The Nine Most Misleading Batting Averages of 2013

On this site, we often discuss which statistics are misleading and which statistics are better at determining a player’s value. Over in our Stat Primer section we have tons of posts about why pitcher wins are bad and why RBI aren’t a good way to measure individual players. We also have a post about why on base percentage is better than batting average and why you should use Weighted On Base Average (wOBA) if you’re really only interested in looking at a single number because it weighs each type of hit based on its actual contribution to scoring. You want to look at stats that correlate more highly with scoring and OBP and wOBA are much better than batting average (just click the OBP v AVG link above to see for yourself).

All in all, for hitters I’d tell you to look at Weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+) because that is a park and league adjusted version of wOBA, meaning that you can compare players at Petco and Camden Yards and players from 2010 and 1960. It’s simple to understand as 100 is average and anything above it is that % better than average and anything below it is that much worse. One of our main goals is to make advanced statistics more popular in the broader baseball community because we think they will improve your enjoyment of the game.

Simply put, many of the traditional stats were invented before we knew enough and had the ability to calculate better ones. It’s always important to move forward. Today, I’m offering a bit of evidence from the 2013 season about why you should look beyond batting average when judging a player. Below you will find The Nine Most Misleading Batting Averages so far this season. The rules are simple. These are players who have a below average batting average and above average offensive value or an above average batting average and below average overall value. Players who had really good batting averages that still undersold their value (think Cabrera) are not included because that would just be a list of the best hitters in baseball and that would be boring.

Think of these players as guys who either walk a ton or not at all and/or guys with lots of power or no power. Batting average treats every hit the same and ignores walks. That’s not a good idea. Batting average is a fine stat, but it should only be a compliment to on base percentage if you want something simple and wOBA or wRC+ if you want something more daring. This is a plot of AVG and wRC+ to show you that while batting average is important in determining offensive value, there is a lot it doesn’t explain. About 54% of the variation in wRC+ can be explained by average. Walks, power, and ballpark make up the rest and we shouldn’t ignore them:

It’s important to note that I make no adjustment for position, meaning that these are all deviations from league average (.257 AVG) and not based on their respective positions. These are batting averages that don’t tell the whole story about a player, not batting averages that explain positional value.

What you have is three types of players. One are players who have a high average but never walk and don’t hit for power. Two are players with great walk rates. Three are players with a ton of power. Each of those qualities makes batting average deceptive. We don’t have to get rid of the stat, but it’s important to understand that walking and extra base hits are very important and just dividing hits by at bats doesn’t equal offensive value.

I say this because the person who wins the batting title is only the best offensive player 30% of the time. We call that person the “Batting Champion,” but that’s not really true. Offensive value is more complicated that H/AB and it’s important to start moving towards stats that capture that, especially because we already have those stats and it only requires a few minutes to learn about them.