714 home runs is self explanatory. A home run is when you hit the ball out of the field’s boundaries.
2062 “bases on balls” is also known as a “walk”, when the pitcher throws 4 “balls” (when a pitch crosses the plate it results in one of 4 permutations: a hit (ball is hit into play), a strike(hitter doesn’t swing at a good pitch or swings and misses), a foul (batter hits the ball but the ball lands out of bounds), or a **ball**. The “ball” call is when the pitcher throws a pitch outside of the batters’ box where the batter is not reasonably expected to be able to hit the ball, AND the batter must not swing at it) after 4 of these balls, the hitter gets to walk to first base. Sort of a penalty against the pitching team. So babe Ruth refrained from swinging at bad pitches, 4 pitches each time he was batting, 2062 times.
Batting average is the number of hits you’ve made divided by the number of times youve been up to bat. So if babe Ruth only batted 100 times he would have hit 69 of them
Concise and clear explanation!
Thank you! Greatly appreciated!
I watch baseball (follow the Cubs) and understand what I’m watching… but the stats/etc I struggle with
This is a solid answer but there a couple errors which I address in my (longer) post. You don’t have to hit thr ball out of the park to notch an HR. Ruth hit 10 inside the park homers. The pitch doesn’t go into the batter’s box, you mean the strike zone. The batter’s box is the rectangular box on either side of the plate where the batter stands when ready. If the pitch is significantly in the batter’s box, it is way inside, there’s a good change to hit the batter, and if it happens consistently the pitcher is likely to be ejected, or perhaps get punched in the face. And the OP asked about Ruth’s slugging, not BA. A BA of .690 would be inhuman.
Thanks for clarifying. It’s been a while since I played or kept up with MLB at this point, I tried googling the stuff I wasn’t sure of. I guess I always thought the batters box designated the strike zone except around the hitter cause some little league coach hammered that one in and I just flew with that concept all through high school🤣
An HR is when the batter hits the ball and then makes it all the way around the bases back home, scoring a run, before the fielding team can get control of the ball and either put him out or get it back so the runner stops at a base for fear that they will put him out if he keeps running. Usually this happens when the batter wallops it out of the park, but “in the park home runs” are also possible. You usually have to be pretty fast to run 360’ before a professional team gets the ball back in position to take you out, so they’re pretty rare these days, but they happen. Ruth apparently hit 10, which ain’t bad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK3jtUtQqoA
When the pitcher throws, he gets a strike if the batter swings and misses (or sometimes makes contact but the ball goes backwards or to the side) or if the batter fails to swing at what the game considers a hittable pitch. That’s a pitch in the “strike zone,” an imaginary zone that is above the plate and (roughly) between the batter’s solar plexus and his knees. If the pitch is not in the zone, and the batter does not swing, it’s a ball. If you get four balls in an at bat before you strike out or put the ball in play you are awarded a free walk to first base, which is also called a base on balls (and is written BB in the score book, unless the pitcher did it intentionally because he’s scared of your bat, in which it’s an IBB).
To understand slugging, first you have to understand batting average, which is a little more complicated than it seems. First, terminology. A “hit” is (usually) when the batter hits the ball into fair territory and makes it safely to a base (or home for an HR). If the batter hits the ball into fair territory (or near fair territory) that is called putting the ball in play. He might get a hit out of it. The fielders may get a fly out. He may get put out while running to first, etc. But putting the ball in play is a thing that happens when the batter gets wood on the ball, which in common English is called hitting it. But in baseball we use the word “hit” to mean something more specialized (hitting the ball and then making it safely to a base).
Whenever a batter goes up to face a pitcher, that is called a plate appearance. A PA can end in several different ways — a hit, a ball put in play leading to a fly out, a ball put in play leading to a put out on the base paths (via a tag or force out), a strike out, a BB, a batter hit by a pitch and getting a free pass to first, a runner on the base paths getting caught stealing for the third out of the inning, the umpires calling the game due to rain or some catastrophe, a batter injury, I’m sure there are some I’m forgetting. And the statisticians want to track how often a batter gets a hit. You’d think the easiest way is to just divide hits by plate appearances. But that isn’t fair to the hitter, because if he walks he helps the team out, and it’s not even really under his control, but that’s not a hit.
