Why does Major League Baseball (MLB) feel the need to differentiate between an At-Bat vs. a Plate Appearance? Personally, I feel what counts as an At-Bat distorts the statistics whereas if they only counted Plate Appearances, the stats would be unbiased and paint a more accurate picture of a batter’s abilities. Your thoughts?
Simple answer: if you didn’t differentiate between the two, the more a player walked, the lower the batting average. Unless you counted walks as hits, but they’re not, so it’s neatly divided into two catergories: how well a batter hits, and how often they reach base.
Slightly longer answer, walks are not counted as at-bats, nor are hit by pitches, outs that are ruled sacrifices, and catcher’s interference calls that result in a batter being awarded first base. There may be some other exceptions.
The long and short of it is that the distinction was made for subjective and pretty dumb reasons in the 19th century, and it’s kept the way it is for the sake of consistency.
Old timey baseballers were overly interested in batting average, and undervalued the walk.
With today’s sensibilities, we would discard batting average in favor of on base percentage, which basically uses plate appearances rather than at bats. It removes errors and a few less common ways of reaching base, like dropped 3rd strikes.
I’m wondering why you think this. It’s possible for a plate appearance to have an outcome that is entirely out of the batter’s control, and thus have nothing to do with that batter’s abilities. And a walk may or may not indicate a batter with a good eye and skill at laying off pitches that are outside the zone.
I like having both. On-base percentage doesn’t tell the whole story. The BA/OB/SP slash is pretty good shorthand for understanding a player’s value. Batting average was certainly overvalued in the past but it’s still relevant info.
This. Plate appearance doesn’t provide any useful information on its own. On Base Percentage is a broader statistic than Batting Average, considered more useful than Batting Average by many since it measures every aspect of batters offensive contribution. Batting Averages are specific to hitting though, and the statistic would be even less useful if diluted by other means for a batter to reach base.
That said, modern baseball teams use statistics broken down far more finely than traditional measures. A players record in offense can be examined based on the specific pitcher and the types of pitches thrown, the park, time of year, time of day, weather conditions, other men on base and in the line-up, inning, score, and maybe what he ate for breakfast. The details that show when a batter’s performance will be noticeably greater or lesser than average are the most important to know.
Same is true of at-bats. One fielder may get to a hit ball in time to catch it or throw the runner out, while another one has to pull up and catch it on the first hop, or his throw gets there a fraction of a second late.
True, but in general, a player with a lot of walks either has a good eye and skill at laying off of pitches, or he’s a dangerous enough hitter that pitchers pitch around him frequently.
Neither stat is immune to undeserved successes in getting a hit or getting on base. So those undeserved successes aren’t a way of determining which stat is better, unless one can show that one of them is much more prone to them than the other is. And those undeserved successes are also why you have averages.
There’s that oldie but goodie: a successful offense has to do two things - get men on base, and drive them in. OBP is an excellent measure of the ability to get on base, much better than BA. And there are better stats than BA to measure ability to drive men around and in, since BA treats all hits alike, from a single to a four-bagger. BA measures some of each, without measuring either one all that well.
I concur.
A very interesting discussion. I see arguments here where the stats could be broken down even more granular…but where dies it stop, right? I have to agree with those who effectively pointed out that no ONE stat alone says it all. As such, a collection of key stats gives a fuller picture of each batter’s performance.
To answer why I feel this way, I wasn’t thinking as deeply as all those who responded. I was just thinking superficially about At-Bats vs. Plate Appearances. But, the compilation of opinions and discussions within any one thread is what makes the Straight Dope so great!
Absolutely, and the growth of “sabermetrics” (that is, advanced stats) has given us, as baseball fans, a far better understanding of how players perform.
When I was growing up, in the early '70s and '80s, if those stats even existed, they weren’t commonly seen, and OBP was probably the most “advanced” stat that was commonly reported in the newspapers and magazines like Sporting News. Now, it’s easy to find slugging percentage, OPS+, etc., as well as pitching stats like WHIP, ERA+. and FIP.
Well, as long as they prove useful, why shouldn’t we keep going down the rabbit hole to mine more and more granular data?
xwOBA is Expected Weighted On-base Average, and it factors in exit velocity of the ball off the bat, launch angle, pitch type, pitch speed, and even sprint speed of the batter. It’s useful for both pitchers and hitters, and has shown to be extremely predictive. For instance, a pitcher can look up the xwOBA on their slider and compare it to their 4-seam fastball. Maybe there was a really lucky hit off their slider that normally would result in an out. xwOBA picks that up, but FIP, WHIP and ERA didn’t. That’s useful.
Yeah, how else would we know who’s the all time leader in batting average against left-handed pitchers wearing red uniforms on Thursdays during a full moon?
Important for Cincinnati to know when they have a southpaw on the mound on a Thursday during a full moon. More importantly, statistics are used by announcers to fill time when a baseball game gets extremely dull and boring. IOW, most of the time.
My wife makes fun of that stuff all the time. It’s a lazy crutch for announcers, to be sure. I’m a Royals fan, and I think that on the TV side, Rex Hudler* and Ryan Lefebvre do a good job. Rex is goofy enough that instead of relying on the statistics department for filler, they can rely on another dumb story from Rex.
On the radio side, Denny Matthews is the AL answer to Vin Scully, and people don’t talk about him enough. He’s been announcing for the Royals for their entire history, since 1969! He’s not Vin, but he’s really damn good.
- and a shout out to Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling for the Mets - I’ll tune into them when the Royals aren’t on, hoping to catch Keith wondering aloud if he left his front door unlocked.
A lot of times I’d rather hear about pointless statistics than the goofy announcer stories. Radio announcers are the worst. Don’t know if anybody bothers listening to a game on the radio unless they’re driving. As a teenager I’d listen to radio broadcasts of the Phillies losing, sometimes late into the night when they were out playing a team out west. On a hot summer night when I couldn’t get a date a cold case of beer and a ball game on the radio was a way to pass the time. The stories could get stupid, the statistics boring, and nothing worse than an announcer’s spiel on every fly ball “It’s going… it’s going… it’s gooooing… foul.” You asshole, you knew that ball had no chance of going over the wall.
Number of PA’s are used because otherwise, someone who had an outrageous number of BB’s - like Barry Bonds did during his otherwordly stretch from 2000 - 2004 that included some years with more than 200 BBs - would be unable to qualify for a batting title if number of AB’s were the criterion.
Among current players Juan Soto comes to mind as someone who will probably win a batting title only because PA’s (minimum 502 I believe) is the standard.
“It is high, it is far, it is… IN the left field foul seats!”
30+ years ago, I remember it like it was yesterday.
For reasons I don’t understand, it’s 3.1 PA per game your team plays. Why 3.1? Beats me.