It’s nice to see that OBP/SLG is gaining far more traction in the mainstream media. Let’s face it, why look at BA when you have those. It’ll be an improvement if we see more reference to things like OPS, which in and of itself isn’t a very good stat, though it’s passable. I know ESPN’s coverage shows OPS, but not everyone refers to it as they probably should.

And the day that RBI goes away, that day we can all rejoice a little. I’ll rejoice a lot, I know that.

My pleasure. Anything to help the understanding of baseball’s a good thing, right?

I know that ran a little long for a comment, but I wanted to add something else. Fans often times rate offense very highly because it’s so visible. It makes sense to do so. If a system doesn’t agree with a strict offensive ranking (maybe with some position adjustment, as I think fans know the difference between the 1B pool of players and the SS pool, for example), sometimes they decree that a system is “wrong.”

Well, Bill James once said (and I’m paraphrasing) that a new stat should have some surprises, but be mostly what you’d expect. If it doesn’t surprise, you’re not adding anything. If it surprises too much, then you’re probably wrong. Adding defense to our evaluation of players is adding some surprises, as well it should. You would expect, when accounting for defense, that some players would go up in value, and some would go down. For example, Braun appears to be an awful defender everywhere he’s been. In comparison, Carl Crawford is an excellent defender, but not as good a hitter. Judging strictly by offense, you’d call Braun the better player, but Crawford is at least on equal footing because of his defensive accomplishments.

It’s things like this that add new insight to players. It should surprise sometimes, but it shouldn’t (and isn’t) rating Jeff Francoeur as a 3-win player, for example.