OPS is one of the best and most popular statistics in Major League Baseball for evaluating hitters, so get to know more about what it is, how it’s calculated and how it can be wielded in the fantasy space.
What Does On-Base Plus Slugging (OPS) Mean in Baseball?
For many years, batting average reigned supreme as baseball’s go-to gauge of how effective a hitter was for a season or career.
Nowadays, though, on-base percentage plus slugging percentage (OPS) is infinitely more popular as a one-stop shop for quantifying the overall impact of a player’s plate appearances.
That isn’t to say OPS is the greatest batting statistic ever conceived. Some of the more analytically inclined push back against the widespread usage of OPS, because it inherently puts more weight on slugging percentage than on-base percentage. Others prefer more holistic acronyms like wOBA, OPS+ and wRC+, which include park factors and/or how the player is hitting compared to the rest of the league during that particular window.
No stat is perfect, though, and OPS is solid, readily available for making MLB comparisons and not all that difficult to calculate on your own.
Here, we’ll go through the components of OPS and how to calculate it, plus uncover the players with the best OPS numbers and touch on how and why you might use the stat to gain an edge in fantasy baseball.
The O: What Is On-Base Percentage and How Is It Calculated?
On-base percentage (OBP) is the percentage of plate appearances in which the batter successfully reaches base.
As simple as it sounds, you do need quite a few variables to calculate it, and it’s worth noting what does and doesn’t count toward the calculation.
The formula for calculating OBP is: (Hits + Walks + Hit By Pitch) / (At-Bats + Walks + Hit By Pitch + Sacrifice Flies).
Notably, reaching base either because of an error or a fielder’s choice (i.e. a ground ball in which a runner that was already on base is retired while the batter gets to first base) does count as an at-bat but does not help the batter’s OBP. That part might be a bit confusing, since the batter quite literally does get on base. However, he should not have reached base.
Also notable is that while sacrifice flies count toward the denominator, sacrifice bunts do not factor anywhere into the equation. The rationale there is that the batter was still trying to potentially hit a home run on the former, compared to a much more intentional sacrifice on the latter.
At an MLB-wide level, OBP was in the range of .312 to .325 each year from 2010-24.
The S: What is Slugging Percentage and How Is It Calculated?
Slugging percentage (SLG) is a bit like batting average (hits divided by at-bats), but with bonus consideration given to extra-base hits.
Instead of hits in the numerator, it’s total bases, which is calculated as: Singles + (2 x Doubles) + (3 x Triples) + (4 x Home Runs). Divide that sum by the total number of at-bats and you’ve got SLG.
If a player goes 8-for-32 over the course of a week’s worth of games, that player’s batting average is .250. If all eight of those hits were singles, then his slugging percentage is also .250. But if all eight of those hits were home runs, then the slugging percentage would be 1.000. (The max SLG is 4.000, which would be a home run in every at-bat.)
At an MLB-wide level, SLG was in the range of .386 to .435 each year from 2010-24.
The P: Why Is It Helpful to Combine Them?
On their own, OBP and SLG are both perfectly wonderful data points, applicable in a variety of ways. Like peanut butter and jelly, though, OBP and SLG are simply (and just about indisputably) better together.
By combining a player’s ability to get on base with his ability to hit for power/extra bases, you get a great sense of his overall impact on offense.
A truly holistic offensive rating for a player would also factor in stolen bases, baserunning and strikeout rate — the latter because there’s a chance something good might happen if you at least put the ball in play — but OPS checks most of the boxes you could want when comparing players across positions, teams or even decades.
What Is a Good OBP/SLG/OPS in Baseball?
As already mentioned, the average OBP in MLB from 2010-24 was roughly .320, while the average SLG was around .410.
Time for your math exam: What’s the average OPS?
If you said .730, great work.
The league-wide average OPS was as low as .700 in 2014 and as high as .758 in 2019 — the clear difference being that there were 6,776 home runs hit in 2019 to just 4,186 in 2014. (All hail the juiced balls.)
If that’s average, though, then what’s considered good? Or even great?
There were 1,016 players with at least 600 total plate appearances from 2010-2024. At the top of the list was Aaron Judge with an OPS of 1.010, which is just madness. Only 10 players (not quite 1% of the entire pool) landed at .900 or greater. A mark of .833 was sufficient for the top 5%, while .806 was good enough for the top 10%.
For a full career, anything north of .750 is solid, while getting up to .850 is darn impressive. An OPS of .900 or above is pretty much reserved for either Hall of Famers or dudes who mashed during the steroid era.
For a single season, though, the bar is a bit higher.
From 2010-24, there were 2,102 instances of a player recording enough plate appearances in a single season to qualify for a batting title, 40 of whom posted an OPS of 1.000 or better—six even landing at 1.100 or higher.
To finish in the top 1% on the single-season OPS ranking over those 15 years, 1.033 was the goal. Top 5% was .943 and top 10% was an even .900. (For what it’s worth, the worst mark in those 15 years belonged to Chris Davis at .539 in 2018.)
