Batting Average Calculator
Batting average is the simplest and most recognizable statistic in baseball. It tells you what fraction of at-bats result in a hit. Just enter hits and at-bats, and optionally add walks and HBP to calculate on-base percentage too.
The batting average formula is: AVG = Hits / At-Bats
Batting average is displayed in three-decimal format (e.g., .300, pronounced "three hundred"). A player who gets 3 hits in 10 at-bats is batting .300, meaning they get a hit 30% of the time.
Important: at-bats are not the same as plate appearances. At-bats exclude walks, hit-by-pitches, sacrifices, and catcher interference. So if a player comes to the plate 600 times but walks 80 times, they have roughly 520 at-bats.
Historical context:
- .400: No one has hit .400 for a full season since Ted Williams hit .406 in 1941.
- .350+: Elite territory. Only a handful of players in any era sustain this.
- .300: Traditionally the benchmark for an excellent hitter. The phrase "300 hitter" is baseball shorthand for a very good batter.
- .250: Roughly league average in modern baseball.
- .200: The Mendoza Line, named after Mario Mendoza, is the informal threshold below which a player's batting is considered unacceptable.
On-Base Percentage (OBP) is considered a more complete measure of a hitter's ability to reach base. The formula is: OBP = (H + BB + HBP) / (AB + BB + HBP + SF). A .350 OBP is about average, and .400+ is excellent. Enter walks and HBP to calculate it.
While batting average remains the most well-known stat, modern analytics (sabermetrics) generally favor OBP, slugging percentage (SLG), and OPS (OBP + SLG) as more predictive measures of offensive value.