I will take this opportunity to get something out there and see what people thing.
On a Facebook baseball blog I had a "discussion" with a poster who said he doesn't like WAR because it's opinion based. I pointed out to him that other than counting stats, they are opinion based.
Pointed out the opinions that go into the creation of BA and also the daily calculation of it.
Errors, it's an official scorers opinion as to what is or isn't an error
Why is an error an oh fer? Batter hits a 100 mph ground ball that goes through a shortstops legs, error and oh fer. Batter checks his swing and nubs one down the line and beats it out, hit and 1-1.
Sacrifices, bunt a runner along and it's a sac and an 0-0, fly ball with man on 3rd scoring, it's a sac fly and a 0-0, long fly ball with runner on 2nd tagging and going to 3rd, that's a 0-1. Even worse a fly ball that moves 2 runners up from 1st and 2nd, seen as a failure in BA as it is recorded as an 0-1.
Runner on 3rd, batter grounds out and run scores, batter gets positive with the RBI, but a negative with the 0-1 in BA, contradictory.
I could go on, and these might be all the correct interpretations, but they are all based on the opinion of the person/people who crafted the formula for BA.
Don't really get me started on ERA, but how is this one. Starter with two out in an inning gives up an error and is pulled from game. Reliever comes in and gives up 3 hits and a homer run, 5 runs in total, all UNEARNED, he gets the 3rd out and his ERA decreases!
An opinion of the creator of ERA.
I'm ranting for no reason, apologies. But thoughts?
"I pointed out to him that other than counting stats, they are opinion based."
I'd only point out that as you implicitly state, many of the counting stats are likewise based on opinions. Just as you note the opinion that goes into BA, it goes into Hits as well. RBI? Same opinion on hit vs. error. Pitcher Wins? In the (far too often) case where the starter doesn't go 5 innings when leaving with a lead, the winner is based on the subjective belief of the scorer as to who was the best of the relievers ...
1. I wonder if things have changed at the lower end. Are we seeing fewer hitters "on the interstate", as it were?
2. Who misses a good race for the batting title?
I remember the last day of the 2011 season (for reasons OTHER than the evening's madness) in the NL. Jose Reyes and Ryan Braun had been fighting for the BA title in the last week. Reyes had pulled ahead by Game 162, but if Braun had a great day.... Leading off for the Mets in an afternoon game, Reyes beat out a bunt single, and then took himself out of the game - giving him the BA crown (and the Mets first ever batting champ).
The year I turned 9 (or definitionally one year before baseball was perfected!) there was a memorable batting title race. Going into the last game of the 1976 season, Hal McRae and George Brett were separated by .0005. They both started the Royals game and were 2 for 3 with McRae fractions of a point higher. Then in the 9th, Brett lofted a fly to left that fell in and bounced away for an inside the park homer while McRae grounded out. Brett won the title .333 to .332 (with Carew just behind at .331) and McRae went on to say that the Twins were under orders to let his teammate win because of the race of the two.
It would be as if analysts decided that the best way to win an NBA game was to get fouled as much as possible and shoot 50 free throws each night. And then, suddenly, we'd wake up one morning to find that half of all the scoring in basketball was taking place at the charity stripe (do they still call it that or am I channeling Chick Hearn from about 1971?). And field goal percentages were dropping into the low 30s. Bo-ring.
But you know something? If that happened, the NBA would do something about it.
True: see, e.g. the Neutral Zone Trap in Hockey: During the 2004–05 NHL lockout, serious discussion about opening the game to offense was held between the NHL and NHL Players Association (NHLPA). Because it is easier to trap when engaging in obstruction and restraining fouls, such as hooking and holding, which slow the progress of faster players who can evade the trapping team, the NHL ordered officials to call every obstruction penalty, regardless of circumstance. The prohibition on two-line passes from behind a team's blue line to the other side of the red line was also lifted. Long passes are one method for breaking out of the trap, as it avoids the need to navigate through defenders in the neutral zone, although it has high rates of turnovers (from Wikipedia)
One thing that I think gets very lost in the conversation around today’s pitcher dominance is the impact of (the lack of) expansion. There’s really no surer way to improve offense than adding more pitchers to the pool. And baseball hasn’t expanded in almost 30 years! In the prior 30 years (1969-1998), baseball added 10 teams. Let’s add 10 more teams over the next 20 years. Newark (NJ), Portland, Nashville, Charlotte, Austin, San Antonio, Oakland, Salt Lake City, Vancouver, Montreal, Raleigh, Orlando. That’s at least 12 great candidates.
Expanded to 40 teams and create a relegation system so that only 20 of them are in the High Majors. The minor league teams would keep their affiliations, but teams would strive to stay in (or move to) the High Majors.
