Hello, again.
And welcome back to Mudville Math!
In our first post, we talked about batting averages.
How an average is determined.
What's considered to be a good batting average.
A not-so-good one..
That sort of thing.
Here's a quick re-cap.
A batting average is a statistic that is used to measure how successful a player has been when he's been up to bat.
It reveals how often a player has gotten a base hit.
To figure out the average, you take the number of hits a player has and divide it by the number of turns he's had at the plate.
For example, a player has four hits in twenty at-bats.
That's 4/20.
Or, 4 divided by 20.
And that equals .200 ..... which isn't good, actually.
The .300 mark, or higher, has long been the average that good hitters want to have.
Most players don't reach the .300 level.
But, keep this in mind.
If you hit .300, that means you failed to get a hit SEVEN times in ten chances at the plate!
A bit odd when you think about it.
By the way, the last player to hit .400 in the major leagues (getting a hit, on average, four out of every ten times at-bat) was Ted Williams.
He hit .406 during the 1941 season.
Josh Gibson, a star player in the Negro Leagues, hit .466 in 1943.
That's an amazing batting average!
So, in today's post, we're going to take a look at on-base percentages.
OBP for short.
(Baseball is big on abbreviations)
Percentages and averages are pretty much the same thing.
If you get a hit 5 out of 10 trips to the plate, you're hitting ....
Wait for it ,,,,,,,
.500
And if you have a geography test at school and answer 5 out of 10 questions correctly, your mark is 50%.
.500 and 50%.
Same-same.
But here's where statistics get a bit weird.
If you're hitting .500 on your Little League team, you're a star!
If you get 50% on your geography test, well, let's just say Mom and Dad aren't going to be thrilled.
Anyway, back to on-base percentages.
Here's how it works.
Let's say a player comes to bat 100 times.
She gets a hit 28 times.
Plus, she gets a walk 10 times.
However, baseball people don't consider a walk to be an "official" at-bat.
Why?
It's because the batter didn't get a hit but didn't record an out either.
So, baseball statisticians (people who work with numbers & statistics) don't count it at all when they're figuring out a batting average.
Which means that this player actually had 28 hits in 90 "official" at-bats.
28/90 works out to be a batting average of .311.
Better than .300!
Impressive.
But what's her on-base percentage?
Here's where the walks come into play.
She had 28 hits, right?
Plus the 10 walks.
Out of 100 trips to the plate.
That's 38/100, or, 38 times out of 100 that she reached base.
So, to determine her on-base percentage, we simply divide 38 by 100.
Which equals .380
And that's pretty darn good!
Make sense?
Okay.
Try this.
A player comes to bat 60 times.
He gets a hit 18 times.
He also walked 8 times.
What is his OBP?
The answer is found below the picture!
So, let's see how you did.
The player came to bat 60 times.
But he walked 8 times so that's 60-8=52 official at-bats.
Hmm. He has 18 hits in 52 official at-bats.
18/52.
That's a .346 batting average.
Now, let's tack on the 8 walks.
18 hits plus 8 walks means he got on base 26 times in 60 at-bats.
26/60 ?
He has an on-base percentage of .433.
Which is excellent, by the way.
So, that's how on-base percentages work.
A number that identifies how often a player reaches base either thru a hit or a walk.
You total those two numbers up and divide by the amount of times a player came to bat.
Even if a player walks just one time during the year, their on-base percentage will be higher than their batting average.
Oh.
Nearly forgot.
That guy in the picture above ..... that's Hank Aaron.
One of the greatest home run hitters of all time.
HIs lifetime batting average was .305 and his on-base percentage was .374
Outstanding!!
Until next time, friends!
Comments
Post a Comment