Don’t look now, but our little Cincinnati Reds with their recent run of 10+ run games have moved up to the top five in hitting in the National League!
Sorted by Runs per game
Team R/Game
Cardinals 5.12
Reds 4.92
Phillies 4.85
Dodgers 4.73
Cubs 4.73
Sorted by OPS
Team OPS
Cubs .792
Phillies .771
Cards .769
Reds .768
Dodgers .767
WOH! That is interesting….anybody else notice anything interesting between Runs Scored per game and OPS? Anyone?
That’s right, they are the SAME FIVE TEAMS! This is why Statheads prefer OPS over batting average when judging players. OPS most closely correlates to runs scored. Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look at our old friend batting average:
Team BA
Cubs .279
Marlins .276
Giants .272
Phillies .272
Rockies .271
Cards .271
Ok, this pretty much proves AGAIN, that batting average does NOT correlate with Runs Scored, so can we PLEASE stop using it when judging hitters?
Just wrote about that here…tried to pingback to this article, but I suck at the whole interconnectivity of the web…
I don’t know that anyone is going to argue against OPS on here. The only reason AVG is used is because it was always used. I did a top 10 comparison the other day for all ML teams and came up with very similar results. There were a few top OPS teams that were further back in actual runs (Angels), but it was much more accurate than average, but OPS is so much more so that only makes sense that it’s going to be more accurate.
What we should really be talking about is the fact that the Reds offense, though 5th in runs scored and OPS in the NL, is certainly NOT the 5th best offense in the league. Don’t get me wrong, this offense could be first in the league and it really wouldn’t matter with their pitching. It just seems to me that this team has outbursts of offense against some teams, but I feel like the last four games have been a better representation of what this team has done this year.
I did a quick count, but I believe they have scored 3 runs or less in 32 games this year, losing 29 of those games. They have also scored 9 or more runs in 13 games this season, going 12-1 in these games (sorry for bringing that game back up). Seems like a lot of those 4.92 runs have come all at once.
I would be curious to see if there is any difference with the Reds numbers against starting pitchers only. How ugly would the comparison be against the Reds starting pitchers?
sorry, that is somewhat redundant date from above, didn’t read through everyone’s posts.
Not sure how the rest of the league stacks up, but look at the Astros. These guys have to be the worst offensive team in the game and they are 5-26 when scoring 3 runs or less, very similar to the Reds in this regard. However they don’t need quite the offensive support that the Reds do, so they’ve managed to win when only scoring 4 runs or less a lot more than the average team, but rarely do they have a major scoring outburst.