Softball SABERMETRICS

[Coach SS]

Apologize in advance if this has been dealt with already but I have a couple questions for the masses........

Baseball appears to have gone to more of a Sabermetrics view of the world including an OPS% focus rather than looking solely at stats individually such as batting average, OBP, SLG, runs, RBIs, etc. to determine the value of an offensive player.

In relation to the college and professional ranks, is this considered different for softball?

There seems to be a significant focus of coaches on batting average and OBP as opposed to including slugging in the equation.

Are there other offensive stats or combination of them that are considered a better gauge of an offensive players value in softball?

If there is a link to a previous discussion, please post.

Thanks in advance.

[UmpSteve]

Without knowing the competence of any statistician, or the level of competition faced, why would you give any of this credibility?? If a coach doesn't see and meet the player at some point, the rest is "lies, damn lies, and statistics".

[Mark H]

College statistics I'm thinking are pretty legit. High school and travel ball not so much. If I were drafting in the NPF I'd be very interested in the sabermetrics of college fp players. I don't think college coach's have any reliable information to lean on.

A competent examination of the differences between fp and bb in terms of what stats are important would be interesting. For instance, the relative value of forcing the starting pitcher to throw a lot of pitches so you can get to hit against the middle relief pitcher is important in bb. Much different in fp.

[PDad]

A lot depends on what you're trying to accomplish. If you're working on your team's lineup, individual stats like OBP and Slug% are very useful. If you're trying to rank or compare different types of hitters by their value, OPS is better - but it is flawed. A good synopsis from http://www.fangraphs.com/library/offense/ops/...

Many sabermetricians don’t like OPS because it treats OBP as equal in value with SLG, while OBP is roughly twice as important as SLG in terms of its effect on run scoring (x1.8 to be exact). However, OPS has value as a metric because it is accepted and used more widely than other, more accurate statistics while also being a relatively accurate representations of offense. You can find OPS on baseball cards and in broadcasts, and it’s a simple statistic that has made its way into the main stream

The problem is SLG uses a crude weighting system of total bases that exaggerates the value of extra-base hits. A simple fix is to use (1.8 x OBP) + SLG.

Sabermetrics has Weighted On-Base Average (wOBA), which melds OBP and SLG by weighting the components (i.e. BB, HBP, 1B, 2B, 3B, HR) with more accurate relative values. See http://www.fangraphs.com/library/offense/woba/.

FastPitchAnalytics.com analyses college softball with Sabermetrics. Run Expectancy is a major cornerstone and this site has tables generated from college softball data instead of MLB - http://fastpitchanalytics.com/2014/08/14/run-expectancy-using-2014-play-by-play-data/.

[Mark H]

Thanks