Friday, April 08, 2005

More for you ravenous sports fans!

The clamor is clamorous. "Fever Pitch" should have it so good. (BTW, I do NOT want a DVD of Fever Pitch next Christmas, unless it's the English one. Do some people never grow up? Do Jimmy "The Dink" Fallon and his associates think it is actually funny to make the joke "He's washing your father's balls" and then replay it over and over in commercials? It wasn't funny the first time. It was adolescent.) (Are we cranky today?)

The OOPA is newly constructed to measure the player's ability to take advantage of the situational opportunity presented when he is at the plate. It is renamed OOPO for Offensive Output Per Opportunity, tentatively, though I like OA for offensive average. It's maximum score is a 1.000 like the BA. It's calculated by the total bases advanced by the batter and the runners DIVIDED BY the potential bases. Thus a grand slam is the same as a solo homer at 10/10 or 4/4. They both took maximum advantage of the Opportunity. This has the effect of leveling the playing field so that the stat measures the player's ability to take advantage of the given situation. Manny's denominator will be larger than Johnny "the idiot" Damon's because he will come up more often with runners on base. The worst score would be a -6/10 for a home to third to second triple play with the base loaded (probably has never happened). Striking out with the bases loaded is a 0/10 and a 0/4 with the bases empty. The stat goes a long way toward measuring clutch hitting.

I like it. Maybe I'll score a whole game this way and see what the stat looks like.

1 comment:

Caleb said...

I also like it, and I'd be interested to see the stats from a game.