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:
“I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous ... as to attend to the gross but somewhat foreign form of servitude called Negro Slavery, there are so many keen and subtle masters that enslave both north and south. It is hard to have a southern overseer; it is worse to have a northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To expect to increase prices and then to maintain them at a higher level by means of a plan which must of necessity increase production while decreasing consumption is to fly in the face of an economic law as well established as any law of nature.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“That’s one thing I like about Hollywood. The writer is there revealed in his ultimate corruption. He asks no praise, because his praise comes to him in the form of a salary check. In Hollywood the average writer is not young, not honest, not brave, and a bit overdressed. But he is darn good company, which book writers as a rule are not. He is better than what he writes. Most book writers are not as good.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)