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.

49 Comments
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Philmember
5 years ago

This is great. I might even consider it a real plus.

Ryanmember
5 years ago
Reply to  Phil

Here, take your thumbs up!

ScottyGTO
5 years ago
Reply to  Ryan

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?