Players with seasons with 500 or more PA and .400 or higher OBP: 

Decade by decade: 
1946-55 - 118
1956-65 - 56
1966-1975 -67
1976-1985-50
1986-1995 - 85
1996-2005 - 202
2006-2015 -   91

We have now covered the history of the postwar era and the era of modern, integrated baseball regarding exceptionally high OBP seasons. I think the main pattern is clear, except for why there were so many of such seasons from 1946-55 (wouldn't you expect expansion to have increased the number? But the lowered mound did kill off any explosions in offense after 1961. 

Anyway, the pattern except for the decade, of 1946-55 but with some of the big names suggesting that it is the exception that proves the rule seems to be that there are normally (I know, the whole Foucault "there is no normal thing again" - let's let it go for now and come back to it later) 5-10 players who post such numbers in a given season, and the general rule is that these great OBP seasons consist of two groups: 1) really, really great players having some great seasons, and 2) a few players that are quite good having career seasons. Having a bunch of people in a lineup with .400 OBP is not something we should expect to happen, except in 1894. 

Speaking of which, let's keep going back in Mr. Peabody's Way Back Machine and see what happens: 

1936-45 (war years here, so grains of salt to be handed out all around if need be): 

There were - 132 players with these great OBP seasons in those years. 
1936 - 21
1937 - 17
1938 - 18
1939 - 17
1940 - 12
1941  - 15  - Ted Wiliams' OBP that year of .551 is so mind-boggling that my mind is boggled. 
1942 - 14
1943 - 10
1944 -   6
1945 -  9

Decade by Decade: 

1936-45 - 132
1946-55 - 118
1956-65 - 56
1966-1975 -67
1976-1985-50
1986-1995 - 85
1996-2005 - 202
2006-2015 -   91

It would now appear that the 1946-55 anomaly is no such thing, but rather an indication that that era remained closely linked to the one that came before - where the normality was no 5-8  players a year with .400 or higher OBP , as is the case with the whole period 1956-1995, but rather 11-13 a year. Let's see how far back this goes: 

1926-1935 saw no fewer than 152 players have seasons with 500 PA or more and OBP of .400 or higher ! 

1916-1925 saw 100 players do it. So we have the transition from the waning years of the deadball era perhaps to the roaring twenties. 

Our Decade by Decade read-out now reads: 

1916-1925 - 100
1926-1935 - 152
1936-45 - 132
1946-55 - 118
1956-65 - 56
1966-1975 -67
1976-1985-50
1986-1995 - 85
1996-2005 - 202
2006-2015 -   91

So it goes up in the 1920s, peaks in the 1920s and 1930s and starts to decline gradually, though remaining high, until the mid-1950s (when the slider was invented?). 

Let's see where the cutoff year is if we can identify it: 


1916 - 3 - Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Eddie Collins - no playing around here
1917 - 2 - Speaker and Cobb
1918 - 2 Sisler and Speaker 
1919 - 4 - it is more than worth noting the names this time - Shoeless Joe Jackson, Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth of the Boston Red Sox, and someone named Nemo Leibold
1920 -  11 - this looks like a candidate for being our turning point year  - Babe Ruth had an OBP of .530 in 1920
1921 -  14 - looks like that is no mirage - the 1920s seem to be where the change comes in suggesting that even then, even with lower HR/Game numbers than today, but with the spectacular effect of the first real explosion of HRs in baseball focusing the minds of pitchers, you start to get an effect of higher OBPs. Ruth's was .512 that season.
1922 - 11
1923 - 15 - Ruth .545 OBP
1924 - 21  - Hornsby OBP .507, Ruth .513
1925 - 17

The number, once is jumps in 1920, stays high and does not really come down until the mid-1950s. So we now have two normalities. 

Sorry, my computer froze and I had to re-boot it. Okay.

So, one reality begins in 1920 and continues to 1955, and consists in double digit numbers of players every season playing full time (operationalized here as 500 PA minimum) and with .400 or higher OBP. 

The other begins in 1955 and goes up to 1995 and sees single digit numbers of players having such years. 

There is, in 1996-2005 an anomalous period that dwarfs even the numbers for 1926-35 of players having .400 plus OBP years and then things kind of settle back to normal in 2006-2015. 

Let's see how far back the period that ended in 1919 goes, to see what our third reality might be: 

1906-1915 - 67
1896-1905 - 101 - 19 in 1896, 20 in 1897, 10 in 1898,  12 in 1899, 7 in 1900,  11 in 1901, 5 in 1902, 7 in 1903, 3 in 1904, 6 in 1905. 

So I think that we have a solid case to say that a shift began in 1898, but was really consolidated in 1902. So 1902 is the start of a reality that lasted to 1919 of single digit numbers of players posting .400 plus OBP.

There were 133 such players from 1885 to 1895, with an eleven-year period plus the greatest hitters' year of all time: 1894. 

1885 had only 2 of these, so whatever came before the bigger offensive numbers of the 1890s started before then, but we need other sources for another time to trace them back any further than 1885. 

