 Two of the most common statistics that are used to analyze how good a player is at hitting are batting average and on base percentage. So let's look at how those are calculated. These are statistics that we can use over any period of time or in a specific situation. Most commonly we would look at a player's batting average in the current season or over his entire career. But if you really wanted to you could come up with a player's batting average on Tuesdays when it's over 85 degrees and there's a runner on the second base. Just be careful because if you narrow it down too much then your sample size will be so small that it might not accurately reflect a hitter's real talent. But let's get to the formulas. Batting average is found by dividing the number of hits a player has by his number of at bats. Just as a reminder at bats are considered the sum total of his hits, errors, fielders choices and times he got out. If you're looking up stats for a college or a pro player usually the number of bats will be listed so you won't have to worry about adding those up. Things like walks and being hit by a pitch are not included in batting average so it isn't helping or hurting his batting average but we'll look at those more in a bit. So just as a quick example and if you have kids this might be a good way to trick them into having fun with math. I picked a player at random so here we have the stats of a great player named Willie Maze. There was an actress once named Tallulah Bankhead who said that the only two geniuses in the world have ever been Willie Maze and Willie Shakespeare. But anyway, in 1962 Willie played every game for the San Francisco Giants. He had 621 of bats and 189 hits. So 189 divided by 621 of course gives us .304 and we routed off to three decimal places. So what does this tell us? Well if Mr. Maze were to bat a thousand times and he kept up this pace he would have 304 hits. Ok so is that good? And yes as it turns out it is good. Once we calculate everyone's batting average and we compare we find out that if you're quote unquote a 300 hitter that means you're a pretty good hitter and this will fluctuate over time but as a general rule 300 is pretty good. 275 to 255 and you're about average but if you get down around 200 you should probably try to get better real quick before they replace you. Although again this changes over time so in the very early 1900s to the late 1800s there were plenty of guys who would hit over 400 but the last guy to do that to hit over 400 for the whole season his name was Ted Williams and he did that in 1941. So obviously it's been a while so as a comparison the 2012 season was the last season to be complete as I'm recording this and the highest batting average over the last few seasons has generally been somewhere in the 350s or the 360s. So the last thing to point out about batting average is that we realize if a guy with a 300 batting average is good he's actually getting out or failing the majority 7 out of 10 times he's at bat. So if you go up to bat and you get out don't be too upset because it happens to everyone. So the third of batting average is something called on base percentage although technically it should probably be called on base average because it's an average rather than a percentage but we'll go with O.B.P. to avoid any confusion. On base percentage builds on batting average taking into account a few additional categories. For batting average 60 hits and it bats, O.B.P. also factors in walks, times hit by a pitch and sacrifice flies. O.B.P. is designed more as a stat to describe what happened rather than trying to predict the future but adding in errors or times interfered with probably wouldn't change the values all that much plus the numbers are harder to find but it does tend to remain more constant from year to year for a player than his batting average does. So what's our formula? We start by adding hits to walks and times hit by a pitch and then we divide that by the sum total of at bats, hits, walks, times hit by a pitch, sacrifice flies. So up until the mid-1950s sacrifice bunts and sacrifice flies were just one stat but they have since been divided we don't include bunts because they are generally something that teams manager would tell a player to do so we leave those out completely and they don't help hurt anyone's on base percentage. Like batting average this is pretty straightforward arithmetic but let's do a quick example anyway and just like the batting average we'll stick to Mr. Mays in the 1962 season in which he had 621 at bats, 189 hits, 78 walks, it was hit, hit by four pitches and he had three sacrifice flies. So 189 plus 78 plus 4 and divide that by 621 plus 78 plus 4 plus 3 which is 271 over 706. Divide that out and we get the total on base percentage of 384. So obviously our scale of OBB will be different than that of batting average in general it's going to be about 60 to 80 points higher because with the walks added in that means we're reaching base more times and as it turns out Mr. Mays's OBB is exactly 80 points higher than his batting average was at least in 1962. So anywhere from the 380 to the 400 range in your grade 320s to the 340s range that's about average but start falling below 300 and you're slipping. In 2012 the highest OBB in the league was a guy named Joey Vado who came in at 474 but he was actually way ahead of everyone else and the guy in second place finished at about 416. You recall as far as batting average goes nobody's going to get hit more times than they get out but there have been a few players whose on base percentage has exceeded 500 meaning that they'll be safe more times than they'll be out. The highest ever over a whole season was Barry Bonds who had a 609 OBB in 2004 although to really see how that mark fits in again you have to consider the era that Bonds played in and how that might affect his numbers. As far as whether batting average or on base percentage is the quote unquote better stat to look at they're really telling us two different things but I'll break them down and compare them a little more in the next video. See ya.