Quote:
Originally Posted by Roof-Daddy
Batting average is an archaic stat, what matters most is having guys who can get on base, and slug (extra base hits). Unfortunately they aren't doing this successfully either, despite having done it very well in the past.
|
I agree with this, with the caveat that at this exact point in the season I think there's a place for batting average. It reverts to a "real" value faster than OPS because it only considers hits generically, so it doesn't need quite as big a sample size.
Example: Davis Schneider has a batting average of 250. He's only started twice so he has a small sample, but that's probably pretty close to where he ends up. Hopefully a bit higher (278 last year) but it's in the neighbourhood.
However, since he has 2 HR his OPS is 1.333. Three players hit over 1.0 OPS last year (Ohtani, Seager and Acuņa), and nobody was over 1.1. I don't think Schneider will be the best hitter in MLB this year, that's just an artifact of a small sample size and a couple of early HR.
(Although he did actually hit over 1.0 OPS last year, but only over 116 at-bats so it doesn't count for league stats)