An out is an out except when it's not an out

I'm down with OBP and OPS and Win Shares. Sometimes I'm even down with OPP. But I'm having the damnest time trying to wrap my head around POP (or Productive Out Percentage), a psuedo-sabermetric formula that Buster Olney discusses in a recent issue of ESPN the Magazine. ESPN and Elias Sports Bureau -- who collaborated on the metric -- define a "productive out" as such:

1) A baserunner advances with the first out of an inning.
2) A pitcher sacrifices with one out.
3) A baserunner is driven home with the second out of an inning.

And "POP" is a ratio of "productive" outs to total possible "productive" outs, i.e. if 3 of a player's 10 outs are deemed "productive" by the above standard, his POP is .300.

Ok, but what the fuck does this mean? Olney goes on to rank the top six and bottom six teams in POP to illustrate his thesis -- the Tigers, Diamonbacks, and Pirates are at the top of the list above .400, while the Yankees, Red Sox and Oakland As are at the bottom of the list. Oakland's cumulative POP appears to be pretty galling at .137, until you remember that Oakland:

a) doesn't favor bunts, stolen bases or the hit-and-run
b) compensates by stressing plate discipline and walks and OBP, and
c) has averaged 100 wins per season over the last three seasons with this "bias"

Last I checked, the Yankees and Red Sox have won a few games with their POP-allergic methods, because, oh yeah -- they actually get people on base. Ha ha ha, this makes absolutely no sense as a standard for efficiency/ productivity -- even with as little as I know about statistics -- because it's based around such a small, quirky sample size. Olney writes that "Through Monday, the Tigers led the majors in POP, at .430, with 37 productive outs among 86 made in those situations." So what happens when you base this against a team with, say, 70 or 100 such situations? Is there a quantitative way of defining which team is doing a better job? Maybe in these particular situations, but it's not a metric that considers what a player/team is doing in every at-bat or inning pitched. Ergo, I hate it.