Beginner's Guide to Baseball Statistics

Baseball is a huge part of this country's history and a huge part of baseball is the statistics. Everything that happens on the field is judged by the statistics that these games produce. With the excessive amounts of stats that are out there, it is very difficult to understand what they mean at times. From pitching stats and hitting stats, you will hear them all thrown around by just about everyone. So what exactly do these stats mean? Hopefully, I can clear up some of the confusion with this article.

Hitting Stats

Some of the easiest and most used stats are the hitting numbers. These are also some of the most important numbers for any player that is not a pitcher. There are several different ones that can be used and it would be almost impossible to go over all of them in this article. This is why we will go over the most important ones. We will start with Average (AVG). This is a basic percentage, but calculated to a three digit decimal. It is a reference to the percentage of times that the batter gets a hit. A hit is anytime that the hitter can reach base without an error or any other out occurring before the player gets to first base. You can get the average by dividing the amount of hits the batter gets by their at bats for the season. So if a hitter gets 3 hits in 5 at bats, they will have an average of .600. The next stat will be a player's On Base Percentage (OBP). Since a walk or hit batsman does not count as an at bat, the number of times the player reaches base cannot be accurately predicted by their average. This is where the OBP comes in. You will combine all times that a player reaches base, either by walk, getting a hit, or getting hit, and divide this number by the number of recorded at bats. Let's use the same player as before. This player got 3 hits in 5 at bats and walked once. This one walk is not reflected in the number of at bats, so you will only need to add the walk to the number of hits. So they have now reached base in 4 of 5 at bats. This will give the player an OBP of .800. This is an accurate depiction of how often the player reaches base.

Now that we have the two most basic stats figured out, we can move on to the last one that we will be going over. Slugging percentage is an interesting statistic. This is the number of times that the player put the ball into play. This means they made contact with the ball in that at bat and either got an out as a result of it or got a hit. Many people will shrug this number off as pointless, but it can help account for some runs batted in (RBI). When the ball is put into play, the runners can then advance if the conditions are right. A deep fly ball can result in a sac fly. This is when the runner stays on the base (tagged up) until the catch is made. If they can advance to the next base after that, then it is a sacrifice and does not count against their at bats. This can also show if a player is in a slump and how well they see the ball. Any at bat that does not result in a strike out (K) is counted toward this total. Since our last player had a very good night, we will use his teammate that only went 2 for 5 with two K's. This means that he put the ball in play 3 times. This would result in a .600 slugging percentage. Here is a basic line for our two players:

Player AB R RBI H BB K LOB Avg OBP Slg% TB 2B 3B HR

Doe, J. 5 2 3 3 1 0 2 .600 .800 1.000 7 1 0 1

Dumas, H. 5 1 0 2 0 2 3 .400 .400 .600 2 0 0 0

The stats are At Bats (AB), Runs (R), Runs Batted In (RBI), Hits (H), Base on Balls (BB, this is a walk), Strikeouts (K), Left on Base (LOB, the number of players they left on the bases instead of batting them in or advancing them), Average (AVG), On Base Percentage (OBP), Slugging Percentage (SLG%), Total Bases (TB, the number of bases they reached in a game), Double (2B, hit resulting in two bases), Triple (3B, hit resulting in three bases), Homer Run (HR). There are several more, but these are the basic ones and the most commonly used.

Pitching Stats

Pitchers have their own stats as well. These are a little different than hitting stats and tell how well a pitcher is doing. For the most part, the higher your hitting stats are, the better you are. This is opposite for pitchers. The lower a pitcher's numbers are, the better they are doing. The first of these stats is the Earned Run Average (ERA). This is the average amount of runs that a pitcher allows in a game. This is a good judge of how well a pitcher does. There are several exceptions, but for the most part, the better the pitcher, the lower the ERA. You can calculate this number by taking the number of runs allowed by a pitcher in the game and dividing that by the number of innings pitched. This will give you the number of runs allowed per inning. This can get confusing. Remember, you will see 6.1, but it is actually 6 and 1/3^rd of an inning. It needs to be calculated as 6.33 and not 6.1. Then multiply this number by 9 (for the number of innings in a game). Let's say our pitcher is able to last 7.2 innings and allows only 2 runs in this time. You will now take 2 runs divided by 7.667 (7 2/3 innings). Then multiply this by 9. This will give you the ERA of 2.35 (rounded up). Another stat that we will look at is the average against. This is the same as batting average but it is not hitter specific. It is all the hits that a pitcher allows divided by the number of at bats. This stat can be very useful when trying to average in the success that some batters will have against a pitcher. Win percentage is also calculated, but it is just a simple percentage of wins versus total starts. You take a pitcher's wins and divide this number by the total games played. This stat can be a little helpful, because the ERA does not always mean a loss. There are some pitchers that can have an ERA under 2.00 but have a Win percentage of .200. There are some pitchers that get no run support, or there are other factors that prevent them from winning. The Win percentage can paint a more accurate prediction. Fortunately, the rest of the pitching stats have no calculations. They are still important, just not math heavy.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to stats. There are also fielding percentages, and OPS, and several more. Every single aspect of baseball is governed by statistics. There are even sometimes, too many statistics. There are several people that will calculate some insane factors to show how well their team will do that day. It is not uncommon to hear this; when hitting on the third Thursday of June in the rain against pitchers born in Georgia "so and so" is hitting .800, so he should have a great game tonight. It even gets worse than this. Understanding the statistics and which ones are actually important is an integral part of baseball. I hope this will help give you a little insight to how the facts are figured and what they mean.