Stop staring at Batting Average and Home Runs. Look at their percentage above the league. Sunday, January 30, 2022
We baseball fans are simple. That's a euphemism for stupid. We stare at numbers and marvel at them even when they are completely lacking context. The two traditional stats stared at the most are:
Batting Average: Hits divided by At Bats (AB).
Home Runs: uh, that's it. Just a total. Not even a simple average or rate like AB divided by HR to get the common sense stat of the average number of AB to hit a homer. Some may prefer using Plate Appearances (PA), which is mostly AB + Bases on Balls (BB) also known as Walks. The idea is the same.
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Look for the only two righty batters to lead the AL or NL in BA 1939-2024 with BA >= .370: Joe DiMaggio and Nomar Garciaparra. Their ranks will drop with this different way of evaluating.
BA >= .360 since 1939. Only 23% bat righty. Monday, May 5, 2025
35 in the 86 seasons 1939-2024.
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The data in this post is derived from the same data in the post above, which included a rank order based on Batting Average (BA). But there were multiple ties. How did baseball-reference.com break those ties? Or did it? Which brings up the related question:
How many decimal places does BA need?
Since each of the 35 individual BA is being compared to its league BA for that season, we need that data too. It came from:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/AL/bat.shtml
https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/NL/bat.shtml
We'll recalculate BA for both the individual player and also for the league to add plenty of decimal places for more precision. And to break those ties. Six BA = .363. Check that BA especially.
Recalculated BA: theBA, Lba.
Rk: Rank order assigned by baseball-reference.com. Sorted on BA:
1939 had the highest league BA: .279 rounded up.
Now lets re-sort on theBA. Look at the Rk.
.363:
Rk is shuffled. 4 of the 6 are actually below .363 but rounded up.
One more sort, this time on the column that counts: %Dif or percent above the league with the league BA as the base: Dif/Lba
Ted Williams is still on top but not with his .406 BA in 1941, which drops to #2. Added May 9, 2025:
Batting Average (BA): Ted Williams percent above league .406 v. .388 considering SF. Sunday, January 23, 2022
Batting Average (BA): 1903-2020 percent above league >= 20% and AB >= 370. Friday, January 21, 2022
Ted Williams had a slightly higher percent above the league BA with his .388 in 1957 than with his .406 in 1941.
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Look at DiMaggio and Garciaparra. They dropped from Rk 6 and 9 to 29 and 33.
Torre up from 30 to 7. Top righty!
Mantle up from 23 to 8.
Musial up from up 21 to 9.
Cash up from 34 to 15.
Walker 1999 down from 7 to 14.
Helton down from 10 to 19.
Suzuki down from 11 to 25.
Even if DiMaggio had hit .400 in 1939, his %Dif would still be less than the %Dif for Torre hitting .363 in 1971: 44.111% to 43.583%.
Lba (League BA):
AL 1939: .2785838 Highest in the data set.
NL 1971: .2517336 Lowest in the data set.
Joe DiMaggio .400 batting average lost in 1939 due to: eye infection, manager, himself? Tuesday, October 18, 2016
No Yankee has had a .400 Batting Average. Has any come close? Monday, May 5, 2025
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