| We all know that when a baseball team comes up to bat,
the batter's goal is to get on base and move base runners around the bases
and eventually to home base. So their goal is to accumulate bases and
convert them into runs.
If the team doesn't generate bases, they don't score runs, and they don't
win. In short, offense in baseball is the generation of bases. It's that
simple. Offense = bases. It's not a coincidence that the word "base"
is in the very name of the game.
Therefore, to determine the players who generate the most offense, we
need to do one simple thing: count the bases the players generate. And
we call that total tBG (total Bases Generated). And since offense = bases,
tBG tell us which players generate the most offense.
All Bases Count
For tBG, we count all bases. We don't ignore any plays or any bases,
as other stats do. All bases are counted and assigned to the player responsible
for generating them. In addition, all bases lost are deducted from the
responsible player's total. If a stat doesn't consider all plays and bases
(such as BA, OBP, SLG%, OPS and even wOBA), it isn't looking at the entire
game and can't be considered "comprehensive."
Note that Batting Average (BA) and Slugging % (SLG%) are based on At
Bats, which doesn't include all plate appearances. At Bats covers about
88% of baseball plays. OBP and (by extension OPS) include Walks and Hit
by Pitch, so they are at about 93% of all plays. But what about the other
plays? Are we supposed to ignore those plays? You don't have to. tBG incorporates
100% of plays. With tBG, every play counts.
tBG doesn't concern itself with how the bases are generated. It doesn't
count some bases and ignore others, as other stats do. We don't determine
that some bases generated during certain types of plays are not as important
as others and, therefore, shouldn't be counted. We count all bases. That
includes bases generated from hits, errors, walks, balks, hit by pitches,
and any other way bases can be gained or lost in a baseball game.
Here's another way of putting it: If the generation of bases is a good
thing, tBG tells us how many "good things" happen when a particular
player is up to bat.
Not only does tBG count the bases that the batter generates for himself,
but we count the bases the batter generates for base runners. This is
the biggest difference between tBG and traditional baseball stats. That
is, if base runners move up one or more bases as a result of batter's
action, such as a hit, walk, HBP, etc., we credit those bases to the batter.
After all, the batter is generating them. No other stat does that. (RBI,
of course, counts the accumulation of one base by base runners, but just
that one base-- from 3rd to Home. Offense in baseball includes those other
bases as well.)
tBG also counts bases that are gained and lost by base runners. Why?
Because moving around bases is part of the offense in baseball, so bases
gained on the base paths by base runners are part of a team's offense.
In tBG, those bases credited to the base runner. No other stat does that
either.
The nominator for Slugging % is the Total Bases (TB) generated by the
player, but just for himself. The stat ignores the bases generated by
the batter for base runners. It also ignores bases gained by base runners.
For example, in 2024, TB for MLB was 65,348 bases. For the same year,
tBG for MLB was 140,478. That means for 2024, SLG% and, by extension,
OPS (since SLG% is part of OPS), ignored approximately 53% of all bases
generated. OBP ignored about 48% of bases. That's a lot of baseball being
ignored by those stats.
So stats like SLG%, OPB, and OPS are fine for what they do, but they
are limited and don't provide a comprehensive measure of a player's offensive
productivity.
A Family of Stats
For each year, we add the bases generated by each player and call that
each player's tBG. We also divide tBG by the player's
plate appearances (not by At Bats) to come up with an average called tBGPA
(total Bases generated per Plate Appearance).
We also total just the bases gained and lost by each player as a base
runner, which gives us our base running stat, tBGR (total
Bases Generated as a Runner). Note that tBGR is a subset of tBG. We also
count the extra bases a player gains as a base runner (XrtaB) and add
that to tBGR for a more comprehensive base running stat called XtBGR.
We also know the pitcher for each plate appearance, so we can determine
the number of bases surrendered by a pitcher for a season, which we call
tBS (total Bases Surrendered). We divide tBS by the innings
pitched by a pitcher for a stat we call tBSI (total Bases
Surrendered per Innings Pitched).
We also--
- Calculate the percent of possible bases generated per player year,
career, and team year. This value is called PossBG%.
- Adjust tBG, tBGPA, tBS, and tBSI for park factor. Each adjusted value
is designated by the letter "p" at the end, as in tBGp,
tBGPAp, tBSp, and tBSIp.
- Normalize tBGPA and tBSI against league averages to compare players
and teams across eras. These values are named tBG+
and tBS+.
- For each team year, we add the team tBG+ and tBS+
for an overall team performance value called totalPerf.
Reports
With our tBG scoring data of over 15 million plays going back to 1914,
we generate extensive reports with tBG, tBGPA, tBS, tBSI, and tBGR values
per player year, player career, and team year. We also derive fun reports
like--
- Most Offense by a Player in a Game
- Most Offense by a Team in a Game
- Most Offense in a Game (by both teams)
- Least Offense in a Game (by both teams)
- Most Bases Lost and Gained as a Base Runner in a Game
OPS or tBG?
OPS attempts to provide a comprehensive measure of a player's offensive
productivity by adding his OBP and SLG%. However, OPS is not as rigorous
or as precise as tBG at providing such a comprehensive measure. Like OPS,
tBG incorporates both the on-base skills of a player (every time he's
on base, it's counted in tBG) and the player's batting power (hits for
multiple bases count as multiple bases in tBG, just as they do in SLG%
and OPS).
OPS is the addition of two very old stats that were added together in
the early 80's to give an indication of both on base percentage and batting
power. It was a convenience because there was no other stat that did it
as well. But OPS has problems:
- The denominators of the two stats are different, and the nominators
are too. So it is the addition of two very different stats that were
never intended to be combined with other stats. It adds apples and oranges.
It's a kluge.
- Walks and HBP are counted in half of OPS--the OBP half, but not in
the SLG% half.
- But the big difference is that OPS (and BA, OBP, and SLG%, for that
matter) doesn't credit the batter for moving base runners around the
bases. That is a major part of the game, and those other stats ignore
that part of a batter's productivity. For example, OPS counts a single
with no one on the same as a single that scores runners from 2nd and
3rd. But they aren't the same. The single that scores runs is much more
important to the outcome of a game than a single that occurs when the
bases are empty.
- OPS also doesn't incorporate bases gained and lost by base runners.
It ignores that part of the offense. That's approximately 7% of baseball.
- OPS counts most bases twice. For example, base hits are counted in
both OBP and SLG%, but bases from walks and HBP are counted just once.
tBG, on the other hand, counts each base just once.
- If a player gets a hit but is out trying to stretch to the next base,
OPS counts the hit twice (once in OBP and once in SLG%) even though
the batter ultimately did nothing but generate an out. tBG credits 0
bases for such a play, because ultimately no bases were generated.
OPS was a good stat for a time, but it isn't good enough anymore. There
are stats that do a better job of measuring offensive productivity, and
tBG is one of them.
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