Sabermetricians have long talked about the empty batting average. So who so far this season holds onto the emptiest batting average?
We have a stat here at BP, called True Average, that accounts for the totality of a player’s production at the plate, while still being on the familiar scale of batting average. What’s missing from this is a sense of opportunities; the more playing time a player has, the emptier his batting average can really be.
To get hits, of course, we just take batting average and multiply by at-bats. If we want to come up with True Hits, we simply take True Average and multiply by… True At-Bats, right? So I took a player’s PAs and multiplied by the MLB at-bats per PA rate, excluding pitchers to come up with a number on the at-bats scale that doesn’t penalize a player for taking a lot of walks, and multiplied that by TAv to come up with True Hits. Now, the players whose actual hits exceed their True Hits by the most:
|
TrueH |
Diff |
||||||
|
CHN |
211 |
0.322 |
0.270 |
68 |
53.0 |
15.0 |
|
|
CHN |
185 |
0.308 |
0.254 |
57 |
44.7 |
12.3 |
|
|
SLN |
178 |
0.303 |
0.250 |
54 |
43.7 |
10.3 |
|
|
LAN |
142 |
0.275 |
0.220 |
39 |
28.8 |
10.2 |
|
|
BAL |
199 |
0.302 |
0.271 |
60 |
50.3 |
9.7 |
|
|
CHA |
171 |
0.263 |
0.223 |
45 |
36.4 |
8.6 |
|
|
CHN |
87 |
0.368 |
0.298 |
32 |
23.7 |
8.3 |
|
|
TEX |
197 |
0.259 |
0.222 |
51 |
42.8 |
8.2 |
|
|
PHI |
200 |
0.315 |
0.278 |
63 |
55.0 |
8.0 |
|
|
CHN |
172 |
0.308 |
0.281 |
53 |
45.6 |
7.4 |
|
|
CLE |
175 |
0.263 |
0.237 |
46 |
39.2 |
6.8 |
|
|
TEX |
196 |
0.332 |
0.300 |
65 |
58.3 |
6.7 |
|
|
LAN |
185 |
0.297 |
0.268 |
55 |
48.8 |
6.2 |
|
|
ARI |
92 |
0.272 |
0.215 |
25 |
18.8 |
6.2 |
|
|
ATL |
199 |
0.271 |
0.258 |
54 |
47.8 |
6.2 |
|
|
NYN |
222 |
0.324 |
0.306 |
72 |
65.9 |
6.1 |
|
|
TOR |
171 |
0.287 |
0.265 |
49 |
43.0 |
6.0 |
|
|
SFN |
188 |
0.298 |
0.272 |
56 |
50.1 |
5.9 |
|
|
PHI |
118 |
0.246 |
0.205 |
29 |
23.2 |
5.8 |
|
|
ATL |
224 |
0.281 |
0.266 |
63 |
57.6 |
5.4 |
A few very notable things about this list:
- The Cubs absolutely dominate the top of this list – four of the top ten are all Cubs. On one hand, this is a surprising amount. On the other hand, if there was a team to do this, I would’ve bet on the Cubs.
- You can be a good hitter and still end up on this list. Nobody is complaining about Jose Reyes or Starlin Castro.
- You can be a poor hitter and be on this list. Wilson Valdez is probably my favorite, somehoe managing to come up with an empty batting average while only hitting .246.
- Special credit goes to Jeff Baker and Melvin Mora, who make this list with less than 100 at-bats apiece.
Thank you for reading
This is a free article. If you enjoyed it, consider subscribing to Baseball Prospectus. Subscriptions support ongoing public baseball research and analysis in an increasingly proprietary environment.
Subscribe now