Looking Beyond Batting Average

Batting average has been around baseball since Henry Chadwick implemented box scores in the mid-1800s. This long history combined with the simplicity of batting average, hits divided by at bats, appeals to many fans. Most people will look at batting average first when evaluating a hitter. Yet, there is much more to valuing hitters than just looking at their batting averages.

Walks and hit by pitches are valuable and repeatable skills. An extreme example can be used to prove this point. Two players each hit exactly .300 with the same distribution of hit-types (singles, home runs, etc.). However, one of the players doesn’t have a single walk while the other walked 85 times over the course of the season. The second player is clearly more valuable because he got on base more and avoided outs, but looking just at batting average shrouds this fact.

Furthermore, not all hits are created equal, but batting average doesn’t reveal this fact. Home runs are clearly more valuable than doubles which, in turn, are more valuable than singles. Another extreme example highlights this. Two hitters both hit exactly .300 with no walks (or HBPs). The first player had all singles while the second player had 30 doubles, 5 triples, and 15 home runs. Player 2 was more valuable because he gained more bases with some of his hits and recorded hits that had a higher higher chance of scoring baserunners (and himself). The Yankees had two players that provide a good example of batting average not telling the whole story.

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The two players for the comparison had identical .256 batting averages. Player 1 had 636 plate appearances, while player 2 had 634. Player 1 had 92 singles, 25 doubles, 8 triples, 18 home runs, 6 hit by pitches, and 56 walks. Player 2 had 125 singles, 19 doubles, 1 triple, 4 home runs, 6 hit by pitches, and 35 walks. These inputs led Player 1 to have a .327 on-base percentage and .422 slugging percentage. Player 2 had a .304 OBP and .313 SLG. Player 1 seems to have had a better season than Player 2 because he got on base slightly more and hit for much more power.

Advanced hitting metrics back this up. wOBA (weighted on-base average) uses a linear weights system to calculate the average run value of each offensive event (BB, K, HR, 1B, etc.) across the league in an individual season. Indeed, Player 1 had a higher wOBA (.331) than player 2 (.279). Finally, wRAA (weighted runs above average) combines wOBA, the rate state, with the number of plate appearances (opportunities to produce value at the plate) to come up with the number of non-park adjusted runs a player was worth at the plate. Again, player 1 (10.4) was worth more runs above average than Player 2 (-15.2). Player 1 (Brett Gardner) was more valuable at the plate than player 2 (Derek Jeter) despite both players having the exact same batting averages.

Looking at the triple slash line (AVG/OBP/SLG) gives a better reflection of the type and quality of hitter. wOBA, wRAA, or wRC+ (adjusting for park and league effects) are even better at measuring the value of a hitter. Batting average should not be totally ignored. It helps make decisions on batting order. For instance, it helps decide who should bat first and who should bat second when the decision is between just two players. The player with a larger portion of his OBP coming from walks should bat first while the player with more OBP coming from average should bat second. This is because walks are most valuable when no one is on base (when the leadoff hitter usually hits) while hits are most valuable with runners on because they can be advanced multiple bases to score runs. Not all batting averages are created equally and they require supplementation from other statistics in order to properly measure the value a hitter delivers at the plate.

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