Thanks, Steve. I’d forgotten you had to look at a specific year’s split page to see sOPS+.

Damon’s 2007 page backs up my point from the previous post. In 2007, his sOPS+ in Wins was exactly 100. He’s a league-average hitter who performed like the typical league-average hitter in games the Yankees won.

Sky – go to Damon’s main page on B-R.com
then choose splits and 2008.

Look for the wins-losses split.
And, scroll to the right. It’s there.

sOPS+ is after BA OBP SLG OPS BAbip
and before tOPS+

Steve, where are you finding sOPS+ for these stats? I’m only finding tOPS+ on Johnny Damon’s PI Splits page, which compares each player’s split line to his overall line.

In 2007, league-average OPS+ in Wins was 128. In losses it was 70. Johnny Damon has a career OPS+ of 102, and sported a 97 OPS+ in 2007 — he’s pretty much the definition of league-average, with some year-to-year variation. Anyway, his 2007 tOPS+ in Wins was 130*, almost exactly league-average. His 2007 tOPS+ in losses was 53, a bit worse than average. (You can’t just weight them equally because Damon’s Yanks had many fewer losses than wins.)

Over his career, damon’s tOPS+ in wins is 122 and in losses it’s 73, again basically exactly what the league-averages are.

In 2008, he’s ahead of the game, as you pointed out. But he’s had only 47 PAs in wins so far. The Yankee splits page doesn’t list tOPS+ for individual players, but it looks like Giambi, ARod, and Posada have similar ratios between OPS in Wins and Losses, and Matsui and Abreu have also performed quite well in wins (but also decently in losses.)

(*Because Damon’s overall OPS+ was basically league-average, his tOPS+ numbers in various splits reflect almost exactly what his actual OPS+ is in those splits, which is nice because B-Ref doesn’t list OPS+ on the splits page.)

Sky – it’s the same as the Giambi thing, FYI.

B-R.com tracks sOPS+

sOPS+ is the OPS+ of a split relative to the major league OPS for this split.

Damon’s 2008 sOPS+ in wins is 149. And, his sOPS+ in losses is 70. (All after last night’s game). So, he’s way above average in wins and way below average in losses, no?

This answer your question?

sky – I’ll look into this soon.

2008 In Wins (AVG/OBP/SLG):
HMatsui .356 .442 .556
BAbreu .304 .373 .543

2007 In Wins:
DJeter .359 .423 .503
ARodriguez .332 .452 .749
BAbreu .356 .439 .563

You’d still like to see the difference in performance of the average player between wins and losses. My guess it that it’s surprisingly huge.

skyking162 makes an interesting point. Perhaps we could use vs. team average stats?

Moose has a record of performing well after being criticized – he nearly pitched a no-hitter after being criticized in baltimore

Steve, I’ve noticed a pattern with the way you use stats, and your Johnny Damon observation was enough for me to mention it. In basic terms, you need to use controls. Yes, Johnny Damon hits very well in Yankee wins. But do other Yankee hitters? There’s obviously a strong connection between one player performing well and winning games — SOMEBODY had to hit well. And there’s a strong chances that wins come against worse pitching, which means everyone in the lineup is likely to hit better. This is the same observation I had with your Jason Giambi power-pitcher stats. It’s important to know how OTHER hitters do against power pitchers.

In stats, you should always be comparing what actually happened to what you would expect the neutral result to be. If you don’t do that, you’ll tend to sometimes draw conclusions that aren’t valid.