Talk:Batting average

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[edit] "Good"?

I will settle for good :) I actually wrote "good" to start with & then decided to go the superlative.

Just to be a geek, I downloaded the stats and found that 45 out of 151 qualifiers for the BA championship in the majors hit .300 (53/258 with 300 PA, 69/430 with 100 PA). So I agree, "good", at least among regulars. Of course, if you're a bench player hitting .300 you probably won't be a bench player much longer.

Then again, in the American league in 1968, a batting average of .300 was unquestionably excellent. But that was then, and this is definitely an era of offense. User:Dze27

Quite. Yaz won the batting title three times without ever hitting better than 326.
As compared to, say, 1930, when (I think) there was only one regular in the NL who didn't hit .300. The 1890s were another odd period like this. User:RjLesch
See also : Baseball statistics

[edit] Split cricket/baseball or keep together

Hmm.. I'm not big follower of cricket but there is a potential conflict here between cricket and baseball. Althouh I would guess that an obsession with batting averages is more usual for baseball fans than avid followers of cricet where other statistical evaluations are also made. Mintguy 17:39 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I didn't see this comment before, but I recently added content on cricket batting averages to cover just this. Cricket fans are indeed obsessed with batting averages. :-) Not sure if it should be split out to a separate page and disambiged yet though. dmmaus 02:35, 5 May 2004 (UTC)
I think probably in the fullness of time it should be, although there are a heck of a lot of articles, both baseball- and cricket-related, linking to "Batting average" so it would be a fairly major task and might be better left until there's more content in the cricket section. Loganberry 12:05, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
Well, if we are going to do it, the sooner the better really: the list of "what links here" will only get longer. I should have thought that this was a case where we would need batting average (cricket) and batting average (baseball), with batting average being a disambiguation page... -- ALoan (Talk) 13:28, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
Actually, I was going to add a section explaining how the two are related. It seems that baseball averages were deliberately invented by Chadwick (who was a cricket fan also) to provide statistics like cricket averages. That would provide more reason to keep the two together, as they are clearly related by lineage. Although I have no objection to splitting them up. -dmmaus 01:20, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
I've gone ahead and made my change. I decided to rearrange the order of the sections on baseball and cricket because I think it makes sense to discuss cricket averages before baseball, given that the baseball average is descended from the cricket one, and it allows a chronological discussion in the sensible order. -dmmaus 02:25, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
Right, having seen what dmmaus has done, I've changed my mind; it looks good as it is, and unless either section gets enormously long the benefits of having a single page probably outweigh the drawbacks. Loganberry 03:35, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I now believe there are strong advantages to keeping the discussion of cricket and baseball batting averages on one page, as they are related historically and discussing each in the context of the other is valuable and provides insights that fans of either sport alone may never discover otherwise. -dmmaus 22:43, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] .400 hitters/55+ averages

Just a little (possibly silly) thought that I set down here for consideration... if we accept the Steven Jay Gould argument that the decline of the .400 hitter in baseball is because of the tendency for (simplistically speaking) top stats to get lower as well as bottom stats to get higher, why has the benchmark for the very top Test cricketers been an average in the high fifties for decades now? The extraordinary one-off of Bradman aside, no-one has ever averaged over 61 in Tests - Herbert Sutcliffe averaged 60.73 before the war, while Rahul Dravid is currently averaging 57.86 and seven other current players are over the 55 mark. Loganberry (Talk) 04:10, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm... good point. I'm tempted to say that, as admirable as Gould's knowledge of baseball statistics is, his one failing was a lack of an appreciation for cricket. :-) More seriously, there are almost certainly other factors at work that make baseball averages a better analogy of "naturally evolving" systems than cricket averages. I think the fact that baseball averages display this sort of behaviour is more coincidence than rule, despite Gould getting a whole book out of it. -dmmaus 23:40, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Well, I've added some text about this to the article, as I think it's a valid point. -dmmaus 11:04, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I think this point may be less valid than you think. Gould's explanation entails two statistical measurements that he did: 1. That the variance of batting averages decreased, and 2. That the across-league average of batting averages stayed unchanged. Only because of the combination of these two conditions, did the top batting average go down (and below 0.400). Condition #2 - the fact that the league average didn't change - is far from obvious. Gould measured this fact using the heaps of statistics he collects, and he attributes this fact to changes in the rules of the game (when players became better, the rules were changed to be harder). My guess (not backed by any cricket statistics) that this fact is simply not true of cricket: probably the variance of cricket skill went down, and at the same time, the leage average went up - because rules weren't changed, or even changed in the wrong direction. Unless you (or someone else) can refute this guess (with real cricket statistics), you can't use cricket to invalidate Gould's explanation. Nyh 21:35, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I've moved the following contribution from the article to here. It may well be worth discussion in the article, but the contributed text as it stands could use some clean-up and NPOVing, preferably from someone with a better understanding of the baseball history involved than I have. -dmmaus 00:12, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
Moved text follows:

