How to Better Understand the Performance of MLB Players

 

By Jay Palitto

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When looking at the prowess of baseball players, the stats that most people use are the more well-known ones such as home runs and batting average and runs batted in. However, there is an often overlooked statistic that can be more proving of a player's ability at any given time. That stat is OPS+.

 

OPS+., and its other "+" related stats, are era and ballpark adjusted stats that take into account the hitting environment a player encounters where 100 is always average. This stat helps weed out the players who may predominantly play in hitter-friendly stadiums who can put up monstrous numbers while still being an average player as well as guys who benefitted from an era in which the environment for scoring runs in the MLB was better.

 

Take, for instance, the longtime second basemen for the Houston Astros, Jose Altuve. In 2017, Altuve batted .346 with 204 hits, both of which led the American League, as well as accumulating 24 home runs and 81 RBIs on his way to being named the AL's Most Valuable Player. For his efforts, Altuve earned himself a 160 OPS+, making him 60% better than a league average hitter.

 

Five years later, in 2022, Altuve's numbers were down in his age 32 season. The veteran was only able to muster up a .300 batting average, 158 hits, 57 RBIs, and multiple other stats such as slugging percentage and OPS that were much lower than the heights of his MVP campaign. However, for his efforts this season, Altuve had a higher OPS+ than in 2017 at 161.

 

The key to understanding why Altuve was technically better in 2022 than in 2017, despite worse stats on paper, is understanding the run environment that he played in in both years.

 

2017 was in the middle of the MLB's juiced ball era, a time period during the late 2010s in which people theorized that the baseballs Major League Baseball was using baseballs had much more bounce to them in years past causing power numbers around the league to skyrocket. This era ended following the 2019 season, a season in which four different teams easily surpassed the single-season home run record.

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What this tells us is that Altuve was playing in a much more hitter-friendly run environment in his 2017 MVP season than he was in 2022. This means that while Altuve's stats in 2017 were better on paper, he was a better hitter in 2022 due to the circumstances around him.

 

If there is one thing to take away from all of this, it is that counting stats are not always necessarily the entire story when it comes to how well a player is performing. It is more important to look at the factors that can affect a player's performance and make sure everything is taken into account