Highest OPS Marks in MLB History
Career OPS Leaderboard (min. 4,000 PA, through the end of 2024):
- Babe Ruth, 1.164
- Ted Williams, 1.116
- Lou Gehrig, 1.080
- Barry Bonds, 1.051
- Jimmie Foxx, 1.038
- Turkey Stearnes, 1.034
- Hank Greenberg, 1.017
- Aaron Judge, 1.010*
- Rogers Hornsby, 1.010
- Manny Ramirez, .996
Single-Season OPS Leaderboard (min. 500 PA)
- 2024 Barry Bonds, 1.422
- 1920 Babe Ruth, 1.382
- 2002 Barry Bonds, 1.381
- 2001 Barry Bonds, 1.379
- 1921 Babe Ruth, 1.359
- 1923 Babe Ruth, 1.309
- 1941 Ted Williams, 1.287
- 2003 Barry Bonds, 1.278
- 1927 Babe Ruth, 1.258
- 1957 Ted Williams, 1.257
Career Postseason OPS Leaderboard (min. 100 PA)
- Babe Ruth, 1.211
- Lou Gehrig, 1.208
- Randy Arozarena, 1.104*
- Lenny Dykstra, 1.094
- Hank Greenberg, 1.044
- Paul Molitor, 1.026
- George Brett, 1.023
- Carlos Beltan, 1.021
- Bryce Harper, 1.016*
- Albert Pujols, .995
*still active, and far more likely to decrease than increase over the final few seasons of his career.
How to Use OPS in Fantasy Baseball
Right off the bat when thinking of applying OPS knowledge to fantasy baseball purposes, a big thing to keep in mind is that it’s not a predictive stat.
You can, if you so choose, assume that a player’s OPS for the first half of the season will continue into the second half, or that his OPS will eventually regress/improve to what it had been over the previous X number of years. Good luck with that, though.
What you want to do is compare the sum of a player’s expected slugging percentage (xSLG) and expected weighted on base average (xwOBA)—both of which can be found on Statcast or FanGraphs—to his current OPS, find the outliers and make moves/draft picks accordingly.
Take Cincinnati’s TJ Friedl, for instance.
In 2023, he had an .819 OPS, but an xSLG and xwOBA sum of just .610. At a difference of 209 points, it was the widest among qualified hitters, and a clear sign to keep your distance in those pre-2024 fantasy drafts. Now, if you drafted later than March 17 of that year, you had the advantage of already knowing he suffered a broken wrist in spring training and was a player to avoid anyway, but he ended up with a below-league-average .690 OPS in 2024.
Similarly, Isaac Paredes (.840 OPS vs. .684 expected) and Cody Bellinger (.881 OPS vs. .761 expected) took big steps backward in 2024, each posting an OPS more than 100 points worse than the previous year, as anticipated.
On the flip side, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. had an actual 2023 OPS of .788 and an xSLG/xwOBA sum of .881, and he ended up sixth in the majors in OPS (.940) the following year—a mid-third round draft pick on average, who ended up being a borderline top-10 overall player.
This isn’t exclusively a draft-day exercise, either. It could be done at any point during the season. Just keep in mind that the data inherently gets more valuable as it gets more events to factor, so it’s probably going to serve you better three months into the season than three weeks into it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do walks count in OPS?
Yes, walks do count toward OPS. They don’t change the S portion of the equation, but they do increase the O.
Here’s a fun fact, though: Whether a walk would increase a player’s OPS by more, less or the same as a single depends upon what the player’s slugging percentage was prior to that plate appearance.
For example, if a player is 2-for-5 in a game with two singles, he has an .800 OPS (.400 OBP, .400 SLG) for the day. Drawing a walk in a sixth plate appearance would bring his OPS up to .900 (.500 OBP, .400 SLG), while adding a third single would increase his OPS to 1.000 (.500 OBP, .500 SLG).
If that player is instead 2-for-5 with two home runs, that’s a 2.000 OPS (.400 OBP, 1.600 SLG). Adding a walk would increase his OPS to 2.100 (.500 OBP, 1.600 SLG), but adding a single would keep that player at 2.000 (.500, 1.500 SLG).
If, however, a player is slugging exactly 1.000 heading into a plate appearance, adding a walk or a single would have the same effect on OPS, increasing OBP without changing SLG.
Over the course of a full season, though, a single will always increase a player’s OPS more than a walk will, as no one has ever slugged 1.000 or better for an entire season. This is part of why some push back against OPS, believing that it undervalues drawing walks while overvaluing extra-base hits.
What is considered a good OPS?
To some extent, it depends on the player’s position and the era in which he played/is playing. For instance, a good-hitting first baseman playing in the 1995-2003 range would be expected to have a much better OPS than the vast majority of good-hitting middle infielders from 1963-68.
It also depends to a much greater extent whether we’re talking about a game, a week, a month, a season or an entire career.
For either a season or a career, though, anything .800 or greater is generally regarded as good/above average, while .900 and above is considered excellent.
What about for pitchers? What’s a good OPS against?
For as much as we talk about OPS for batters, it’s a challenge to even find a leaderboard on the pitching side of the aisle.
Things like WHIP, FIP, K/9, Batting Average Against and, of course, Earned Run Average are far more popular gauges of a pitcher’s effectiveness on the mound.
That said, a sub-.600 OPS against is mighty impressive and likely to result in Cy Young consideration.
Between the 2023 and 2024 campaigns, there were a combined total of eight qualified pitchers who went below .600 OPS against, including both Cy Young winners in each season.
Elevate Your Fantasy Baseball Strategy with Sleeper
Now that you know a good bit more about one of the primary hitting statistics in baseball, you might want to start applying that new-found knowledge in the world of fantasy baseball.
If so, give Sleeper a try. The app is top notch, and its fantasy offerings are plentiful, from breaking news, to Sleeper Picks, a DFS game where you can maximize your winnings by picking whether you think players will exceed or fall short of their daily stat projections.
