Batting Average Calculator

What the batting average calculator does

Batting average is the oldest and most famous number in baseball, the headline figure on the back of every card. This tool works it out. You give it a hitter's total hits and their at-bats, and it returns the batting average, the share of at-bats that turned into hits, as the familiar three-digit decimal.

It is the quickest read on how often a player gets a hit. It is also, as we will get to, only part of the story, which is exactly why it pays to understand what it does and does not measure.

How to use it

1. Enter the total hits. Singles, doubles, triples, and home runs all count the same here, one hit each.
2. Enter the total at-bats. Note that at-bats do not include walks, hit-by-pitches, or sacrifices, which is a detail that matters more than it looks.

Press Calculate for the batting average, or Reset to clear the boxes.

How batting average is worked out

It is hits divided by at-bats:

Batting average = hits ÷ at-bats

By convention it is shown to three decimal places, so 0.300 rather than 0.3. That is why you hear it spoken as a three-digit number, a hitter batting "three hundred" or "two fifty." The decimal point is really just along for the ride.

An example with real numbers

Say a hitter has 165 hits in 550 at-bats over a season.

• Batting average = 165 ÷ 550 = 0.300

That is a .300 average, said "three hundred," and it means the player got a hit in 30 percent of their at-bats. In baseball terms that is an excellent season, which tells you something about how hard hitting really is: even the best fail to get a hit roughly seven times out of ten.

Reading the number, and what good looks like

Because batting average is spoken as those three digits, it helps to know the landmarks. A .300 average is the classic mark of an excellent hitter, the line players chase all season. Somewhere around .250 to .260 is roughly typical at the major league level. Down at .200 sits what players grimly call the Mendoza line, the rough boundary below which a hitter is struggling to justify a spot in the lineup. So when you read an average, .300 and up is a very good year, the .250s are ordinary, and the low .200s are a worry.

What batting average leaves out

Here is the honest catch, and it is the reason batting average is no longer treated as the last word. It misses two big things.

First, it ignores walks entirely. A walk is not an at-bat, so a patient hitter who draws a lot of them gets no credit here, even though reaching base is exactly what an offense wants. Two hitters with the same average can have very different real value if one walks twice as often as the other. Second, it treats every hit as equal. A bloop single and a towering home run both count as one hit, so a singles hitter and a slugger can share an identical average while producing very different damage. Batting average answers one narrow question, how often did this player get a hit, and nothing more.

Where it fits: the slash line

This is why you almost never see batting average quoted alone any more. It is the first of three numbers written together as the slash line, batting average, then on-base percentage, then slugging percentage, shown as something like .300 / .390 / .520. Average tells you how often a hitter connects, on-base percentage tells you how often they reach base at all, and slugging tells you how much power is in those hits. Read all three together and you get a real picture of a hitter. Read average on its own and you only get the opening line of the story.

Questions people ask

How do you calculate batting average?

Divide hits by at-bats. A player with 165 hits in 550 at-bats is batting .300, shown to three decimal places.

What is a good batting average?

Around .300 is excellent, the .250s are roughly typical at the major league level, and the low .200s, near the Mendoza line, mark a hitter who is struggling.

Do walks count in batting average?

No. A walk is not an at-bat, so it has no effect on batting average at all. That is one of the stat's main blind spots, and the reason on-base percentage exists.

Why is it written as .300 and not 30 percent?

It is just the convention, a decimal carried to three places and spoken as three digits. A .300 average does mean the hitter gets a hit in 30 percent of at-bats.

References

1. MLB.com Glossary, Standard Stats: Batting Average (AVG). https://www.mlb.com/glossary/standard-stats/batting-average