Mudville
Math
Baseball is
a game of numbers.
A whole lot
of them.
And some of
us (including me) are afraid of numbers!
But, fear
not, young baseball fan.
Mudville
Math is here to help.
In today’s
post, we’re going to talk about batting averages.
Hank Aaron
had a career batting average of .305.
Okay.
But what
does that mean exactly?
First of all,
a batting average is a statistic used to measure how successful a
batter is when it’s his turn at the plate.
For example,
if a player bats ten times and gets a base hit on three of those occasions then
he has a batting average of .300.
Whoa!
Pump the
brakes, fella!
Where did
that number come from?
Here’s how
it works.
The player
had three hits in ten times at bat, right?
That’s three
for ten.
Or, 3/10.
Same-same.
Last time I
checked, 3/10 is also a fraction.
And 3/10 actually
means three divided by ten.
Which equals
.300
His batting
average!
Easy, huh?
Try this.
A batter
gets one hit in four times at the plate.
In other
words, he went one for four.
That’s 1/4.
What’s his
batting average for that game?
Use a
calculator if you have to.
One divided
by four.
If your
calculator says .25, just add a zero (batting averages always have three
digits!) and you’ll get a batting average of .250
To find
anyone’s batting average (or BA, for short) all you have to do is take the
number of hits a batter has and divide it by the number of times he went to
bat.
For example,
Roberto Clemente had 3000 hits in his Hall of Fame career. He had 9454 at-bats.
What was his lifetime batting average?
Okay.
I’ll definitely
need my calculator for this one.
3000 divided
by 9454 equals ……
.317
That was
Clemente’s batting average for his career.
Is that a good
batting average?
Definitely.
Anyone with
a batting average at or around .300 is considered to be a very good hitter.
If you are
hitting close to .325 or higher, then, wow!
That’s really,
really good.
Now it’s
your turn.
Do some
research.
Choose a player.
Find out their
batting averages for each season that they’ve played.
Does the
batting average stay the same or does it go up and down from year to year?
How come?
If you're having a bit of a hard time understanding all of this, that's okay.
Some baseball statistics are hard to figure out.
Just be patient and enjoy learning!
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