Bosoxwest wrote:
This has been a pretty damn good discussion, but regarding Drew, as far as Theo's personnel moves go, I don't know that he's the guy keeping me up nights. New thread on value of OBP?
The J.D. Drew thread has sparked a lot of conversation about the value of walking and OBP in general, so I got motivated by the above quote to start a new discussion about the value of OBP and what it means to scoring runs.
I find it awfully baffling that people still rely on AVG over OBP when assessing a hitter. I'm trying to think of possible reasons why this is the case, and I think the major one probably would be that most people don't see walking as a hitter's skill. As we all know from traditional scouting, plate discipline is not considered one of the five tools.
Another reason I think people rely on AVG over OBP is that I've noticed the mainstream media people treating the OBP metric as solely a function of walking. I've heard several times an analyst talking about a specific player and they'll say something along the lines of "and he gets his on-base by walking a lot." Treating OBP as solely a function of getting a lot of walks leads people back to the first point: they don't treat walking as a hitter's skill. So in the end they stick to AVG. However, most of you on this forum know that OBP isn't solely a function of just walking a lot. OBP is a function of not making outs. Getting on base whether via a hit, walk or hit by pitch.
Tying this back into the Red Sox and the front office targeting certain players we all know Theo loves high OBP guys. As you can see, ranking highly in OBP in the American League has correlated well with ranking high in scoring runs.
Yr OBP/RS Rank
2009 2nd/3rd
2008 1st/2nd
2007 2nd/3rd
2006 2nd/6th
2005 1st/1st
2004 1st/1st
2003 1st/1st
They were 4th in BA this season and 5th in BA in 2007, yet in both of those seasons they scored a lot of runs (867 in '07 and 872 in '09). So maybe it's because of the reasons I stated above that people devalue OBP, but I think the value of OBP is pretty damn high. Thoughts?