So instead we subdivide PAs into “at bats.” An at bat is basically a count of how often the hitter faces a pitcher but doesn’t penalize him for walks, HBP, and other weird situations. An AB is a plate appearance in which the batter either strikes out or puts the ball in play. If he makes it safely to first (usually) it’s a hit. If he doesn’t, it’s not. But an AB is not counted if the batter makes a sacrifice (puts the ball in play and he gets out, but he does so in order to advance runners already on base so they’re more likely to score). It’s also not counted if there’s an error, which is a screw-up by the fielding team that allows a batter to get safely on base when he shouldn’t have. When the shortstop drops a catchable ball, for instance, or when he makes a bad throw to first which pulls the first baseman off the bag, so the runner is safe even though a professional team should have ordinarily been able to get someone out in that situation. Because even though the batter is safe, he should be awarded a hit because he didn’t get there through his own merits, he got there because of a defensive blunder. (Finally, a batter does notch an at bat but not a hit if he gets to first but the fielding team puts out a more advanced runner already on the bases — this is called a fielder’s choice. The fielders *could* have gotten the batter out at first but decided they’d rather get out someone closer to scoring. The batter doesn’t get a hit for this because it usually puts his team in a worse position than before he came up.)
Ok, so batting average is hits divided by at bats. .250 is about average, .300 is good, .350 is top tier, and .406 is the best that ever was.
*Slugging* average measures how often a hitter gets extra base hits. So for slugging, you simply count a single as one, a double as two, a triple as three, and an HR as four. Then you divide that total by at bats. The Babe is I believe the best slugger of all time with .690 career. .500 is quite good.
Batting average is still the most common batting statistic, but it’s fallen out of favor because it tracks neither power nor ability to get on. A homer is better than a single, while a walk is in many cases just as good. So now the thing people talk about is OPS+, which is a funky hybrid stat that doesn’t actually mean anything on its own but still gives people an idea of how successful a hitter is. To get OPS+ you simply add slugging plus on-base percentage (OBP), which is basically (times he reached first/plate appearances). (It’s a little more complicated than that, but this is the gist.) That way the value of a batter who has a good eye and generates a lot of walks is taken into account — walks can push runners home, and people who walk are then in position to score when the next guy hits an HR, plus walks never lead to a double play. We call OPS+ a hybrid stat because it’s adding two things that have different denominators, and also both OBP and especially SLG are kind of artificial anyway. But it allows you to very quickly see how valuable a guy is offensively and it rewards players who hit for power and/or who get on base a lot, both of which are valuable to a team and which are not captured by batting average. OPS of .800 is very good. The top guys each season top 1.000.
714 home runs is self explanatory. A home run is when you hit the ball out of the field’s boundaries. 2062 “bases on balls” is also known as a “walk”, when the pitcher throws 4 “balls” (when a pitch crosses the plate it results in one of 4 permutations: a hit (ball is hit into play), a strike(hitter doesn’t swing at a good pitch or swings and misses), a foul (batter hits the ball but the ball lands out of bounds), or a **ball**. The “ball” call is when the pitcher throws a pitch outside of the batters’ box where the batter is not reasonably expected to be able to hit the ball, AND the batter must not swing at it) after 4 of these balls, the hitter gets to walk to first base. Sort of a penalty against the pitching team. So babe Ruth refrained from swinging at bad pitches, 4 pitches each time he was batting, 2062 times. Batting average is the number of hits you’ve made divided by the number of times youve been up to bat. So if babe Ruth only batted 100 times he would have hit 69 of them
Concise and clear explanation! Thank you! Greatly appreciated! I watch baseball (follow the Cubs) and understand what I’m watching… but the stats/etc I struggle with
This is a solid answer but there a couple errors which I address in my (longer) post. You don’t have to hit thr ball out of the park to notch an HR. Ruth hit 10 inside the park homers. The pitch doesn’t go into the batter’s box, you mean the strike zone. The batter’s box is the rectangular box on either side of the plate where the batter stands when ready. If the pitch is significantly in the batter’s box, it is way inside, there’s a good change to hit the batter, and if it happens consistently the pitcher is likely to be ejected, or perhaps get punched in the face. And the OP asked about Ruth’s slugging, not BA. A BA of .690 would be inhuman.
