Thursday, November 15, 2007

Brains and Braun

Baseball-reference.com calculates Ryan Braun's OPS+ (that's OPS measured against an average of 100 and adjusted to reflect the effects of home park and the year's league average htting level) at 153. Among hitters playing in their age 23 year, that is tied for the 34th best OPS+ season ever (min. 490 PAs). Braun's 2007 is tied for 34th with Rusty Staub's 1967 season, exactly 40 seasons before.

To give you a sense of how much different historical eras and different home park effects can influence hitting stats, Braun's 153 OPS+ is based on his raw 1.004 OPS, while Staub's 1967 season included a raw .871 OPS. Comparing just raw slugging percentages, Braun's 2007 SLG was .634 and Staub's 1967 SLG was .473. Rusty played in 1967 in a very tough home park for hitters (the Astrodome, where just about 10% fewer runs were scored than in Astros road games in 1967) and in a very tough year for hitters. In 2007, the NL's overall OPS was .757. Compare that to .673 forty seasons earlier. So Staub's much lower raw hitting percentages in 1967 were comparable, in real value to his team, to Braun's gaudy 2007 percentages.

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