Yes, for example, in the 1960's the pitchers mound was raised that made batters have a disadvantage. Also, talent searching for players to play in the pro leagues is more efficient by the number of personnel who have jobs to search for players versus 80 years ago and the pool to choose from is wider to account for a greater amount of players to decrease the lower batting averaged players. The invention/application of the split fingered pitch also added pitchers, along with "Tommy John" surgery for extended good pitching arms and also the pitchers of old were pitching full games as now you have three pitchers of specialty that could show up in any game: starting, set-up, and closing pitchers. Some could argue these points by saying that the ball is more lively today than yesterday which makes homeruns of what would otherwise be outs to increase batting average but these are all ways of understanding baseball stats apart from Gould's reference.
The "Gould effect", if I can call it that, has been offset in cricket by the move to covered pitches and the pressure on groundsmen to produce "TV freindly" pitches. Whereas years ago a test match finishing in 3 days was fine, these days too much TV revenue would be lost if the match doesn't go to at least 4 days, preferably the full 5. --LiamE 01:53, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

You're kidding, right? When was hitting .400 common? There were only 13 cases of an average above .400 between 1900 and 1941. That's considered common? Take in the fact that those 13 times were accomplished by only 8 men. So only 8 talented men were capable of hitting .400 after 1899, and this is called a "not uncommon" occurance? I think this needs to be edited. Here's the list of men:

  • Nap Lajoie
  • Rogers Hornsby
  • George Sisler
  • Ty Cobb
  • Joe Jackson
  • Ted Williams
  • Harry Heilmann
  • Bill Terry

--24.169.128.137 04:11, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Histogram

What real use is the histogram as illustrated? It is just a list of numbers in picture form which says no more than reading the list of numbers does. It would be more useful if it had a column listing runs scored innings-by-innings linked to an indication of career batting average innings-by-innings and possibly current "form" as a moving average, last five innings for example. This would be useful too for baseball stats. Baseball statisticians are fond of winning/losing streaks. The drawback is that 3 at-bats per game over a 160-game season is too many columns for one chart, which rules out Albert Pujohls, but the principle is sound enough. It could be particularly useful for post-season analysis.

Guy 15:32, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

I guess you're just not a visual person. I find diagrams much more interesting to look at and easier to absorb than a list of numbers, and it makes a nice visual break-up of the article text. It distils the voluminous data down into a histogram that shows in a glance the distribution of averages. If you want to make additional or replacement graphs showing more pertinent information, please do so, but this page isn't the place for a large statistical list. We could create them separately at List of moving cricket batting averages and List of moving baseball batting averages, for example - but it would be difficult to keep them up to date. -dmmaus 23:08, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
G'day. I am a former statistician, and also quite skilled at presenting the data pictorially. You are right, there is little point in doing it here for somebody whose career is still under way, as it will need constant revision. Cricinfo and the MLB sites do this very well. My point is that the graph should show something not easy to spot from looking at the raw numbers. There is no need for a picture giving score-by-score game-by-game. However, if the career moving average game-by-game is also arrayed, and also recent "form" (moving average of a few most recent games), then the picture is, as you say, much more interesting and worth having. There is a picture on the Zaheer Abbas page which is more like it.  ;-)
Guy 00:54, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bradman

Bradman's final average was 99.94. What is amazing about this is that in his final innings he needed just one run to take his average to 100, and was out for a duck (no runs). Incredible then that he didn't play again so that he could have made the career average of 100, clearly a different era meant a different attitude! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.9.63.199 (talk)

Actually he needed four runs from his final innings, since he finished with 6,996 Test runs from 80 innings, of which 10 were not out. Loganberry (Talk) 23:58, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dead or alive?

