EclectEcon

Economics and the mid-life crisis have much in common: Both dwell on foregone opportunities

C'est la vie; c'est la guerre; c'est la pomme de terre . . . . . . . . . . . . . email: jpalmer at uwo dot ca

. . . . . . . . . . .Richard Posner should be awarded the next Nobel Prize in Economics . . . . . . . . . . . .

Thursday, November 04, 2004

Measuring output in sports

Here is a great example of why I don't like "triple crown" stats in baseball [the triple crown stats are batting average, home runs, and RBIs]:

"As a rule, team-OPS explains about 92% of variance of runs per game, while team-BA explains only about 70%."

That's from sabernomics.com. OPS is a cobbled-together stat: On-base-percentage Plus Slugging-average. It has its detractors, but is a fairly simple and readily available stat that does a decent job of indicating the contribution of a player to team wins. Read the whole piece here.