The Importance of Having the Right Baseball Ops Gear

The game of baseball requires more than raw talent and countless hours of practice. It also requires top-tier gear and the right tools to help players perform at their best. Whether you’re playing in Little League, training for the Major Leagues or somewhere in between, having the right baseball equipment can make all the difference.

In the early days of baseball, home runs and batting average were the go-to indicators of player performance. But as the game evolved and analysis advanced, so too did understanding of its nuances. Today, sabermetrics are used by coaches, scouts and front offices to assess players’ abilities at the plate, and have become an integral part of MLB strategy.

OPS, or On-Base Plus Slugging, is a statistic designed to illustrate a batter’s overall offensive performance by combining on-base percentage (OBP) and slugging percentage (SLG). This combination is then multiplied by 1000 to create an overall score that represents a player’s ability to reach base, hit for power, and drive in runs.

Although OPS has become a staple of modern baseball analysis, it’s not without its critics. Some argue that OPS overemphasizes slugging percentage and that it doesn’t consider other aspects of the game, such as baserunning and situational hitting, which are important for a hitter’s overall value. Others have developed alternative metrics, such as wOBA and wRC+, that take into account the value of different offensive outcomes as well as league context to offer a more comprehensive evaluation of offensive ability.