New FanGraphs “Plus” Stats!
One of the tricky things about having so many stats on the site is that it can sometimes make it difficult to figure out whether a particular player is “good” or “bad” in a given statistical category. The other thing that can further complicate matters is the ever changing league rates. Given that the league strikeout percentage has increased over 8% in the past 30 years, what was once considered a well above average strikeout rate might today be merely average.
That’s why we’re introducing the “+ Stats” section to our leaderboards, where we have season and league adjusted a number of stats for your perusal.
Just like wRC+ and ERA-, all of these stats have a baseline of 100, where the number above or below 100 is the percentage above or below average a player is. For instance, Pedro Martinez’s 1999 K%+ is 239, that means he was 139% above the league average.
These baselined stats make it relatively easy to compare things like strikeout rates and walk rates across seasons and careers to see who was truly above (or below) their peers.
We’ll periodically add other stats to this section, so if you have additional “+ Stats” you’d like to see, please let us know in the comments!
David Appelman is the creator of FanGraphs.
This is great. I might even consider it a real plus.
Here, take your thumbs up!
are these type of stats only available for overall performance and not in splits like home vs. away or vs LHP/B or RHP/B?
All time leader in AVG+: Ty Cobb
OBP+: Ted Williams
SLG+: Babe Ruth
Those certainly pass the smell test!
Thank you so much, this is fantastic.
Definitely a change for the positive
Fantastic! This takes a big chunk out of the reason and need for the school-grade based system I’ve been working on, since this solves the problem of knowing whether the rate stat I’ve been looking at is good, bad, or indifferent. This supplies some sorely-needed context.
How about expanding the plus treatment to other rate stats such as HR%, HR/FB, ISO, Spd, etc.? This also seems to be a great treatment for plate discipline stats like O-Swing and Contact, another set of stats where you look at the number and wonder, OK, is this number good or bad?
Please license DRA and DRC+ from Baseball Prospectus!!
You might want to consider turning around certain stats in which the lower the number, the better it is, the way you do for ERA, like changing BB%+ to BB%- for pitchers, but keep it as BB%+ for hitters.
WHIP+ is another good one that should probably be flipped around to WHIP-. Otherwise you get query results showing guys like Mike Pelfrey at the top of the heap, and then you have to remind yourself that being at the top of that particular heap is a bad thing.
Agreed here too.
K%+ for batters took me a second to realize that high was bad, since typically (at least with the classical stats like wRC+ and OPS+) high is good.
I guess I’m used to reading it as “better than league average” instead of “above league average” but still I think the + symbol should go the way of the positive side of the stat
We’ll definitely think about this. We do this with ERA-, but that was also to avoid confusion in general with ERA+, where that isn’t an issue here.
Awesome!
So it looks as though, except for wRC+, these all have a zero point at 0? I noticed that Daniel Palka, who is 0 for 32, has AVG+, SLG+, ISO+, and BABIP+ of 0 while his wRC+ is negative. I also notice that Daniel Palka is 0 for 32, which has been overshadowed by Chris Davis. Poor dude.
cool thanks!
Yo, this is AWESOME!
322 and 32
look closely. It’s just astounding.
Can you also put in on the player pages?
And when you do put it on player pages, instead of putting it at the bottom of the page, how about putting it toward the top, perhaps after Custom, Standard and Advanced and before Batted Ball?
Will these stats be available for players who played earlier? For example what was Ron Guidry’s K/9+ in 1978?
Yes
https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=pit&lg=all&qual=y&type=23&season=1978&month=0&season1=1978&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=4,d
Wouldn’t it make sense to invert K+ for hitters? Currently a lower K+ is better which makes sense but in outcome actually a lower K% is better. For all other numbers higher numbers are better (iso, k, bb, avg) kinda like with era+ and era-.
I think it would be cool to have low K hitters have a high K+.
Well, I don’t think we’ll invert these, but maybe we’ll change the sign to “minus”.
This is awesome, thanks! For potential areas of expansion, I’d suggest plate discipline numbers. Those are the hardest for me to put into context and this would be a great addition there (or percentile?).
This is phenomenal. Wow. I’m excited.
Awesome!
This is great
Parroting another comment, but adding this to the player pages would probably be more helpful than the leaderboard. The leaderboard already has the point of reference to other players; an individual’s page does not.
These will eventually make their way to the player pages.
For now at least you can add the player to a custom leaderboard and get the same effect
This is actually a pretty cool, not used much feature of the leaderboards, since they can also act like player pages.
I assumed that feature was mainly for people to use for their fantasy leagues.
Great addition, thank you!
Are any of these park and/or league adjusted?
Only wRC+, ERA- and FIP- are park adjusted.
I just meant the new “Plus” Stats. Either way, you answered my question. Thanks.
eventually, could you create statcast based like RPM+ and EV+?
This is awesome! Definitely wanted it for a long time. Other folks have mentioned it, but would love to see it for zone/swing rate statistics, mostly so I can marvel at Yoan Moncada’s plate discipline numbers. Additionally getting it to the player page would be great.
Another interesting use could potentially be on pitch data. Obviously more H/V movement on a pitch isn’t always the deciding factor success, but it’s an interesting way to see how much more movement/velo a pitcher has on their pitches.
Thank you again!!!
Whoa! I love this! Great addition!
Will these ever be added to individual player pages?
Yes!
OPS+ would be nice
We won’t be adding OPS+, we already have wRC+.
This is great. Can you add plus stats for Soft% / Medium% / Hard% and plate discipline stats?
I’ve been hoping to see some of these stats for a long time, so I I’m excited to finally see them! This is probably a long shot, but I’ve always wanted to see an RA9- stat.
are these type of stats only available for overall performance and not in splits like home vs. away or vs LHP/B or RHP/B? that would be key.
Percentiles for everything might be fun too.
This doesn’t necessarily apply here, but I’d love to see some of the public statcast data looped in, especially things like xWOBA and such. Thanks!
I think indexing the plate discipline stats would be great
This is great. Along the same lines, I’d love to see a z-score for various stats as well. That’s probably even more informative than percent plus or minus.
Not on the player cards?
Boo