Gross Production Average or GPA is a baseball statistic created in 2003 by Aaron Gleeman, as a refinement of On-Base Plus Slugging (OPS). GPA attempts to solve two frequently cited problems with OPS. First, OPS gives equal weight to its two components, On Base Percentage (OBP) and Slugging Percentage (SLG). In fact, OBP contributes significantly more to scoring runs than SLG does. Sabermetricians have calculated that OBP is about 80% more valuable than SLG. A second problem with OPS is that it generates numbers on a scale unfamiliar to most baseball fans. For all the problems with a traditional stat like batting average (AVG), baseball fans immediately know that a player batting .365 is significantly better than average, while a player batting .167 is significantly below average. But many fans don't immediately know how good a player with a 1.013 OPS is.
The basic formula for GPA is:
Unlike OPS, this formula both gives proper relative weight to its two component statistics and generates a number that falls on a scale similar to the familiar batting average scale.
Famous quotes containing the words gross, production and/or average:
“We perceive no charms that are not sharpened, puffed out, and inflated by artifice. Those which glide along naturally and simply easily escape a sight so gross as ours.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
“If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place.... The flag and the Constitution stand for democracy and not tyranny, for freedom, not subjection.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)