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lgOPS, lgERA

metsmarathon Jan 04 2006 10:47 AM

so i was clicking around www.baseballreference.com, and i've started to notice something odd for 2005. the league OPS and league ERA stats look to be screwed up, and not in a small way. here's what i mean. for 2005, the mets and devil rays both have batting and pitching park factors of 99, meaning they should both slightly suppress offense. OK. the devil rays are in the AL, while the Mets are in the NL. the NL scores fewer runs per game than the AL does, primarily as a result of the DH. so we would expect the league ERA and league OPS for the mets to both be lower than the league ERA and league OPS for the devil rays. (the park factors are the same, so that should eliminate any source of difference) but they're not. not by a long shot. the league ERA against which tom glavine's ERA gets compared is 4.19, giving him an ERA+ of 118 for 2005. the league ERA against which scott kazmir's ERA gets compared is 4.32, giving him an ERA+ of 114. and i've got no problem with these numbers. the average ERA in the NL was about 4.22, compared to 4.35 in the AL. so pitchers in the AL on average have about a 0.13 higher ERA than they would in the NL. so why am i complaining...? well, the lg OPS figures are why. mike piazza's 2005 gets compared to a lgAVG of .267, an lgOBP of .338 and a lgSLG of .426, for a lgOPS of .763 in contrast, toby hall gets compared to a lgAVG of .267, a lgOBP of .330 and a lgSLG of .423, for a lgOPS of .753 the lgOPS for hte american league is some 10 points lower than the NL! granted, as i'm typing all this out, i figure that they must've taken out hte pitchers from the NL stats, and the numbers seem to show that. if i do a quick and dirty approximation, taking out the pitchers from the NL yields an average OPS of about .767, as compared to .744 with the pitchers (a 23 point impact!). the same method yeilds an average AL OPS of .756 sans pitchers, up from .754, yawn. but this leads me to the conclusion that the national league favors hitters, or at least that hitters hit better in the national league than they do in the american league. indeed the phenomenon existed the previous year as well, with the NL earning a lgOPS 5 points higher than the AL. does this hold up for a longer time period, who knows! but it does raise a few questions: 1) why doesnt baseballreference tell us that they've done this (as it really screws up anyone trying to calculate league-relative OPS allowed statistics)? 2) why do hitters appear to do better in the national league when conventional wisdom holds that the DH wears on pitchers, allowing hte rest of the lineup to perform better? 3) does this phenomenon see odd or interesting to you, or am i just that big a loser that its both odd and interesting to me?? (sorry, two questions doesnt seem like enough. but i can't think of any more.)

Edgy DC Jan 04 2006 12:51 PM Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Jan 04 2006 02:24 PM

I think bb-r does tell us that they take out pitchers' numbers --- somewhere. I don't know that conventional wisdom holds that the DH wears more on pitchers. I think the main advantage to the American league is that they have nine professional hitters in the lineup, rather than eight. Once you correct for that, all bets are off. My guess is simply that the National League has more good hitters right now. If there's a circumstancial reason that the National League is out-hitting the American League, it perhaps could mean that more pitching changes sends more games deeper into the bullpen, or that two more teams means that many more bad pitchers. I don't know that I believe either, particularly the second.

Yancy Street Gang Jan 04 2006 12:56 PM

The two additional teams should also mean more bad hitters, shouldn't it?

Edgy DC Jan 04 2006 01:19 PM

Which is why I don't particularly buy it. Or buy the idea that expansion is to blame for inflated offenses of the nineties.

metsmarathon Jan 04 2006 02:19 PM

ah. yep. there it is. in the descriptions of the lgAVG, etc. stats. interestingly, for the last 7 years, the NL had a higher lgOPS. then 5 years of the AL. going back to 1990, the NL had a higher lgOPS 9 times, the AL 7. they both have averaged, over the same period, approximately the same OPS. so, i guess, there's nothing to it after all, just a quirk that perhaps this year, more of the better hitters were in teh NL, and other years, more of the better hitters are in the AL. i often hear (or maybe i just hink i hear) in tv and radio broadcasts how the DH has helped bring about the rise in offensive production of late, because in the past, pitcher could relax for a batter or two, but now, because of the DH, they cannot, and as a result, the pitchers become less effective. were that the case, then the non-pitchers in a league with a DH should regularly out hit those in a league without a DH. right? ah well. its really just something i noticed while trying to compute allowed OPS+'s for pitchers in the NL. that'll teach me.

Frayed Knot Jan 04 2006 03:47 PM

The "conventional wisdom" that 'AL offenses are better by leaps and bounds' has been seriously overblown in recent years IMO. There's usually been an AL edge but just as the differences between the leagues has been decreasing in recent years the perception of it has been getting more play. Of course much of the recent chorus has been coming from MFY fans and their complaints about their newly imported NL pitchers: Pavano, Johnson, Wright, etc. It's a convenient excuse for fans to deride failures by questioning whether the players were ever any good in the first place, as in; 'your shit may work elsewhere but here in the REAL major leagues you have to be extra special'. It's a lot like the 'tougher to play in NYC' angle; it cited as an after-the-fact reason when the player declines but it ignored as a factor when he doesn't.

Elster88 Jan 04 2006 03:58 PM

]"conventional wisdom" that 'AL offenses are better by leaps and bounds' I think the conventional wisdom is not that the AL has better hitters but just more of them in the lineup at once. Makes sense to me.

Frayed Knot Jan 04 2006 04:07 PM

Yes, I just think that the difference has undergone a recent spate of exaggeration by whining. I keep hearing - from both fans and media - about how so-and-so may be a good pitcher but let's see if he's still good once he gets to the AL ... as if the two leagues are barely comparable.