I will accept expansion only with the following: one team gets added to esch league, each league splits into an east and west division, the playoffs consist of only the four division winners. In short, we go back to the 1969-1993 method. I still think pre-expansion was the best with just the World Series, but I can accept two divisions and no damn wild card.
I would prefer an LCS and WS only, but since that will never happen I’d go for 40 teams, 8 divisions, and each division winner is in with no wild cards. I wholeheartedly agree that baseball is best where the regular season matters and playoffs are just the icing on the cake.
I hate that the current iteration of the playoffs has kept the Orioles alive this season. They don’t deserve it! But likewise, everyone in Baltimore acts like the 101 win 2023 team was some sort of massive failure because it got swept out of the playoffs by a Rangers team that got hot at the right time.
I think the decline in batting average is part of a larger overall trend of players being human rather than robots. From an analytical standpoint, at least as it's currently understood, the ideal is probably close to what baseball was in about 2010: Take a walk but be aggressive in the zone. However, the downside to that is being aggressive in the zone can lead to outs and make too many outs and you're not getting paid.
Now, the concept of a single and a walk being the same and strikeouts not mattering has led to even greater passivity, where hitters aren't necessarily aggressive in the zone: they're looking for a single pitch and only swing at that pitch, with the gamble being that the pitcher ultimately needs to get to three strikes before the hitter gets to four balls.
Basically the game has shifted from the batter driving the action to the pitcher because that's what teams value right now and how players get paid.
While I think Tom Tango, et al., might argue that batting average is a poor analytical tool for baseball performance (and probably be right), it does strike me as an exceptional analytical tool for baseball entertainment. Sure, all hits aren't created equal, but as a fan (especially if I'm watching a game I don't have a clear rooting interest in), hits are the functional equivalent of dialog that drives the plot forward. They create dramatic tension to have a runner on first, or second, or third. The home run is a fun spectacle, but low-BA, high-SLG baseball sometimes feels more like watching roulette or craps. On a related note, it would be fun to see a JoeBlogs post on the stats that best reflect the entertainment value of baseball...
That's the big thing for me, and a point a lot of folks miss in the batting average discussion.
Yes, batting average doesn't tell you much about a player's worth. However, fewer hits means fewer balls in play, which means less action, which usually means a duller product.
In 2025, there were 40,138 hits in the regular season. In 2015, there were 42,106, and in 2005, there were 43,991. That's thousands of fewer times seeing a ball in play during a game, which is, aesthetically, usually more appealing than a high-velocity game of catch.
And yes, there's been low-offense points in history, but they were generally evened out by dominant, durable starting pitching. Yes, guys like Sanchez, Schlitter, and the Miz are fun to watch, but it's not the same as watching pitchers who frequently went the distance. Again, it's a different game, but that doesn't mean it's not less entertaining.
We had a column a little while ago where Joe wrote about a Tango created amalgamation to show the most entertaining players via stats. I don't remember the elements, but things like triples & steals weighed in at a higher value than their quote-unquote actual worth in winning games.
Thanks a lot. I'm now picturing Poz shirtless & wearing the overalls while dancing along to the tune.
...
"If I shouted out .388 or .366 or .301, you would probably think of someone."
The first and last of these, for me, screamed Carew and Yaz. The one in the middle made me pause. Boggs hit in the .360s several times; did he ever bat .366? Yes, he did, 1988. So then the .388 maybe wasn't Carew in '77 but Teddy Ballgame as a broken down old man after his wars so we can all be thinking like Mike Schur and focus on the Sox. Or maybe the .366 was Larry Walker. Or maybe ...
Yep, batting average may not be a great analytical tool, but it sure is evocative!
Cobb's .367 to me is like his 4191 hits totals - not technically correct, but set in my mind and unlikely to change even though I admire the good folks who dive into the microfilm to find the hidden boxscores.
I hear ya, Joe. I am in that in between era where batting average importance declined and WAR rose. Seeing high BA hitters like Luis Arraez hit is pure joy - and - I'm so grateful for tools like WAR because they are elevating the profiles of players like Chase Utley, who racked up a huge amount of base running runs while only stealing more than 20 bases once. It shows just how special of a season PCA is having too. I think we can celebrate both!
As a Guardians fan, fingers crossed Chase DeLauter comes back tonight and mounts a surge toward .300. He's been so good the last few months and when he's really going he just looks like a classic pure hitter.
I couldn't stay up so I'm only now watching the full match. I'm sure there will be some Alcaraz/Shelton coming soon ... maybe some Shelton/Tiafoe since they are two of my faves.
The availability of superior stats aside, none of them sound or feel as right to me (or as satisfying) as the Triple Crown stats.
I will take this opportunity to get something out there and see what people thing.
On a Facebook baseball blog I had a "discussion" with a poster who said he doesn't like WAR because it's opinion based. I pointed out to him that other than counting stats, they are opinion based.
Pointed out the opinions that go into the creation of BA and also the daily calculation of it.
