Let’s call OPS/LgOPS “SOPS+” for “straight OPS” plus. People think that OPS+ is SOPS+, and it is not.
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To me, it is a parody of sabermetrics when people complain about OPS+ not being SOPS+, for any reason other then the confusion caused by its name.

Are there people complaining about that somewhere? I'm sure Patriot has someone in mind, but I've never seen that complaint, which sounds pretty silly to me, for the reasons he states.

Are there people complaining about that somewhere?

I have never heard anyone complain about it. There may be some surprise, but for the kind of people who use OPS+ in the first place, the fact that it is more accurate by giving greater weight to OBP is a benefit, not a detriment.'

I also disagree that slugging percentage is not a fundamental baseball measurement. It is not as good as Isolated Power -- but then again, Branch Rickey knew that as far back as 1954, but it is a useful measure.

I also liked this comment by him: " If somebody asks you, “How do you know that just adding them together weights them properly?”, how do you respond?" We all respond the same way: We know for a fact that it does not weigh them properly. OBA should have greater weight. But it is sufficient for the purpose.

And the mad dash over the cliffs of false precision continues apace.

Some people are really shocked to learn that OPS+ is calculated as OBA/LgOBA + SLG/LgSLG - 1

I'm having a lot of trouble dealing with that, yes. I may head straight to the bar today and not check in at the office at all.

Give me Total Average or give me death!

Some people are really shocked to learn that OPS+ is calculated as OBA/LgOBA + SLG/LgSLG - 1.

I was way more shocked when I heard Elvis died, but maybe that was just me.

Why don't we use SLOP+?

When I first read on baseball it took me a long time to understand why people add SLG and OBA together. Turns out there was very little logic behind it. It's convenient because it was easier to do addition between two rate stats, something you can do in your head. In comparision SLGxOBA is more logical, albeit complicated (multiplication), method.

However, when it comes to OPS+, we are already presuming division, which you can't do in your head. Since we have to use a calculator or a computer, why don't we use , say, SLOP/league SLOP for total offensive evaluation. Does such a stat exist?

It's SLOB, not SLOP. The one thing that I like about OPS is that you can divide it by 3 and get a quick and dirty EQA, which has the same benchmarks as batting average.

Are there people complaining about that somewhere?

There are complaints that an 80 OPS+ is not "20% worse" than a 100 OPS+.

The one thing that I like about OPS is that you can divide it by 3 and get a quick and dirty EQA, which has the same benchmarks as batting average.

I don't see the point of trying to align it to give similar "benchmarks" as BA.

I don't see the point of trying to align it to give similar "benchmarks" as BA.

Because I'm old and I remember "knowing" that a .300 BA was a sign of a good season, .250 or .260 was average, and .200 was Mario Mendoza territory.

Now if you asked me what the benchmarks for VORP and WARP are, I'd be lost.

I don't see the point of trying to align it to give similar "benchmarks" as BA.

EWK is really Gleeman in disguise! Random multipliers!

Are there people complaining about that somewhere?

there is actually people complaining about that. It is usually stat newbies or people who have little or no intention of learning about stats beyond HR, AVG, and RBI.

Patriot ran into them the other day in this thread, causing him to probably write this "rant".

Yes, there are unfortunately a few people complaining about this; half of this year's SABR statistical committee was wasted by dealing with such a complaint (while the other half was wasted by someone's new statistic that counts bases). We really need to get past this rather pointless discussion, however.

And SLOB (or whatever you want to call it) is not really better than OPS on an individual level; it's just much better on a team level. If you want to compare teams, I'm sure Adjusted SLOB would be better than Adjusted OPS, but I doubt there's much of a difference when it comes to rating individual players.

Plus, Adjusted OPS was invented by Pete Palmer in the 1970s, so it's been around for 30 years.

Audacity! Hubris! Overweening pride!