May OPS: AL .705, NL .699

For the first week of May (as I reported last week), the AL had an OPS of .681 and the NL had .674. So that means this past week was better. The AL would have been about .729 and the NL about .724. But neither one of those is a very torrid pace.

Here are the AVG-OBP-SLG for each league, so far, for the month of May:

AL: .251-.321-.384
NL: .248-.320-.379

Not exactly the kinds of numbers that conjure up images of slugfests. For the whole season, the AL has an OPS of .711 and the NL has .706. So far this month, both leagues have a lower isolated power than they did in April. The AL fell from .145 to .133 and the NL has fallen from .137 to .131.

Generally, the OPS for all of MLB in April and May combined are pretty good indicators of the OPS we will get for the whole season, as shown in the table below:



The AVG is just the simple average of each of the first two months. It looks like May usually has slightly more PAs, but this is probably a good approximation. The Total column is the MLB OPS for the entire season. In only two seasons was the overall OPS 10 or more points higher than for April/May. The average is for the whole season OPS to be 4-5 points higher. So it looks like we are in for a very low offensive year.

Right now the MLB OPS is .708. The last year it was lower was 1992 when it was .700. The lowest from 1993-2010 was .728 (last year). The next lowest was .736 in 1993. The simple average from 1994-2009 was .760 with no season being lower than .748. In 8 of the 13 seasons from 1979-1991, it was higher than .708. So, by recent historical standards, we are having a very low-offense year.

Since I mentioned Paul Konerko last week and his general patter of doing much worse in May than he does for the whole season, his OPS so far this month is 1.212 after .836 in April.