The time has come for the tables of leading batting averages to be revised. Firstly by date. Both games are very different nowadays from what they were decades ago. Hence there should be tables for currently active players separate from those retired. Baseball should have a separate tables for regular season and post-season, possibly a further split between championship series and world series, and possibly split again for semi-finals since the start of wild cards. For cricket, one-day stats are equally as useful and relevant as full-term games nowadays, and there should be tables for first-class averages as well as test match. A lot of table-making for somebody. Guy 04:33, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Issues arising from Test and ODI batting averages

It seems clear that the international game has changed in the era of the ODI (the last thirty-five years). A simple batting average is not adequate to compare test-match batsmen over a 120-year period. The ICC stats, published here [1] do not seem to be totally satisfactory either. One feature is the recent introduction of Zimbabwe and Bangladesh to the list of ten test-playing countries. Some averages have been inflated by batsmen filling their boots against weak opposition - Sri Lanka too was a softer opponent when they were first admitted. India and New Zealand also won very few test matches for many years, but that was at least forty years ago (until Geoffrey Boycott became the first losing England captain in New Zealand in 1978). At the risk of falling foul of the Wikipedia strictures about original research, it should be possible for a proper statistician to analyse the numbers over the years to compare averages (for example, a correlation between average and tests/innings played for batsmen averaging over 50, or fitting the histograms to bell-shaped curves). The ODI histogram is significantly narrower in the base than the test histogram. I am inclined to think that the test averages of players active since the introduction of ODIs will converge in a similar manner to those of ODI batsmen. I think one factor is that the modern batsmen who have sustained a high average are all exceptional players who have responded to the higher pressure of the game compared to, for example, timeless tests against South Africa in the old days, but then W.R. Hammond will have felt the pressure walking out on the Melbourne Cricket Ground. There is plenty here for cricket-lovers to discuss - for my part all contributions made to the discussion in the spirit of the game are welcome, and will be taken seriously - call me an idiot if you like, as long as you supply supporting evidence.

Guy 05:13, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Addition of current player and ODI cricket batting averages

As ardent a cricket fan as I am, I must say that I oppose the addition of these extensive tables of batting averages to this article. Firstly, I don't think Wikipedia is an appropriate place for lists of frequently updated sports stats - other sites that we link to do a better job of that. Secondly, this makes the article look cricket-heavy, at the expense of baseball. I strongly believe that fans of both sports gain an advantage by discussion of batting average being combined on one page, rather than split into two, as the statistics are historically related, and discussing them in the context of one another provides valuable insights and comparisons. Overloading the page with current cricket stats interferes with that insightful comparison and may make people start to agitate to split this article up into a separate article for each sport, which would be a tragedy. Therefore, I suggest we remove the additional tables, perhaps placing them on a separate page such as List of cricket batting averages. I'm listing this here for discussion rather than just removing the tables, because I suspect some people might feel differently, and I want everyone to know why I think they should be removed from this article. -dmmaus 22:37, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

This change has been discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cricket, with consensus to move the extended tables of cricket averages to List of cricket batting averages. They should not be reinstated here. -dmmaus 04:27, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cricket ahead of Baseball?!