Errors, it's an official scorers opinion as to what is or isn't an error
Why is an error an oh fer? Batter hits a 100 mph ground ball that goes through a shortstops legs, error and oh fer. Batter checks his swing and nubs one down the line and beats it out, hit and 1-1.
Sacrifices, bunt a runner along and it's a sac and an 0-0, fly ball with man on 3rd scoring, it's a sac fly and a 0-0, long fly ball with runner on 2nd tagging and going to 3rd, that's a 0-1. Even worse a fly ball that moves 2 runners up from 1st and 2nd, seen as a failure in BA as it is recorded as an 0-1.
Runner on 3rd, batter grounds out and run scores, batter gets positive with the RBI, but a negative with the 0-1 in BA, contradictory.
I could go on, and these might be all the correct interpretations, but they are all based on the opinion of the person/people who crafted the formula for BA.
Don't really get me started on ERA, but how is this one. Starter with two out in an inning gives up an error and is pulled from game. Reliever comes in and gives up 3 hits and a homer run, 5 runs in total, all UNEARNED, he gets the 3rd out and his ERA decreases!
An opinion of the creator of ERA.
I'm ranting for no reason, apologies. But thoughts?
"I pointed out to him that other than counting stats, they are opinion based."
I'd only point out that as you implicitly state, many of the counting stats are likewise based on opinions. Just as you note the opinion that goes into BA, it goes into Hits as well. RBI? Same opinion on hit vs. error. Pitcher Wins? In the (far too often) case where the starter doesn't go 5 innings when leaving with a lead, the winner is based on the subjective belief of the scorer as to who was the best of the relievers ...
1. I wonder if things have changed at the lower end. Are we seeing fewer hitters "on the interstate", as it were?
2. Who misses a good race for the batting title?
I remember the last day of the 2011 season (for reasons OTHER than the evening's madness) in the NL. Jose Reyes and Ryan Braun had been fighting for the BA title in the last week. Reyes had pulled ahead by Game 162, but if Braun had a great day.... Leading off for the Mets in an afternoon game, Reyes beat out a bunt single, and then took himself out of the game - giving him the BA crown (and the Mets first ever batting champ).
The year I turned 9 (or definitionally one year before baseball was perfected!) there was a memorable batting title race. Going into the last game of the 1976 season, Hal McRae and George Brett were separated by .0005. They both started the Royals game and were 2 for 3 with McRae fractions of a point higher. Then in the 9th, Brett lofted a fly to left that fell in and bounced away for an inside the park homer while McRae grounded out. Brett won the title .333 to .332 (with Carew just behind at .331) and McRae went on to say that the Twins were under orders to let his teammate win because of the race of the two.
Hits are fun; walks are almost always boring.
It would be as if analysts decided that the best way to win an NBA game was to get fouled as much as possible and shoot 50 free throws each night. And then, suddenly, we'd wake up one morning to find that half of all the scoring in basketball was taking place at the charity stripe (do they still call it that or am I channeling Chick Hearn from about 1971?). And field goal percentages were dropping into the low 30s. Bo-ring.
But you know something? If that happened, the NBA would do something about it.
True: see, e.g. the Neutral Zone Trap in Hockey: During the 2004–05 NHL lockout, serious discussion about opening the game to offense was held between the NHL and NHL Players Association (NHLPA). Because it is easier to trap when engaging in obstruction and restraining fouls, such as hooking and holding, which slow the progress of faster players who can evade the trapping team, the NHL ordered officials to call every obstruction penalty, regardless of circumstance. The prohibition on two-line passes from behind a team's blue line to the other side of the red line was also lifted. Long passes are one method for breaking out of the trap, as it avoids the need to navigate through defenders in the neutral zone, although it has high rates of turnovers (from Wikipedia)
One thing that I think gets very lost in the conversation around today’s pitcher dominance is the impact of (the lack of) expansion. There’s really no surer way to improve offense than adding more pitchers to the pool. And baseball hasn’t expanded in almost 30 years! In the prior 30 years (1969-1998), baseball added 10 teams. Let’s add 10 more teams over the next 20 years. Newark (NJ), Portland, Nashville, Charlotte, Austin, San Antonio, Oakland, Salt Lake City, Vancouver, Montreal, Raleigh, Orlando. That’s at least 12 great candidates.
Expanded to 40 teams and create a relegation system so that only 20 of them are in the High Majors. The minor league teams would keep their affiliations, but teams would strive to stay in (or move to) the High Majors.
I will accept expansion only with the following: one team gets added to esch league, each league splits into an east and west division, the playoffs consist of only the four division winners. In short, we go back to the 1969-1993 method. I still think pre-expansion was the best with just the World Series, but I can accept two divisions and no damn wild card.