1886 - 6
1887 - 10
1888 - zero
1889 - 14
1890 - 22
1891 - 7
1892 - 4
1893 - 18
1894 - 31
1895 - 19

I don't know what to make of 1888, 1891 and 1892 here, since these seem anomalous in what is otherwise a hitter's era starting in 1887, but I guess we should not be too surprised by inconsistency in 19th century baseball performances. 

I think we have a handle on this now, with 1887 more or less up to 1901 being high numbers of .400 plus OBP, then low numbers of such player seasons from 1902-1919, high from 1920-55, low 1955-1995, crazy 1996-2005, lower 2006-2015. 

Our Decade by Decade read-out now reads: 
1885 - 1895 133
1896-1905 - 101
1906-1915 - 67
1916-1925 - 100
1926-1935 - 152
1936-45 - 132
1946-55 - 118
1956-65 - 56
1966-1975 -67
1976-1985-50
1986-1995 - 85
1996-2005 - 202
2006-2015 -   91

The years 1894, 1999 and 2000 each saw 31 players with 500 or more PA have OBPs of .400 or higher. That remains the league record to this point. Only 1888 and 1965 if I remember correctly here have had no players reach an OBP of .400. 

By the way 3 players in 1894, Billiy Hamilton .523, Joe Kelley and Hugh Duffy each at .502 and Ed Delahanty in 1895 at .500 had OBPs of .500 or higher in the 1885-1895 era. 

19 players in all of baseball history have had OBPs of .500 or higher: 

The four just mentioned plus John McGraw in 1899, Babe Ruth did it 5 times, Hornsby once, Ted Williams 3 times, Mickey Mantle once and Barry Bonds four times. 

It is now late in Italy and bedtime. But I want to meditate on these stats and tomorrow over coffee maybe try to line them up decade by decade with the below 1.00 WHIPs to see what that tells us. 

I have to look at SLG but also at OPS which is a little problematic as a stat to me (still better than WAR in my book, but let's not get too excited about these issues), and we will see what we see tomorrow. 

Before going to sleep I decided to follow one more thread - scoring per inning, which relates to the cause of low WHIPs that we tried to reach consensus about in my other thread on WHIPs below 1.00, the consensus being that it is mostly due to  the use of reliever so batters rarely see the same pitcher more than twice. 

If that is true, and some of the implications and evidence are in this article, then what a team might want, to do, given the realities we seem to have found above, that OBP may not be an independent variable, may have gone up due to HRs in the steroid era, but reached their high point as a dependent variable of high batting averages, AND if batting averages are lower when facing pitchers for the first time, is to find the batters that have the highest averages when facing pitchers for the first time, and as a short-hand version of that, hitters with the best averages in innings 1-3 and 9. Find those guys and you might have an advantage that makes a difference. 

Here is the article on scoring per inning: 

http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2011/7/3/2255959/all-innings-are-not-created-equal-how-run-scoring-varies-by-inning

Posted by italyprof on 1/10/2016 8:25:00 PM (view original):
Before going to sleep I decided to follow one more thread - scoring per inning, which relates to the cause of low WHIPs that we tried to reach consensus about in my other thread on WHIPs below 1.00, the consensus being that it is mostly due to  the use of reliever so batters rarely see the same pitcher more than twice. 

If that is true, and some of the implications and evidence are in this article, then what a team might want, to do, given the realities we seem to have found above, that OBP may not be an independent variable, may have gone up due to HRs in the steroid era, but reached their high point as a dependent variable of high batting averages, AND if batting averages are lower when facing pitchers for the first time, is to find the batters that have the highest averages when facing pitchers for the first time, and as a short-hand version of that, hitters with the best averages in innings 1-3 and 9. Find those guys and you might have an advantage that makes a difference. 

Here is the article on scoring per inning: 

http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2011/7/3/2255959/all-innings-are-not-created-equal-how-run-scoring-varies-by-inning

I am not convinced that some hitters would be significantly better than other hitters when doing this. Professionals should in general maintain peak performance. While there are general trends that you hit the ball better as you see a pitcher more, I am unconvinced that hitters that appear to break this trend both have a sufficient sample size to differentiate it from chance. I mean, the best hitters vs. 1st time with a pitcher will still be even better vs. 3rd time, more likely -- they'll be the best hitters, period.

I think you have a good point about whether such a phenomenon as some batters being better hitters than others when facing pitchers for the first time can exist separately from these just being the best hitters uncleal. 

So, now I want to know about how OBP is related to OPS. 

First, it turns out that according to the WIS database, 93 players between 1885 and 2015 with 500 or more PA have posted OBPs of .400 or higher but with SLG percentages between .000 and .399.

I chose this search to try to get a sense of how frequently we see OBP players that are not getting their high OBP as a result of pitchers' fear of them hitting the long ball. 

I don't know if SLG of .400 is much of a good cutoff, but momentarily we will see how batters with SLG between .400 and .500 come out.

