 Let's compare the most popular stat for analyzing hitters, and one that is similar but quickly growing in popularity. And I refer of course to batting average and on base percentage. To break it down to its simplest terms, there are two things that can happen when a batter steps up to the plate. Either he's going to be out, or he's going to reach base and he's going to be safe. Now as many of you know, there are seven ways to reach base. Some places will tell you there are more, but technically you compare it down to these seven. What we see in the last four, though, is an element of luck. With the exception of a fielder's choice, the defense has to screw something up one way or another. And for a fielder's choice, the batter must happen to come up with somebody already on base. And while the batter is going to be safe, he's still technically going to cost his team an out. But the top three hits walks being hit by a pitch, meaning nobody gets out, and this is exactly what the batter's goal is. But let's get to our actual stats. Batting average is pretty simple. The number of hits divided by the number of it bats. And as you know, it bats include every time the batter got a hit, reached on an error, fielder's choice, or got out. There are plenty of things that batting average does not include, though, and these are included in plate appearances. As a bit of an aside, plate appearances are at bats plus walks, times it by pitch, sacrifices, and times reach base because of interference. In other words, plate appearances leave nothing out. Our other stat on base percentage doesn't technically use plate appearance, but it gets close. For on base percentage, we add the number of hits, walks, and times hit by a pitch, and then divide them by the sum of the it bats, walks, times hit by a pitch, and sacrifice flies. Sacrifice buns are not included because generally they are pre-planned, whereas when a hitter gets a sacrifice fly, he's still likely trying to get a hit. We recognize over here on the left side of the equation our batting average formula. And really the difference is according to batting average, walking or being hit by a pitch is doing nothing because they're not included at all. It's not helping or hurting. But in reality, and the reason why they're included on base percentage, is that they're really a good thing for the batter because he is not being put out. You might be wondering if there's really much of a difference, though, after all guys get hits more than they walk. And this is true, but to show you the comparison from the 2012 season, guys still walk and get hit by enough pitches that it does make a difference. So let's look at a quick example of a few players. First we've got Carlos Santana, he's a catcher for the Indians. Last season, the league average batting average was 255. Santana's batting average was 252. So based on that, you might think he's just an average hitter. But if we look at his on base percentage, we see that Santana's 365 OVP was much higher than the league's average on base percentage of 319. And this was due in a large part to the number of walks that Santana drew. He had 118 hits but 91 walks and that's about as good of a walk rate as you're going to see. Conversely, another catcher, AJ Pierzinski, hit 278 last year, which is higher than the league average. But his on base percentage was only 326, or just above the league average. Again, we see this is mainly due to walks. Pierzinski only had five more hits than Santana, but he walked 63 less times. To compare, Pierzinski had a better average in 2012, but that is only telling us what he did as far as getting hits. Now of course you want to have guys on your team who have lots of hits and I'm not saying Pierzinski isn't a good player because he is. But some would argue that getting hits is not as important as not getting out, regardless of how you do it. And so that is why some people would argue that on base percentage is a better description of a player's true value at the plate than batting averages.