+ and the increase of league average ERA+?