Baseball is far more popular (especially regarding this term) AND baseball is first alphabetically. Really no excuse not to have baseball be the first thing you see. 63.145.155.66 17:25, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Two points: Cricket is more popular than baseball on a global scale (although in fact that point is completely irrelevant to the ordering in this article - I am merely correcting your factual error). The main point is that baseball batting average is directly descended from cricket batting average. Therefore, to give proper historical context, it is necessary to discuss cricket batting average first, so that people researching baseball batting averages can learn about the history of the statistic. This point has been discussed several times previously on this talk page, and consensus reached that the current ordering makes the most sense. -dmmaus 00:11, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Statistical Error in .400 Section

I'll try to reword it, but in case I fail (or don't get back to it) this note should let someone else know the problem exists. The article claims that the increase in strikeouts and walks makes it more difficult to hit .400. But the walks should actually make it easier to hit .400, because they pad the Plate Appearance total (which needs to be at least 502 in a 162 game season) without adding extra at-bats (which are the denominator in the batting average calculation). As such, a higher walk rate increases the chances of hitting .400 by increasing the statistical noise within a small sample (the smaller number of at-bats). The rewrite will need to note that while the increase in strikeouts makes the .400 average less likely, the increase in walks makes it more likely. --Llewdor 22:52, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Citation for relation between sports

An anonymous editor has added a request for a citation for the statement that baseball averages descend directly from cricket averages. I have the citation at home, and will add it as soon as I get home from work. -dmmaus 22:03, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Turned out it wasn't in Koppett's History of Major League Baseball as I thought. I know I've read it explicitly somewhere - must have been in another book on baseball history. The link is pretty clear though. It's well established that Henry Chadwick invented the baseball batting average statistic ([2] [3] [4] [5] [6] and the aforementioned Koppett), and he was originally a cricket journalist and statistician, so was intimately familiar with cricket's batting average and other statistics. It's pretty much impossible that he couldn't have been influenced by his familiarity with cricket statistics when devising his baseball statistics, though making that deduction could be construed as "Original Research". Until a better cite turns up, I've cited a website with the closest thing to a direct statement I could find. -dmmaus 22:12, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 08:27, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Phil Tufnell example is weak

The example given batting averages being inflated by not-outs about Phil Tufnell is a pretty weak example of the point that is trying to be made. The issue with his average is not that it was inflated by not-outs, but that he was only out once and trying to take a statistical average over one sample point is not going to produce a reliable result. i.e. the issue with Phil Tufnell is the same issue as somebody having played one innings and scoring 200 then having an average of 200. I'm not what value this paragraph adds to the article, but if it does stay then removing the example or fining a better one would be a good idea. 150.101.103.206 (talk) 03:13, 30 December 2007 (UTC)


I basically agree. However, it is not so much that the example is weak, but rather that that this aternative measure is weak. Phil Tufnell has an arguably inflated average not due to an intrinsic problem with the method of calculation, but rather with the fact that he hadn't played enough innings for a reliable statistic. Batting average is the perfect statistic as long as a batsman has played a sufficient number of innings. Batting average comes down to "number of runs per number of outs", which is exactly what it should be. To illustrate the point, if one were to use runs per innings, even the great Sir Donald Bradman would have had a poor average if he were the number 11 batsman throughout his career. Put another way, if Phil Tufnell had played ten thousand innings at number 11, scored a ten thousand runs in total, and got out only once, his average would be very high yes, but deservedly so given that he scored ten thousand runs and only got out once (that would make him a genius of sorts). In short, runs per inning is a vastly inferior measure of a batsman's prowess to runs per number of outs. It isn't even a debatable point. Either the comment regarding runs per innings should be taken out completely, or it should be made clear that the notion of it being a more reliable statistic than runs per out is non sensical.

Barryvz (talk) 00:55, 6 January 2008 (UTC)


In fact, a lower order batsman is clearly disadvantaged by even the batting average statistic in that he more infrequently gets the opportunity to "bat himself in". A batsman is more likely to get out with a delivery during the early stages of his inning than later stages.

Barryvz (talk) 02:07, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Mendoza Line

The Mendoza Line is named for Mario Mendoza. The version of the story that I understand is that one Sunday, George Brett walked into the Royals clubhouse and picked up the paper (newspapers on Sunday used to publish the batting statistics of every player in the league with a minimum number of plate appearances) and said, "So, let's see who's below the Mendoza Line this week," and the name stuck. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jimpoz (talk • contribs) 17:32, 23 April 2008 (UTC)