Batting average tells you how often a hitter got a hit. It does not tell you whether he can hit. A .280 hitter with pop and plate discipline can out-produce a .320 hitter who only swings at strikes and never walks. The number on the back of the baseball card is the worst stat still printed on it.
It survives because it is old, it is simple, and it is on the broadcast. The same reason points per game still rules NBA broadcasts. The number is famous. It is also a museum piece. If you want to read what a hitter is going to do tonight, you need a different set of numbers, and they are not hard to learn.
What does batting average actually measure?
Batting average is hits divided by at-bats. A .300 hitter got a hit in 30 percent of his official at-bats. That is the whole thing. Walks don't count. Hit-by-pitches don't count. Home runs count as one hit, the same as a swinging bunt down the line.
So a player can pad his average with soft contact that falls in, draw no walks, and never hit the ball hard. The scoreboard will love him. The pitcher the next time through the order will not.
That is the trap. Batting average rewards the outcome of a single moment. It says nothing about how that moment was created, what came before it, or what came after.
Why can a .300 hitter be worse than a .260 hitter?
Two players can finish a season with the same number of hits and wildly different value. The .260 hitter who walks a lot and hits for power puts more runs on the board. The .300 hitter who swings at everything and never walks leaves runners stranded and gives away outs.
Look at the league leaders from any year in the last decade. The OPS leaders almost never match the batting average leaders. They overlap, but the names that show up high in OPS and not in average are the interesting ones. Those are the hitters who produce runs in ways the average ignores.
You can verify this on Baseball-Reference by sorting any season's leaderboard by OPS instead of AVG. The two lists look different. The OPS list tends to age better too.
Why is on-base percentage the first upgrade?
On-base percentage (OBP) counts every time a batter reaches base, including walks and hit-by-pitches. It answers a different question than batting average: how often does this player avoid making an out?
Outs are the only thing a hitter actually controls. Every out ends an inning. Walks don't show up in batting average, but they keep innings alive. A walk is as good as a single for the lineup, and OBP credits it.
League average OBP usually lands around .320. Elite hitters live in the .400s. If you want one number that starts to predict what a hitter does in his next game, OBP is closer to that number than average is.
What does slugging percentage add?
Slugging percentage (SLG) measures the total bases a player collects per at-bat. A single counts as one, a double as two, a triple as three, a home run as four. It tells you how hard a player hits when he makes contact.
This is where power shows up. Two hitters can both bat .280. One hits nothing but singles. The other hits 35 home runs. They are not the same player. Batting average treats them like they are. Slugging separates them on sight.
League average slugging usually sits around .400. Anything in the .500s is a power bat. The .600s and above are the guys who change a lineup with one swing. Baseball Savant breaks this down with the launch-angle and exit-velocity data behind the slugging number.
What is OPS and why is it the sharpest single number?
OPS is on-base plus slugging. It is not perfect. It is a rough sum of two percentages that don't share a denominator, so smart people will tell you to use wOBA or OPS+ instead. But as a single number you can read in two seconds, OPS is the sharpest stat in baseball.
An OPS above .800 is an above-average regular. Above .900 is a star. Above 1.000 is a season that puts you in MVP conversations. You can remember those tiers. You can apply them to any hitter in any season and you will not embarrass yourself.
OPS also fixes the worst batting-average trick. A hitter with a .250 average and an .850 OPS is producing more runs than a hitter with a .310 average and a .720 OPS. The first guy walks and hits for power. The second guy singles a lot. The runs follow the first guy, not the second.
What are OPS+ and wOBA?
OPS+ adjusts OPS for the parks a hitter plays in and the era he plays in. A .750 OPS in 1968 means something different from a .750 OPS in 2022. OPS+ sets 100 as league average every year, so a 120 is 20 percent better than average no matter the season.
Weighted on-base average (wOBA) does the same idea with more precision. It weights every offensive event by how many runs it creates, then sums them. It is the stat FanGraphs built and the one most front offices use when they decide who to pay.
You don't need to calculate wOBA in your head. You need to know it exists and trust it. When someone says a hitter's wOBA is .360 and another is .310, the first is a clearly better run producer. The math handles the rest.
What about pitchers? The same logic gives you FIP
ERA looks like the pitching version of batting average. It is what shows up on the broadcast. It is also noisy. A pitcher can give up a soft liner that drops in, a broken-bat grounder that finds a hole, or a screaming liner right at the shortstop. All of those move his ERA. None of them reflect how he actually pitched.
Fielding independent pitching (FIP) strips out the defense and the ballpark and asks one question: did the pitcher strike guys out, walk them, or give up home runs. Those are the three things he controls. FIP is to ERA what OPS is to batting average. The same principle: reward what the player did, not what happened around him.
How do you use this while watching a game?
Three questions. That's all you need. When a hitter comes up, ask yourself:
- What is his OBP compared to his batting average? Big gap means he walks a lot, which means he is better than his average.
- What is his slugging? If it is high, he hits for power, and the next at-bat could end the inning or start a rally with one swing.
- What is his OPS+? Above 110 is a plus hitter. Above 130 is a star. That number is portable across eras and parks.
You will start to notice the hitters who get on base and the hitters who just look like they do. They are different people. Once you see it, you can't unsee it.
Why does this matter for predicting the next at-bat?
Batting average predicts very little. A hitter's average in his last 20 games is barely better than his season average at predicting his next 20 games. There is regression baked in. Slugging and on-base are stickier. Power, plate discipline, and contact quality all show up in those numbers, and they don't vanish overnight.
If you want to call what a hitter is going to do tonight, OPS+ or wOBA over the last month is a better guide than his average. The best guide is his underlying quality of contact: exit velocity, launch angle, chase rate. You can find all of it on Baseball Savant, free, before first pitch.
Read the number, not the average. That is how you stop being fooled by a .300 hitter who shouldn't be a .300 hitter and start seeing the .250 hitter who is about to take you apart.
FAQ
Is batting average a useless MLB stat?
Not useless, but very limited. It ignores walks, ignores power, and treats a bloop single the same as a line-drive double. For predicting what a hitter does next, OPS, OPS+, or wOBA tell you far more.
What stat should I read instead of batting average?
Start with OPS. It rolls on-base percentage and slugging into one number you can read in two seconds. If you want to go deeper, OPS+ adjusts for park and era, and wOBA is the weighted version FanGraphs uses.
Why is a .300 hitter not always great?
Because .300 only counts hits per at-bat. A .300 hitter with no walks and no power can be a below-average run producer. A .260 hitter who walks and hits doubles creates more runs. The average is real. The value isn't where you think it is.