Baseball and Statistics
In baseball, information about a player is known as a "statistic." A statistic is a mathematical calculation that tells you something about a person or thing without having to use words.
Eew, math!
Believe it or not, statistics show you how to use addition, subtraction, division, and even multiplication so that things in the real world make sense. To know how good a baseball player is, you can use statistics to compare them to players on other teams or leagues.
The study of baseball statistics is called "Sabermetrics." What? The word comes from the nickname S.A.B.R. (Society for American Baseball Research). Try pronouncing it "Say-bur-met-ricks." Now say it ten times fast!
Below are two important statistics that baseball fans use to keep track of players: Batting Average and RBI.
Batting Average
In baseball,"Batting Average" is the ratio of "Hits" to "At Bats". In other words, it's the number of times a player hit the ball divided by the number of times they had the chance to hit it. In math, this is called an "average" or "mean," and looks like this:
(Times they hit the ball) ÷ (Times they were up to bat) = Batting Average
A batting average is a decimal point followed by three numbers. It can also be shown as a percentage by moving the decimal two places to the right. For instance, if you are up to bat 12 times and hit the ball 4 times, your batting average is:
4 ÷ 12 = .333. This also means that you hit the ball 33.3% of the time.
Honus Wagner hit the ball 3,415 during his career as a baseball player. He was up to bat 10,443 times. What does that make his batting average? Scroll down for the answer...
The baseball player with the best batting average in history is Ty Cobb (another character in Honus and Me), whose batting average is .366. Considering how hard it is to hit a fast pitch, that's pretty impressive!
Answer: Honus Wagner's batting average was .327, which means he hit the ball 32.7% of the time. He had the best batting average in his league for 8 years!
RBI
R.B.I stands for "Runs Batted In." In baseball, a "run" is the same as scoring a point. When you hit the ball, and someone else was already on a base from a previous hit, if they run to home plate, you get an RBI.
Wow! Even if you aren't the one running around the bases, you get credit for giving other players the chance to score. You can earn more RBIs if you hit the ball further and allow more than one runner to get home. For instance, if the bases are loaded, it's the bottom of the ninth, and you hit a home run to win the game, you get 4 RBI!
Honus Wagner had 1,732 RBIs during his entire career. The longer you play baseball, the more chances you have to earn RBIs. Honus played baseball for about 20 years. Ty Cobb had 1,961 RBIs. He played baseball for about 23 years.