Comparing BA leaders Bill Terry (.401 in 1930) and Carl Yastrzemski (.301 in 1968).

Batting Average (BA): Hits/At Bats (AB). One way to compare BA or any stat from different eras is to use the percent above the league average. The contrast between Bill Terry and Carl Yastrzemski is stark.

The batting average example to demonstrate context. Tuesday, February 8, 2011

In 1930 Bill Terry batted .401. In 1968 Carl Yastrzemski batted .301. Both led their leagues. Who did better?

In 1930 NL BA was .303. In 1968 AL BA was .230.

Terry: (.401 - .303) / .303 = 0.323432343 - 32% above NL BA

Yastrzemski: (.301 - .230) / .230 = 0.308695652 - 31% above AL BA

Terry but not by nearly as much as you might expect.

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Let's go beyond that ten year old 2011 post.

In addition to comparing Terry and Yastrzemski let's look at the top ten in BA in each of the two seasons of comparison.

	1930	BA	NL	Dif	%Dif			1968	BA	AL	Dif	%Dif
1	Terry • NYG	.401	.303	.098	32.34%		1	Yastrzemski • BOS	.301	.230	.071	30.87%
2	Herman • BRO	.393	.303	.090	29.70%		2	Cater • OAK	.290	.230	.060	26.09%
3	Klein • PHI	.386	.303	.083	27.39%		3	Oliva • MIN	.289	.230	.059	25.65%
4	O'Doul • PHI	.383	.303	.080	26.40%		4	Horton • DET	.285	.230	.055	23.91%
5	Lindstrom • NYG	.379	.303	.076	25.08%		5	Uhlaender • MIN	.283	.230	.053	23.04%
6	Watkins • STL	.373	.303	.070	23.10%		6	Davalillo • 2TM	.277	.230	.047	20.43%
7	Waner • PIT	.368	.303	.065	21.45%		7	Buford • BAL	.282	.230	.052	22.61%
8	Stephenson • CHC	.367	.303	.064	21.12%		8	Campaneris • OAK	.276	.230	.046	20.00%
9	Traynor • PIT	.366	.303	.063	20.79%		9	Harrelson • BOS	.275	.230	.045	19.57%
10	Wilson • CHC	.356	.303	.053	17.49%		10	Howard • WSA	.274	.230	.044	19.13%

The 1930 NL BA are extraordinary. But looking at %Dif, the percent above the league BA, the differences are not nearly so great. The 1968 AL has the edge in ranks 7 and 10. And the other %Dif are in the same ballpark.

Maybe we'll take a look at BA leaders for the last 100 years against their league BA in a future post. That might be especially interesting for .400 hitters.

Should Sacrifice Flies (SF) be in the Home Run rate: (AB+SF)/HR? Saturday, December 18, 2021

Sacrifice Flies (SF) is a stupid scoring rule that has come and gone over the years and even been included in sacrifice bunts, which are called Sacrifice Hits (SH) for some reason.

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Using both https://www.retrosheet.org/ and https://www.baseball-reference.com/ I was able to track down the 19 Sacrifice Hits (SH) that Bill Terry had in 1930 when the Sacrifice Fly (SF) scoring rule was in effect and SF were lumped with sacrifice bunts into SH. Had SF NOT been used, Terry would have had 16 more AB and his BA would have dropped 10 points to .391. The SF rule was NOT used in 1941 when Ted Williams batted .406. Had it been his BA would have been about .411.

Terry had only one sac bunt among those 19 SH. But two of his SF advanced runners but did not score them as the modern SF seems to require. Adding those two AB reduced Terry's BA:

1930	BA	AB	Hits	SF	game		SF	RBI	Play
10	.400631	634	254	July 6, 1930	1	Polo Grounds	1		Lindstrom to 3B
11			254	July 17, 1930		Polo Grounds	0		sac bunt
12	.400000	635	254	July 21, 1930		Polo Grounds	1		Leach to 3B; Lindstrom to 2B

.400 BA on the nose.