Batting Average leaders percent above league.

Thursday, May 30, 2013
League Batting Average?

Despite that post and because I never received a reply from baseball-reference.com I decided for this post to simply use the batting average (BA) that baseball-reference.com lists per season per league:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/NL/bat.shtml

http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/AL/bat.shtml

It's good old Hits/at bats (AB), so it includes pitchers, which requires one to consider that for American League seasons starting in 1973 when the designated hitter (DH) was introduced.  They should have implemented a designated fielder (DF) and have only eight batters but almost all baseball people, both officials and fans, are to mentally constipated to deal with anything remotely radical.

Clink link to view data and graphs.

P: highest player BA
L: League BA

American League (AL):
          P L Dif
min 0.301 0.230 0.054
max 0.420 0.292 0.147
ave 0.356 0.263 0.093




For the player with the highest BA, the percent above the league BA:
%above
min 21.18%
max 58.02%
ave 35.58%

National League (NL):
          P L Dif
min 0.313 0.239 0.063
max 0.424 0.303 0.141
ave 0.352 0.261 0.091



For the player with the highest BA, the percent above the league BA:
%above
min 24.42%
max 49.82%
ave 34.95%


AL & NL:
         AL NL
min 21.18% 24.42%
max 58.02% 49.82%
ave 35.58% 34.95%


The AL bulge in 1909-1919 is accounted for almost exclusively by Ty Cobb.  The NL advantage from 1973 is due to the higher AL BA because of the DH.  The two AL spikes around 1980:
1977 Rod Carew 46% .388
1980 George Brett 45% .390 on only 449 AB.

AL - NL (player percent above league):
min -20.04%    NL better 1905
max 28.73%    AL better 1910
ave 0.63%