Monday, July 12, 2004
Rolen and OPS
The buzz this year is Scott Rolen for NL MVP. It's in the media, and in the minds of the fans. Just take a look at this ESPN poll. Now Rolen is having a great year, and you can't argue with the success of the Cardinals, but then there's Barry.
OPS has moved into the mainstream, and is accepted as a good measure of performance. What do these numbers tell us? Well, at the All Star Break Barry is sitting at a cool 1.421. That's the highest that's ever been recorded. Nobody not named Ruth or Bonds has ever cleared 1.300. In fact, throw in Ted Williams and you can drop the bar to 1.250.
So how's Rolen doing? Well, he's at 1.017, good for #6 in all of baseball. The gap between Bonds and Rolen is .404. Take 1.017 and subtract out .404 and you get .613. So Bonds to Rolen is as Rolen is to...
Well, Tike Redman of the Pittsburgh Pirates who is putting up a 251/275/338 year. Tike Redman is pretty bad. In fact, the only players in baseball who are on pace to qualify for the batting title who have a lower OPS are Orlando Cabrera, Mark DeRosa, Brad Ausmus and Neifi Perez. In other words, the gap between Bonds and Rolen in OPS is equal to the gap between Rolen and the fifth worst regular in all of baseball.
Part of this is that people just expect Bonds to be Bonds. If anyone else was putting up a 600+/800- season, there wouldn't be any questions here. But we've just come to expect it these days...
posted by David 2:09 AM