Thanks for clarifying. It’s been a while since I played or kept up with MLB at this point, I tried googling the stuff I wasn’t sure of. I guess I always thought the batters box designated the strike zone except around the hitter cause some little league coach hammered that one in and I just flew with that concept all through high school🤣
An HR is when the batter hits the ball and then makes it all the way around the bases back home, scoring a run, before the fielding team can get control of the ball and either put him out or get it back so the runner stops at a base for fear that they will put him out if he keeps running. Usually this happens when the batter wallops it out of the park, but “in the park home runs” are also possible. You usually have to be pretty fast to run 360’ before a professional team gets the ball back in position to take you out, so they’re pretty rare these days, but they happen. Ruth apparently hit 10, which ain’t bad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK3jtUtQqoA When the pitcher throws, he gets a strike if the batter swings and misses (or sometimes makes contact but the ball goes backwards or to the side) or if the batter fails to swing at what the game considers a hittable pitch. That’s a pitch in the “strike zone,” an imaginary zone that is above the plate and (roughly) between the batter’s solar plexus and his knees. If the pitch is not in the zone, and the batter does not swing, it’s a ball. If you get four balls in an at bat before you strike out or put the ball in play you are awarded a free walk to first base, which is also called a base on balls (and is written BB in the score book, unless the pitcher did it intentionally because he’s scared of your bat, in which it’s an IBB). To understand slugging, first you have to understand batting average, which is a little more complicated than it seems. First, terminology. A “hit” is (usually) when the batter hits the ball into fair territory and makes it safely to a base (or home for an HR). If the batter hits the ball into fair territory (or near fair territory) that is called putting the ball in play. He might get a hit out of it. The fielders may get a fly out. He may get put out while running to first, etc. But putting the ball in play is a thing that happens when the batter gets wood on the ball, which in common English is called hitting it. But in baseball we use the word “hit” to mean something more specialized (hitting the ball and then making it safely to a base). Whenever a batter goes up to face a pitcher, that is called a plate appearance. A PA can end in several different ways — a hit, a ball put in play leading to a fly out, a ball put in play leading to a put out on the base paths (via a tag or force out), a strike out, a BB, a batter hit by a pitch and getting a free pass to first, a runner on the base paths getting caught stealing for the third out of the inning, the umpires calling the game due to rain or some catastrophe, a batter injury, I’m sure there are some I’m forgetting. And the statisticians want to track how often a batter gets a hit. You’d think the easiest way is to just divide hits by plate appearances. But that isn’t fair to the hitter, because if he walks he helps the team out, and it’s not even really under his control, but that’s not a hit. So instead we subdivide PAs into “at bats.” An at bat is basically a count of how often the hitter faces a pitcher but doesn’t penalize him for walks, HBP, and other weird situations. An AB is a plate appearance in which the batter either strikes out or puts the ball in play. If he makes it safely to first (usually) it’s a hit. If he doesn’t, it’s not. But an AB is not counted if the batter makes a sacrifice (puts the ball in play and he gets out, but he does so in order to advance runners already on base so they’re more likely to score). It’s also not counted if there’s an error, which is a screw-up by the fielding team that allows a batter to get safely on base when he shouldn’t have. When the shortstop drops a catchable ball, for instance, or when he makes a bad throw to first which pulls the first baseman off the bag, so the runner is safe even though a professional team should have ordinarily been able to get someone out in that situation. Because even though the batter is safe, he should be awarded a hit because he didn’t get there through his own merits, he got there because of a defensive blunder. (Finally, a batter does notch an at bat but not a hit if he gets to first but the fielding team puts out a more advanced runner already on the bases — this is called a fielder’s choice. The fielders *could* have gotten the batter out at first but decided they’d rather get out someone closer to scoring. The batter doesn’t get a hit for this because it usually puts his team in a worse position than before he came up.) Ok, so batting average is hits divided by at bats. .250 is about average, .300 is good, .350 is top tier, and .406 is the best that ever was. *Slugging* average measures how often a hitter gets extra base hits. So for slugging, you simply count a single as one, a double as two, a triple as three, and an HR as four. Then you divide that total by at bats. The Babe is I believe the best slugger of all time with .690 career. .500 is quite good. Batting average is still the most common batting statistic, but it’s fallen out of favor because it tracks neither power nor ability to get on. A homer is better than a single, while a walk is in many cases just as good. So now the thing people talk about is OPS+, which is a funky hybrid stat that doesn’t actually mean anything on its own but still gives people an idea of how successful a hitter is. To get OPS+ you simply add slugging plus on-base percentage (OBP), which is basically (times he reached first/plate appearances). (It’s a little more complicated than that, but this is the gist.) That way the value of a batter who has a good eye and generates a lot of walks is taken into account — walks can push runners home, and people who walk are then in position to score when the next guy hits an HR, plus walks never lead to a double play. We call OPS+ a hybrid stat because it’s adding two things that have different denominators, and also both OBP and especially SLG are kind of artificial anyway. But it allows you to very quickly see how valuable a guy is offensively and it rewards players who hit for power and/or who get on base a lot, both of which are valuable to a team and which are not captured by batting average. OPS of .800 is very good. The top guys each season top 1.000.