Thursday, May 3, 2012

wOBA v. OPS+

To see data click link.

My layman's first take.  Top 30 batting seasons.

I used the Lahman database to derive wOBA (weighted On Base Average) with fixed values and wOBAScale with different values for each season through 2010.  I used seasons with at least 500 PA.  Some concessions had to be made to the DBMS (database management system) I was using as null values negate a calculation: SF and IBB were omitted.

I copied OPS+ (On Base Plus Slugging adjusted for parks and era) leaders from http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/onbase_plus_slugging_plus_season.shtml

The summary tab has seasons sorted by:
wOBAScale
wOBA
OPS
OPS+

The top ten seasons match exactly between wOBA and OPS for seasons 1903-2010:
Bonds
Bonds
Ruth
Bonds
Ruth
Ruth
Williams
Bonds
Williams

And they are very close with OPS+:
Bonds
Bonds
Bonds
Ruth
Ruth
Ruth
Williams
Williams
Bonds
Ruth

wOBAScale is generally the same seasons among the top 30 (especially if you overlook those from the 1800s).  However, the order is changed and Ruth takes the top three:
Ruth
Ruth
Ruth
Williams
Bonds
Bonds
Ruth
Ruth
Bonds

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