Gross Production Average with a tweak

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While looking at stats on the internet, I came across Gross Production Average. Aaron Gleeman and Victor Wang have devised an alternative to OPS. This utilizes over 40 years of data which indicates that OBP is 1.8 times more important to run scoring than SLG. The formula used to compute Gross Production Average is 1.8 times OBP + SLG. Then to make it correspond more closely to batting average they divide by four. Basically you then get results where .200 would be lousy, .265 would be average and anything over .300 would be good.

I have been playing around with a little tweak to the GPA. I remember thinking when Josh Anderson was with the Braves that with Josh a single or walk was almost like a double. Thinking that led me to think of adding stolen bases to slg pct to give him credit for the extra base. After reading more on the subject and hating to seeing our base runners thrown out, I decided that you had to penalize them for failure. Since the prevailing wisdom seems to be that a caught stealing is twice as damaging as successful attempt, I subtract 2 bases for a caught stealing.

Using this method I have been tracking some of the minor league players. Two of the players have more than 10 stolen bases. Cole Miles, Myrtle Beach, GPA goes from a .246 without steals to a .251 including steals. Kyle Rose's, Rome, GPA goes from a .242 to a .209. Prior to adjustments the numbers are about the same. The difference comes in success rate Cole Miles has attempted 18 steals and has been caught 5 times. Kyle Rose has attempted 27 steals and has been caught 15 times. Apparently if he wants to be a base stealer he needs to improve his technique.