My stepdad is a big baseball fan. We’re watching the World Series, and he keeps mentioning the player’s batting average. I have never played, watched, or learned about baseball in my life, so Google and my stepdad was tricky (they used more baseball terms to explain that I don’t know). I want to be able to keep up with what he’s saying, so could someone please explain it to me? Thank you 🙂 (Also, explanations on what a player would have to do to get the particular ranges [???] for said average would be appreciated as well!!)
In: Mathematics
Batting average is just a ratting from 0 to 1.000 (or 1 to one thousand) On how likely a player is to hit a ball at each at bat (each time they get to go up to the plate).
It’s calculated effectively like this. Number of hits divided by number of at bats.
If someone is batting .500, it means they’re hitting half the balls thrown at them, most players typically are in the .2-.35 range, when you start getting into the .400 range your really good, the higher the better.
This is also where the phrase comes “batting a thousand” comes from, it means you have a batting average of 1.000, or in other words your doing perfect.
It’s a percentage score how many hits a player has vs. how many times they get out. If a player has three at bats, they get one hit and get two outs, then they have an average of .333 for that game. Walks don’t factor in to the average, neither do some other plays like errors and sacrifices (I’m sure there are others, but I can’t think of them right now). So, if the players has four at bats, hits once, walks once, and gets out twice, that is still an average of .333.
So there are a few baseball stats that matter that I’ll try to run down simply:
* Batting Average: batting average is the number of hits you get divided by the number of at bats you have, expressed as a three digit number, .XXX as opposed to a percentage like XX%. So, for example, if a player had 3 hits in 10 at bats, we would write that as .300, or “three-hundred.” The league average batting average is usually around .250 or .260, above .280 is good, above .300 is very very good. Below .240 is bad, below .220 is very bad, and below .200 means you’re about to get cut.
* On Base Percentage: on base percentage, or OBP, is the percentage of plate appearances where you get on base. This is different from an at bat. For example if you get walked it doesn’t count as an at bat, but does count as a plate appearance. This one is a bit more complex, but higher is better.
* Home Runs: This one is easy, if you hit it over the fence it is a home run. In a general season more than 20 home runs is considered good, more than 30 is very good, more than 40 is some serious power, and above 50 is insane. “Modern” baseball started in 1901 and there have only been 46 times that a player hit 50+ home runs in a season. The record is 73, though that was set by a player who was using performance enhancing drugs, so some still consider the record to be 61, the highest number hit by a player who was not accused of steroid use.
* Runs Batted In: Generally called “RBIs” this is the number of runs a player is responsible for. So if there is a runner on base and I get a hit, and that runner scores, I would get 1 RBI. If the bases are loaded and I hit a home run I’d get 4 RBI’s (the three players on base plus myself).
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