OBP and the Ideals of Moneyball

Since there are still baseball fans and writers out there who do not see the value of using statistics for evaluating teams and players, I wanted to do a quick post about on base percentage (OBP). Here are this season’s American League team leaders in OBP:

		OBP	Wins	Runs
	Boston	0.349	90	875 (1)
	New York	0.343	97	867(2)
	Detroit	0.340	95	787(4)
	Texas	0.340	96	855(3)
	Kansas City	0.323	71	730(6)
	Tampa Bay	0.322	91	707(8)

The number in parentheses next to the total runs scored is where the team ranked in the AL in runs. As you can see, all 4 playoff teams from the AL are in the top 6 in the league in OBP, and 5 of the top 6 won at least 90 games. Not surprisingly, all these teams minus Tampa Bay were in the top half of the American League in runs scored too. Now here are the National League team leaders:

		OBP	Wins	Runs
	St. Louis	0.341	90	762(1)
	New York	0.335	77	718(6)
	Colorado	0.329	73	735(2)
	Cincinnati	0.326	79	735(2)
	Milwaukee	0.325	96	721(5)
	Philadelphia	0.323	102	713(7)
	Arizona	0.322	94	731(4)

Pretty much the same story in the NL. All 4 of the NL playoff teams are in the top half of the league in OBP, and not coincidentally, in runs scored as well.

I wanted to show this because OBP was the most talked about stat in the film Moneyball. One of the best scenes in the film is when Billy Beane first brings in Peter Brand (aka Paul DePodesta) to a scouting meeting. Beane, played by Brad Pitt, starts calling out names of players that he wants to sign to replace Jason Giambi and every time he calls out a name, the group of old scouts let out a collective groan. These are players that the scouts have evaluated, and written off. Each time one of the scouts questions Beane on one of the players, he simply turns to Brand, asks why the player is valuable, and Brand responds each time with “because he gets on base.”

The scene itself is a symbol of old school baseball thinking and scouting clashing with the new school approach of using statistics for player evaluations. Clearly the scene is simplified and dramatized, but it is realistic in the sense that debates like this happen all the time, whether it be in baseball front offices, in newspapers, sports websites, or just in casual conversations among baseball fans.

Obviously OBP isn’t an end all be all stat. No stat is. But, as I’ve show above, more often than not if a team has a high OBP, it will score more runs which will eventually lead to more wins. The outliers in the above OBP charts are pretty easy to explain. Kansas City won only 71 games despite having an above league average OBP because they had one of the worst pitching staffs in baseball (4.45 ERA as a team, ranking 27^th out of 30 teams). In the National League, New York, Colorado, and Cincinnati all ranked in the bottom half of their league in ERA as well. It doesn’t matter how many runs you score, if you can’t prevent the other teams from scoring you won’t win many games.

The point of the book and the film Moneyball was to show how to take advantage of market inefficiencies. At the time, OBP was an undervalued quality in baseball, so Beane took advantage of it, and was able to save his franchise a lot of money. Today, OBP is more of a standard, and teams will pay to add players with a high OBP. Boston and New York, the 2 teams with the highest OBP in baseball this year, also had the 2 highest payrolls. Clearly, the ideals of Moneyball are very important in baseball today.  

It’s ridiculous to me, an admitted stat-nerd, that in the year 2011 we would be evaluating players in the same way that we have 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. The game is different. The way we look at evaluating players and teams should adapt with the ever changing game. OBP is just one stat, but its an incredibly simple stat to understand (simply hits + walks/plate appearances) and its incredibly effective when it comes to showing who the best offensive players and teams are. Please everyone, embrace statistics. They are your friend.