Interpretation of OPS
OPS does not present a complete picture of a player's offensive contributions. Factors such as baserunning, basestealing, and the leverage/timeliness of performance are not considered.
More expansive sabermetric measurements do attempt to incorporate some or all of the abovementioned factors. Nonetheless, even though it does not include them, OPS correlates quite well with team run scoring.
Other sabermetric stats, such as runs created and Wins Above Replacement, attempt to express a player's contribution directly in terms of runs and/or wins. However, a player's OPS does not have a simple intrinsic meaning.
OPS weighs on-base percentage and slugging average equally. However, on-base percentage correlates better with scoring runs. Statistics such as wOBA build on this distinction using linear weights, avoiding OPS' flaws. Magnifying this fault is that the numerical parts of OPS are not themselves typically equal (league-average slugging percentages are usually 75-100 points higher than league-average on-base percentages). As a point of reference, the OPS for all of Major League Baseball in 2008 was .749.
OPS has the advantage of being based on two already well-established stats whose legitimacy within baseball is uncontroversial. And if those stats are known, it is extremely easy to calculate, as one need only add the two numbers together.
Read more about this topic: On-base Plus Slugging
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