For now, 93 players in history with OBP of .400 and SLG of .399 or lower: 

1885 - 1899 - 19
1900 - 1915 - 27
1916-1930 -    6
1931-1945 - 10
1946-1960  - 20
1961-1975 - 3 - Albie Pearson 1963, Joe Morgan 1966, Ron Hunt 1971
1976-1990 - 1 - Toby Harrah in 1985
1991-2005 -  6
2006-2015 - zero 

Wow. I did not expect to find such variations. Clearly this type of hitter is MUCH more common at some points in history than in others. Again, this suggests to me that OBP has never had much independence - that is a result of other things, it cannot be taught, it cannot be made to happen as a strategy. From 1991 to 2015 exactly 6 players with 500 or more PA have managed a .400 or higher OBP without having at least a .400 Slugging percentage. 

This kind of player has had two heydays in baseball history: 1885-1915, and 1946 to 1960. I am clearly not understanding the 1950s very well and am going to need to study up on it. The earlier era is clearly about batting average. Or is it? Actually another experiment puts my OBP theory entirely into question. 

When I add to the search criteria that I want players with batting averages of .000 to .299 I expect to see the 19th century and early 20th century players melt away. Instead, from 1885 to 1915, there are still 23 such players - 500 PA, .400 OBP but batting average under .300 and Slugging percentage under .400.  23 in 30 years granted, but still, not unknown. More to the point, when I look at the difference in their AVG and the OBP, I find VERY wide gaps - 

Player                                    AVG                    OBP  
Paul Radford 1887              .265                    .403
Jim McTamany 1889            276                    .407
Dummy Hoy 1890               .298                      .418
Jim McTamany 1890           .258                    .405
Dummy Hoy 1891               .291                      .424
Bill Joyce 1890                    .252                       .413
Roy Thomas 1902               .286                    . 414
Jimmy Sheckhard 1911     .276                        .434       


And so on - these are players that added, as in the case of Sheckhard, 158 points to their OBP beyond their BA, so there is clearly something going on here. Granted a good many of these players played in the Players' League, but unless there were different rules (like a 3-pitch walk) then I don't see any reason to rule these out.            

So, from 1885 to 1915, there are 23 players with 500 or more PA, batting averages below .300 but OBP of .400 or greater but SLG below .400.

From 1916-1945 - the next 30 year period, there are 8 - 3 of them are named Max Bishop, king of the gap between batting average and OBP, and the last one is Eddie Stanky who does so in 1945 and then again in 1946 to start our next 30 year era. 

Bishop hit .265 in 1926 but had an OBP of .431.  He hit .254 with .412 OBP in 1932 and in 1933 his numbers are .294 and .446 respectively. Gaps of 166, 158 and 152 points for those years. wow.  Stanky was almost as good: in 1945 he hit .258 but had an OBP of .417 and in 1946 .273 and .436, gaps of 159 and 163 for those two years.

From 1946 to 1975 there were 13 players with these kinds of numbers, compared with 23 in 1885 to 1915 and only 8 for 1916-45.  

Since 1985, up to today, there have been 4 players with AVG below .300, OBP of 400 or higher and SLG under .400: Toby Harrah in 1985, Brett Butler in 1991, Walt Weiss in 1995 and Rickey Henderson in 1996. No one has done it since 1996, which suggest to me that OBP since a certain point is home run driven. 

Let's remove the BA under .300 and remind ourselves of what we found above - that even if we count .300 plus hitters, the total number of players that had OBP of .400 or higher with an SLG under .400 since 1961 has been ten, in 55 years. Ten: 


For now, 93 players in history with OBP of .400 and SLG of .399 or lower: 

1885 - 1899 - 19
1900 - 1915 - 27
1916-1930 -    6
1931-1945 - 10
1946-1960  - 20
1961-1975 - 3 - Albie Pearson 1963, Joe Morgan 1966, Ron Hunt 1971
1976-1990 - 1 - Toby Harrah in 1985
1991-2005 -  6
2006-2015 - zero 

Of the 46 players that did this between 1885 and 1915 half - 23 - we have seen could be considered true OBP players, as their .400 plus OBP came about despite a batting average below .300 meaning that they added more than 100 points to their OBP by non-batting means. 

The period of 1946-1960 perplexes me, but appears to be more linked to the style of baseball of the 1930s then we might have thought (I am not sure of this nor of what it means) but since 1961 pretty much, since expansion in other words, high OBP is linked to SLG of .400 or higher.  

So we might say that on OBP-based strategy and player IS possible after all, but has not existed since around 1920s with Max Bishop as a common phenomenon and really has not been widespread since 1915. So the idea that OBP has revolutionized baseball in our time does not appear to hold up to the evidence. 

Now, let's see how many batters with 500 PA, and .400 or higher OBP had SLG between .400 and .499:

The answer is 491 players since 1885 !   That is 3.77 players per year, compared with fewer than 1.00 per year for players with .400 or higher OBP and SLG below .400.