Batting average (baseball)

 ( Batting Statistics ) 

Note that batting averages are Rounding; entering the final day of the 1941 season, Williams was at 179-for-448, which is .39955 and would have been recorded as .400 via rounding. However, Williams played in both games of a doubleheader, went 6-for-8, and ended the season 185-for-456, which is .40570 and becomes .406 when rounded.

Since 1941, no American League or National League player has hit .400 or above—the highest single-season average in those leagues has been .394 by Tony Gwynn of the San Diego Padres in 1994. Wade Boggs hit .401 over a 162-game span with Boston from June 9, 1985, to June 6, 1986, but never hit above .368 for an MLB season. There have been numerous attempts to explain the disappearance of the .400 hitter, with one of the more rigorous discussions of this question appearing in Stephen Jay Gould's 1996 book . Josh Gibson hit .466 in 1943 while playing for the Homestead Grays of the Negro National League, one of several leagues within Negro league baseball that are now recognized by MLB.

Gibson holds the record for highest major-league career batting average at .371, four points higher than Ty Cobb, who has the second-highest career average at .367. The record for lowest career batting average for a player with more than 2,500 at-bats belongs to Bill Bergen, a catcher who played from 1901 to 1911 and recorded a .170 average in 3,028 career at-bats.

Hugh Duffy, who played from 1888 to 1906, is credited with the highest single-season batting average, having hit .440 in 1894. The modern-era (post-1900) record for highest batting average for a season is held by Nap Lajoie, who hit .426 in 1901, the first year of play for the American League. The modern-era record for the lowest batting average for a player that qualified for the batting title is held by Chris Davis, who hit .168 in 2018. While finishing six plate appearances short of qualifying for the batting title, Adam Dunn of the Chicago White Sox hit .159 for the 2011 season, nine points lower than the record. The highest batting average for a rookie was .408 in 1911 by Shoeless Joe Jackson.

The league batting average in MLB for the 2018 season was .248, with the highest modern-era MLB average being .296 in 1930, and the lowest being .237 in 1968. For non-pitchers, a batting average below .230 is often considered poor, and one below .200 is usually unacceptable. This latter level is sometimes referred to as "The Mendoza Line", named for Mario Mendoza—a lifetime .215 hitter but a good defensive shortstop.

Sabermetrics, the study of baseball statistics, considers batting average a weak measure of performance because it does not correlate as well as other measures to runs scored, thereby causing it to have little predictive value. Batting average does not take into account bases on balls (walks) or power, whereas other statistics such as on-base percentage and slugging percentage have been specifically designed to measure such concepts. Adding these statistics together form a player's on-base plus slugging or "OPS". This is commonly seen as a much better, though not perfect, indicator of a player's overall batting ability as it is a measure of hitting for average, hitting for power, and drawing walks.

To determine which players are eligible to win the batting title, the following conditions have been used over the sport's history:

• Pre-1920 – A player is required to appear in at least 100 games when the schedule was 154 games, and 90 games when the schedule was 140 games. An exception to the rule was made for Ty Cobb in 1914, who appeared in 98 games but had a big lead and was also a favorite of American League President Ban Johnson.
• 1920–1949 – A player had to appear in 100 games to qualify in the NL; the AL used 100 games from 1920 to 1935, and 400 at-bats from 1936 to 1949. The NL was advised to adopt 400 at-bats for the 1945 season, but National League President Ford Frick refused, feeling that 100 games should stand for the benefit of catchers and injured players. (Taffy Wright is often erroneously said to have been cheated out of the 1938 batting title; he batted .350 in exactly 100 games, with 263 ABs. Jimmie Foxx hit .349, in 149 games and 565 AB. But since the AL requirement that year was 400 at-bats, Foxx's batting title is undisputed.)
• 1950–1956 – A player needed 2.6 at-bats per team game originally scheduled. (With the 154-game schedule of the time, that meant a rounded-off 400 at-bats.) From 1951 to 1954, if the player with the highest average in a league failed to meet the minimum at-bat requirement, the remaining at-bats until qualification (e.g., five at-bats, if the player finished the season with 395 at-bats) were hypothetically considered hitless at-bats; if his recalculated batting average still topped the league, he was awarded the title. This standard was applied in the AL from 1936 to 1956.
• 1957 to the present – A player has needed 3.1 plate appearances per team game originally scheduled; thus, players were no longer penalized for walking so frequently or benefitted from walking so rarely. (In 1954, for example, Ted Williams batted .345 but had only 386 ABs, while topping the AL with 136 walks. Williams thus lost the batting title to Cleveland's Bobby Ávila, who hit .341 in 555 ABs.) In the 154-game schedule, the required number of plate appearances was 477, and since the era of the 162-game schedule, the requisite number of plate appearances has been 502. Adjustments to this figure were made during MLB lockout, such as 1972, 1981, 1994, and 1995.

From 1967 to the present, if the player with the highest average in a league does not meet the minimum plate-appearance requirement, the remaining at-bats until qualification (e.g., five at-bats, if the player finished the season with 497 plate appearances) are hypothetically considered hitless at-bats; if his recalculated batting average still tops the league, he is awarded the title. This is officially Rule 10.22(a), but it is also known as the "Tony Gwynn rule" because the Padres' player won the batting crown in 1996 with a .353 average on just 498 plate appearances (i.e., he was four short). Gwynn was awarded the title since he would have led the league even if he had gone 0-for-4 in those missing plate appearances. His average would have dropped to .349, five points better than second-place Ellis Burks' .344. In 2012, a one-time amendment to the rule was made to disqualify Melky Cabrera from the title. Cabrera requested that he be disqualified after serving a suspension that season for a positive testosterone test. He had batted .346 with 501 plate appearances, and the original rule would have awarded him the title over San Francisco Giants teammate Buster Posey, who won batting .336.

• Batting average (cricket)