By Brian Joura November 1, 2020
We like things that are easy. It’s why we add together OBP and SLG to get OPS, which we use as a shorthand for offensive production. In mathematical reality, you never add things with different denominators. But adding together OBP and SLG gets you very close to the “right” answer so we do it anyway. If you’re at a computer and can look up FanGraphs, you’re better using wRC+. Here’s a snippet from the FG glossary on wRC+:
Similar to OPS+, Weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+) measures how a player’s wRC compares with league average after controlling for park effects. League average for position players is 100, and every point above 100 is a percentage point above league average. For example, a 125 wRC+ means a player created 25% more runs than a league average hitter would have in the same number of plate appearances. Similarly, every point below 100 is a percentage point below league average, so a 80 wRC+ means a player created 20% fewer runs than league average.
wRC+ is park and league-adjusted, allowing one to to (sic) compare players who played in different years, parks, and leagues. Want to know how Ted Williams compares with Albert Pujols in terms of offensive abilities? This is your statistic. wRC+ is the most comprehensive rate statistic used to measure hitting performance because it takes into account the varying weights of each offensive action and then adjusts them for the park and league context in which they took place.
Since the glossary mentioned OPS+, let’s bring that into the equation. Since the start of the 2018 season, with a minimum of 900 PA, the top six players in wRC+ are:
Mike Trout
Christian Yelich
Alex Bregman
Mookie Betts
Nelson Cruz
Juan Soto
Few would argue those players didn’t belong as the top hitters in the game. Now let’s check the top six for OPS+ — Trout, Yelich, Betts, Bregman, Cruz and Soto. Actually, we could expand it to the first nine players and they would be the same on both lists but with more guys in different orders. After that we start to see some differences, as guys with extreme OBP or SLG start to show up. The issue is that OPS doesn’t give the proper weight to OBP, which isn’t a big problem most of the time, yet shows up with guys who have really high (or low) marks in one category compared to the other.
Let’s do a chart of the top four Mets hitters the past three seasons with both metrics:
|
Player |
OPS+ |
wRC+ |
|
141 |
137 |
|
|
140 |
139 |
|
|
138 |
140 |
|
|
130 |
128 |
History is useful in WRC+ and OPS+. But I would heavily weight what occurred latest. Smith and, to a lesser degree, Conforto were awesome in 2020. Smith is an absolute extra base hit machine. He was considered the best pure hitter in his draft class. He delivered big in 2021. Can’t overlook that.
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