I would prefer an LCS and WS only, but since that will never happen I’d go for 40 teams, 8 divisions, and each division winner is in with no wild cards. I wholeheartedly agree that baseball is best where the regular season matters and playoffs are just the icing on the cake.
I hate that the current iteration of the playoffs has kept the Orioles alive this season. They don’t deserve it! But likewise, everyone in Baltimore acts like the 101 win 2023 team was some sort of massive failure because it got swept out of the playoffs by a Rangers team that got hot at the right time.
I think the decline in batting average is part of a larger overall trend of players being human rather than robots. From an analytical standpoint, at least as it's currently understood, the ideal is probably close to what baseball was in about 2010: Take a walk but be aggressive in the zone. However, the downside to that is being aggressive in the zone can lead to outs and make too many outs and you're not getting paid.
Now, the concept of a single and a walk being the same and strikeouts not mattering has led to even greater passivity, where hitters aren't necessarily aggressive in the zone: they're looking for a single pitch and only swing at that pitch, with the gamble being that the pitcher ultimately needs to get to three strikes before the hitter gets to four balls.
Basically the game has shifted from the batter driving the action to the pitcher because that's what teams value right now and how players get paid.
While I think Tom Tango, et al., might argue that batting average is a poor analytical tool for baseball performance (and probably be right), it does strike me as an exceptional analytical tool for baseball entertainment. Sure, all hits aren't created equal, but as a fan (especially if I'm watching a game I don't have a clear rooting interest in), hits are the functional equivalent of dialog that drives the plot forward. They create dramatic tension to have a runner on first, or second, or third. The home run is a fun spectacle, but low-BA, high-SLG baseball sometimes feels more like watching roulette or craps. On a related note, it would be fun to see a JoeBlogs post on the stats that best reflect the entertainment value of baseball...
That's the big thing for me, and a point a lot of folks miss in the batting average discussion.
Yes, batting average doesn't tell you much about a player's worth. However, fewer hits means fewer balls in play, which means less action, which usually means a duller product.
In 2025, there were 40,138 hits in the regular season. In 2015, there were 42,106, and in 2005, there were 43,991. That's thousands of fewer times seeing a ball in play during a game, which is, aesthetically, usually more appealing than a high-velocity game of catch.
And yes, there's been low-offense points in history, but they were generally evened out by dominant, durable starting pitching. Yes, guys like Sanchez, Schlitter, and the Miz are fun to watch, but it's not the same as watching pitchers who frequently went the distance. Again, it's a different game, but that doesn't mean it's not less entertaining.
We had a column a little while ago where Joe wrote about a Tango created amalgamation to show the most entertaining players via stats. I don't remember the elements, but things like triples & steals weighed in at a higher value than their quote-unquote actual worth in winning games.
Edit: good grief! It was all the way back to 2023! https://www.joeposnanski.com/p/lets-have-some-fun
.300? The Mariners only have 3 guys that have played regularly batting over .250. And nobody with more than 22 HRs. What a terrible season.
Thanks a lot. I'm now picturing Poz shirtless & wearing the overalls while dancing along to the tune.
...
"If I shouted out .388 or .366 or .301, you would probably think of someone."
The first and last of these, for me, screamed Carew and Yaz. The one in the middle made me pause. Boggs hit in the .360s several times; did he ever bat .366? Yes, he did, 1988. So then the .388 maybe wasn't Carew in '77 but Teddy Ballgame as a broken down old man after his wars so we can all be thinking like Mike Schur and focus on the Sox. Or maybe the .366 was Larry Walker. Or maybe ...
Yep, batting average may not be a great analytical tool, but it sure is evocative!
Ty Cobb's lifetime average is what my mind went to.
And, yes, it was .367 when I was a kid. Don't ask me why it changed, I just know it did.
(Unintentional rhyming there. Hope everyone enjoyed.)
Cobb's .367 to me is like his 4191 hits totals - not technically correct, but set in my mind and unlikely to change even though I admire the good folks who dive into the microfilm to find the hidden boxscores.
I hear ya, Joe. I am in that in between era where batting average importance declined and WAR rose. Seeing high BA hitters like Luis Arraez hit is pure joy - and - I'm so grateful for tools like WAR because they are elevating the profiles of players like Chase Utley, who racked up a huge amount of base running runs while only stealing more than 20 bases once. It shows just how special of a season PCA is having too. I think we can celebrate both!
As a Guardians fan, fingers crossed Chase DeLauter comes back tonight and mounts a surge toward .300. He's been so good the last few months and when he's really going he just looks like a classic pure hitter.
Very surprised a Carlos Alcaraz blog didn't hit the mailbox!
A men’s tennis blog. That Tiafoe/Michelsen was a classic match too.
I couldn't stay up so I'm only now watching the full match. I'm sure there will be some Alcaraz/Shelton coming soon ... maybe some Shelton/Tiafoe since they are two of my faves.