A couple of days ago, Gross Production Average was the centerpiece of an article that discussed offensive production.
Today, we focus on a metric that measures offensive efficiency in Offensive Efficiency Rating (OER). Before diving into the specifics of this new stat, it is important to differentiate between production and efficiency, in the context of offense.
Production is how much a player outputs in total over a season, no matter when it occurs on a per game basis. Efficiency is output per event, or a per plate appearance basis, which OER takes into account. In other words, when a batter is given opportunities, what are they doing with them? Are they doing something positive or negative in the batter's box? These are questions that OER attempts to answer.
OER is my personal creation and has been in development for almost a year. It can be thought of similarly to Wins Above Replacement, or WAR. Here's the key difference: WAR is cumulative, OER is not. It is a scalable metric and ranges from 0.0 to 100.0. So, if we were to think about it objectively, 0.0 is terrible, 50.0 is pretty good, and 100.0 is elite. Another important note is that WAR is a theoretical construct, whereas OER can be used to draw definitive conclusions about a player's efficiency at the pate.
With this article, we want to use this metric in the context of MVP seasons and evaluating the career of, who many consider to be the greatest player in the game, Mike Trout. Through these perspectives, I hope to show that OER can be a viable method that people can use.
Now that we have set the table, let's eat.
MVP Seasons
When analyzing all MVP seasons by position players, the five most efficient campaigns, by OER, are listed below in Figure One:
Let's start with Barry Bonds. You may have your opinions, but when you break down his production from 2001 to 2004, it was elite. In that time, he drew 755 walks, had an OBP% of 0.559, and an OPS+ of 256. The highlight year, in my opinion, being 2004, when he drew 232 walks with an OBP% of 0.609. This culminated in an OER of 81.2, the highest amongst MVP winners who are position players.
When Bonds was not smacking moonshots, he was getting on base via his patience and discipline at the plate. In other words, he was being efficient and he did it for four consecutive years posting the four highest OER scores for MVP winners in baseball history. Now let's transition to Frank Thomas.
Posting the fifth highest OER score (64.4) as an MVP winner, people forget how great his 1994 campaign truly was. It featured 38 homers, 109 BB to 61 SO and an OPS+ of 212. He beat out Ken Griffey Jr. and Albert Belle for the award and powered the White Sox to a 67-46 record in a strike-shortened season. When fans think of efficient offensive forces, The Big Hurt should be at the top of the list.
In using OER to breakdown the five least efficient MVP seasons, there may be some argument from fans as we breakdown the results:
I want to focus on Mike Trout and Willie Stargell specifically. With Stargell, he won co-MVP honors with Keith Hernandez in 1979 and his numbers were not as prominent relative to others in the race. Dave Winfield (0.953) and Dave Kingman (0.956) both had an OPS that was higher than Stargell (0.904). He also did not lead the National League in any major statistical category that season.
Now let's talk Trout. People forget that he led the league in strikeouts in his 2014 MVP year (184) and based on the candidates in that race, I think baseball writers just found him to be the most appealing vote, relative to an underrated field.
If one is only going by OER for the AL MVP that year, Trout would have finished 10th and Victor Martinez would have been your winner that season with an OER of 52.7. Here's a fun fact: Martinez posted a better slash line of 0.335/0.409/0.565 to Trout's 0.287/0.377/0.561.
In this scenario, Trout would have finished behind Jose Bautista (44.0) and Jose Abreu (39.2). It's not to say that he isn't a great player, but in 2014, there were just players who were better and more efficient.
Mike Trout
While some will argue that I don't give enough credit to Trout's excellence, just hold on a second. I'm about to use OER to show otherwise. I direct your attention to the chart below, focusing on Trout's seasons from 2012 to 2019 in the context of this statistic:
Remember how I said above that an OER of 50.0 is pretty good? Well the last four seasons of Trout's career have been highly efficient. Even in years prior to 2016, he had seasons that were viable in this context. Mike Trout, by all statistical measures, including OER, is the best player in the game.
I understand that OER is not then end-all-be-all metric. With that said, I think it's a better measure of a player's total contributions relative to others, such as WAR, and is more objective methodology. We hope that this will provide a guide post for fans in determining how effective an offensive player is.
Thank you so much for choosing The Launch Angle for some out-of-the-box baseball analysis! If you liked this post, click on this link for our previous article.
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