What the VORP?

As promised (and truth be told, I'm not very good at keeping blogging promises), this is the first in my off-season series of posts about stats that were never on any baseball card I traded as a kid (but seem to be important now). First up: VORP.

VORP stands for "Value Over Replacement Player," as explained by the folks at Baseball Prospectus. Invented by MIT grad Keith Woolner, VORP is highly regarded as an important statistic in evaluating a player's performance and market value. Wikipedia has what looks like a fairly good explanation of how VORP is calculated (but it's... uh... kind of dry). But if you want, you can check it out here.

Simply put (if that's possible), VORP analyzes the number of runs a player contributes as compared to the number of runs a replacement-level player would contribute, based on an equal percentage of plate appearances. VORP can be used in either an offensive context, or as a tool for evaluating pitchers. But basically, if I understand it right, the bottom line is that you're looking at a players performance at the most basic level, runs and outs (runs win games, but you only have a finite number of outs to work with).

This stuff is so far over my head it's ridiculous. If ignorance is bliss, I was much happier believing that VORP was the blue one on the left.

For 2008, here were the top five and bottom five in offensive VORP:

• Albert Pujols, 98.7
• Hanley Ramirez, 79.4
• Chipper Jones, 74.7
• Lance Berkman, 72.5
• David Wright, 65.8

• Tony Peña, Jr., -24.9
• Corey Patterson, -18.9
• Jeff Francouer, -17.8
• Andruw Jones, -16.8
• Willy Mo Peña, -16.5

Here are the top five/bottom five for pitching VORP:

• Cliff Lee, 76.5
  
• Johan Santana, 73.6
  
• Tim Lincecum, 72.3
  
• Roy Halladay, 70.6
  
• Jon Lester, 59.6

• Luis Mendoza, -31.6
• Josh Fogg, -18.4
• Matt Morris, -17.8
• Carlos Silva, -17.7
• Greg Reynolds, -16.8