Frontier League Beat — June 8, 2021: Introducing OPSR / Power Rankings
By Dave Rouleau, Frontier League Journal
The “Frontier League Beat” is a weekly column offered every Tuesday on the Frontier League Journal. It is meant to be an “insider” column that discusses hot topics, shares opinions or various informations about the league. In short, just another reason to talk Frontier League baseball.
You can read last week’s column by following this link. The subject was player eligibility rules and my take on the subject, from my first impressions to the way I see things shaping up in the future on that particular and debated aspect of this independent baseball league.
A bit of a special edition of the “Frontier League Beat”, this week, as we continue to just have fun and come up with different ideas to make the Frontier League coverage exciting for baseball fans. The game being such a huge part of my life, it’s fun to share on a daily basis the thoughts and discussions that run through our heads and group discussions.
In 2017, I established a website / entity, called “Édition Baseball”, dedicated to covering amateur and pro baseball in French for the Québec baseball crowd. While trying to find new ways to talk about the game we love, my friend Jean-François Côté and I got to talk about different stats (a subject dear to our hearts and minds) and, after a while, he came up with a version of OPS that I found interesting.
OPSR was taking the many great aspects of OPS (OBP + SLUGGING), but also included an aspect of the game that was not represented in its original form: baserunning.
Here’s the JFC Formula (if you use it, we only ask you to give him credit, deal?): OBP+((TB+(SBX(SB/(SB+CS))))/AB
You think you can improve on it? We hope so, too, just reach out to us with your ideas: frontierleaguejournal@gmail.com.
It takes into account the success a team has running the bases once it reaches them (success stealing bases) a facet of the game that should not be discarded, as baseball fans know. It is exciting, it creates runs / opportunities when done effectively and puts pressure on the defence. You do it well, you gain in the long run. You do it badly, you could cost yourself runs over a season.
While Édition Baseball did not last, OPSR did. Today, we’re proposing it to you, the readers, but also to the players and teams around the Frontier League. It is not revolutionary, but it is an additional tool that can be used to evaluate players. Nothing more, nothing less. If you don’t like it, disregard it. If you do appreciate it, then welcome to our troubled minds, the club is expanding fast.
This is an exclusive stat from us to you, making it another (I think) cool thing to follow the Frontier League.
As of Monday night, here are where teams stood with the OPS vs OPSR and the differential that a team’s running is having on their bottoms line. Below, the teams are ranked in order of OPSR, a difference-maker for certain clubs:
In the future, all players / teams will have their OPSR readily available to them if they choose to consult it. For the short term, the “Frontier League Beat” weekly column will be offering OPSR Team Rankings and the Top 50 OPSR Leaders in the Frontier League.
For pitchers, we are quickly working on offering you the excellent FIP stat (Fielding Independent Pitching) in order to identify the pitchers that truly stand out on the mound by controlling the elements they are able to. If you don’ know about FIP, here is a great primer on it.
Hope you enjoy. If you don’t, I’m confident we’ll still be able to share our passion for baseball.
Here are the Frontier League Power Rankings for Week 2 of the 2021 season:
Methodology:
The Power Rankings are determined each Monday, a day off for al teams in the league. How?
- Run differential: the goal in baseball is to score the most runs and prevent them as much as possible. While not perfect, it is certainly a very good tool to evaluate teams.
- OPSR: This new tool, that we presented at the beginning of the current article, gives us an added look into the offensive strength of a ball club.
- WHIP (FIP in the future): We needed something to evaluate pitchers and FIP will eventually be amazing to work with. Until then, WHIP satisfies us in strengthening or weakening our opinion of teams.
To say that there is no human element in making the final rankings would a lie. There is. When a team has a close run differential to another one and clearly runs behind in one or two of the other stats (OPSR and WHIP/FIP), we’ll adjust without remorse.
Remember that is entertainment, but that we take our coverage seriously. This will never be perfect, just as the game of baseball. You disagree with the rankings? Let’s discuss it constructively.
After all, this is baseball and we just want to have fun while cheering on players who want to reach the next step of their careers.
