One of the classic baseball debates is the relative worth of Punch and Judy hitters and power hackers. Which one provides greater value to their team?
Using Out of the Park Baseball, we decided to put this to the test. Using their player editor feature, I created the following three players:
Slappy Slapstick
Projected stats
BA: .347; OBP: .452; SLG: .347; OPS: .799
Sluggish Slugger
Projected stats
BA: .216; OBP: .253; SLG: .547 (42HR over 660PA); OPS: .800
Average Pitcher
Projected stats
OAVG: .248; ERA: 3.75
Slappy had high ratings for BABIP, Avoid K’s, and Eye/Patience with the lowest possible scores for Gap and Power. Sluggish had high Gap and Power scores with low scores for other ratings. All other ratings (e.g. basestealing, fielding) were equal. The overriding factor for the main ratings was to get projected OPS to be equal, which I did as best as possible.
I cloned each player to fill up 2 teams of Slappy Slapsticks and 2 teams of Sluggish Sluggers. Each team had an 11-man pitching staff made up of Average Pitchers.
Then I set them loose on a 162-game season. Here is a snapshot of the final standings, with the results plainly clear.
The two teams of Slappy Slapsticks far and away beat on the Sluggers. The final stats showed that OPS ended up actually somewhat in favor of the Sluggers. Sluggers made up the entire top 5 and 8 of the top 10 league leaders in OPS.
(Click chart to enlarge)
RC27 (Runs Created per 27 outs) was in favor of the Slapsticks, with 7 of the top 8 leaders in that category.
(Click chart to enlarge)
WPA (Win Probability Added) was also in favor of the Slapsticks taking the top 6 spots in that category.
(Click chart to enlarge)
It’s not possible from this exact run to know what sabermetric stat put the Slapsticks over the top as some (such as BABIP) were designed to be greater for the Slapsticks than the Sluggers. This simulation shows that OPS being equal, a singles hitter is more valuable in the end than a slugger, but it also shows that OPS, being a somewhat arbitrarily derived statistic, is not the defining stat to determine the value of a hitter or how that hitter might translate to team performance.