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Sabermetrics isn't really a specific strategy, IMO. It's more the idea of using statistical analysis to make decisions rather than relying on traditional wisdom. But yeah it often gets simplified to "focus on OBP instead of AVG" because that was one of the bigger, but simple to understand, changes to come out of Sabermetrics.
It would be more accurate to call this a "modern" baseball strategy. And a big reason sabermetrics focuses on OBP is because of home runs. Home runs have kind of taken over baseball at this point. You want to maximize the number of runners on base so that when someone inevitably hits a homer, you get more runs. Doesn't matter if the runner got there via walk or single, if his job is just to score on a homer.
Also consider, it's extremely difficult to hit for high average AND hit a lot of home runs in baseball. That's just the nature of the game - to hit HR you have to swing harder - which increases strikeouts. It's hard to hit for a high AVG when you strike out a lot. So you don't really see many players capable of excelling at both. Since the game has separate park factors for contact & power, it makes sense to choose one of the two and commit to it.
Sluggers tend to have the best EYE ratings to get on base and also high POWER ratings to knock them in, so that's the natural fit for the modern strategy. Live cards tend to do best in a park like this. They have bad CONTACT ratings though, so it helps to set those park factors to minimum, to cover your weaknesses better.
You'll probably find a lot of people preferring the opposite approach, the contact and defense based one. The "modern" strategy runs counter to the prevailing meta. But it still works.
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