Trevor Story's OPS vs. wRC+: the park changes the comparison
His 2021 OPS was higher than his 2025 OPS, yet his wRC+ was lower. The two numbers answer different questions.
A .800 OPS can sit beside a 98 wRC+, while a .741 OPS can sit beside a 102. Those are Trevor Story's 2021 and 2025 regular-season pairs in FanGraphs’ batting table. I like this little reversal because it interrupts an easy assumption: the bigger familiar number does not always mean the better performance relative to the league.
OPS starts with the arithmetic
MLB’s glossary defines OPS as on-base percentage plus slugging percentage. The calculation is wonderfully portable. Add the two columns and the abbreviation stops looking mysterious.
FanGraphs’ OPS explanation supplies the useful caution: reaching base and accumulating total bases do not have equal effects on scoring, even though OPS adds the two rates without weighting them differently. It is an accessible shorthand for batting production. It is also a shorthand, and the league's offensive climate affects how impressive a particular result should look.
For a deliberately invented arithmetic example, an OBP of .350 and an SLG of .450 add to an OPS of .800. Another hypothetical hitter could reach that same OPS with .300 and .500. The sum matches. The balance does not. The little addition problem makes the metric easy to use, but it also shows what gets compressed when two columns become one.
The plus sign asks for a fairer setting
Weighted Runs Created Plus, or wRC+ uses weighted batting outcomes and adjusts for league and park. Its average is 100. A 120 means batting run creation 20 percent above league average on a per-plate-appearance basis. It is a rate comparison, not twenty extra actual runs, and not a statement that a team won twenty percent more games.
That setting matters for Story because the career table includes both Colorado and Boston. I would not compare those chapters by assuming the same raw OPS carries the same meaning everywhere and every year. A park-adjusted measure provides a common scale, while the raw line preserves the underlying shape of the hitting. Keeping both is more useful than declaring one column the winner.
| Regular season | Team | OPS | wRC+ |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Colorado | .917 | 122 |
| 2021 | Colorado | .800 | 98 |
| 2025 | Boston | .741 | 102 |
The table's 2021-to-2025 reversal is the point. Higher OPS, lower wRC+. Those numbers can coexist because the adjusted measure uses a different method and context. They do not isolate a single cause of the change, and they cannot tell us that moving ballparks alone created it. Different seasons are different samples with different league environments.
Two tempting readings to leave behind
First, wRC+ is not OPS with a decimal removed. OPS+ is another adjusted statistic with its own calculation, and its similar name does not make it interchangeable with wRC+. When a chart says 102, read its column heading before comparing it with a number from another site. Familiar scales are useful only when the labels come along.
Second, wRC+ is context-neutral about game situations and does not adjust for defensive position. A hit does not acquire extra weight in that measure simply because it happened with runners on base or in a dramatic inning. It evaluates batting, not the entire responsibility of playing shortstop.
To address that broader question, position-player WAR incorporates batting, baserunning, fielding and positional adjustments. That is a different assignment. Neither OPS nor wRC+ needs to pretend it includes everything a player can do. The major in this package covers Story's range of jobs; the stolen-base guide handles the running separately.
A jersey can celebrate what an adjustment explains
There is no need to drain the pleasure out of a Colorado accomplishment while asking for fair statistical context. The Hall of Fame’s Rockies artifact collection preserves Story's 2018 jersey because he was the first major-league shortstop to reach 40 doubles, 30 homers and 25 steals in a season. The distinction is concrete, unusual and joyful. A park adjustment does not make the doubles or the daring vanish.
We can admire that combination and still use an adjusted batting measure when comparing seasons. To describe a hitting line quickly, OPS is handy. When comparing teams or years, wRC+ supplies context on its own clearly defined scale. As evidence of future ability, neither a selected season nor a clever comparison is enough by itself.
The satisfying answer is to keep the column headings, the season and the question together. The raw number describes a line, while the adjusted number helps place it. Story's jersey gets to remain a happy artifact while the comparison gets to remain a fair one.
Sources
Every factual claim above traces to one of these. Links open in a new tab.
