I like to refer to the “Contribution Percentage,” better known as the “Red-Legged Superbas Index” or “RLS,” as the “slugging percentage on steroids.” The Slugging Percentage (SLG) is a useful statistic as it determines your average hit value — be it a single, double, triple, etc. (If your SLG is 2.000, you average a double.) Major League Baseball (MLB) employs another statistic, which should be considered useless, the On-Base Plus Slugging Percentage (OPS). What the actual meaning of this statistic is I will never know. Is there spatial meaning, MLB? (It is a made-up statistic so commentators can comment on stats with values greater than 1.)

It was my desire to create a “highly-inflated” statistic for the softball team to try to capture the “true contribution” of all players. For this statistic, the Red-Legged Superbas Index (RLS), I give credit to all forms of offensive contribution — be it a home run or a walk, a double or a sacrifice fly; everything counts. The only item that hurts a player is a strikeout. So, I took the numerator of the SLG, the total bases reached on hits, and added to it the number of walks, the number of times reached on error, and the number of sacrifice hits, and subtracted the number of strikeouts. I then divided this crazy sum by the number of plate appearances. In the absence of walks and sacrifice hits, the SLG is equal to the RLS. If a player strikes out, the SLG can actually be greater than the RLS; in general, however, the RLS tends be greater than the SLG, as designed.

The rationale for the RLS, in my opinion, can easily be defended. If you reach base on an error, how are you not “contributing?” If you walk, how is that not, effectively, a single or a “total base value of 1?” Same goes with sacrifice hits. The only debate may be with the subtraction of strikeouts as it may be unfair to punish those who strikeout. (Is a strikeout any less effective than, say, a popup to the pitcher?) But hell, this is softball.

On a further note, I was originally planning on adding the number of times a runner advanced (a statistic I called “A”) to the numerator. For example, a flyout to right and the runner at second tags to third, or a groundout to second and the runner advances to third on the play. But the logistics of keeping the books to that degree of accuracy was overwhelming.