Reading A Box Score

Open up your sports page to the baseball section. Don’t be intimidated by the rows and rows of numbers you see. For many, the lure of baseball is intertwined with love of the thousands of numbers it generates. Some people inhale these numbers and crave the stats that come with the morning paper, or the first internet search of the day. Maybe someday you will, too. Or maybe not. It doesn’t matter. The most important stat in baseball is which team has most the most runs at the end of the game. But understanding a few simple stats will help you get a better sense of how well a batter is doing. So let’s start with interpreting that box score you found in the newspaper.

Here one from Seattle from a recent game against the Washington Nationals. I know, it’s kind of miserable (Seattle is 16 ½ games out of first place in their division) but it will work for our purposes.

Let's start with the big one at the end of the line. AVG means batting average.

AVG - The batting average measure a player’s frequency of getting a safe hit or the number of times he got on base divided by the number of at bats. Say what? All you need to know is that the higher the batting average, the better the batter is hitting. The high .200s is good. Getting into the .300s is great (usually Ichiro Suzuki is batting in the .300s this time of year.) If you are Chipper Jones of the Atlanta Braves (the top batter in the National League right now), you are batting .414 right now which is out-of-this-world. In comparison, the top guy in the American League is Milton Bradley from the Texas Rangers who is batting .330.

The last ballplayer to end the season with over a .400 average was Ted Williams, who if you know him at all you know him as either A.) the guy who gave his name to the new underwater tunnel in Boston in the Big Dig or B.) the guy frozen after death by his family so he could be resurrected in the future. But Ted was a darn good ball player for the Boston Red Sox over a span of almost three decades. A .400 batting average means that for every 10 times that you have an at bat, you have a hit four times (which means you get a single, a double, a triple or a home run.) That is really incredible. Have you heard the phrase, “batting a thousand”? Now you know why that means really, really good!

Continuing on with the box score, you’ll note that the names are listed in the batting order. Let’s play Bingo, shall we?

AB stands for At Bats. That’s how many times a batter came to bat and got a hit or made an out. Not to be confused with plate appearances (walks, getting hit by the pitcher, and sacrifice flies or bunts aren’t counted as at-bats. They get counted elsewhere.) Ichiro (ISuzuki at the top of the order) was credited with 4 At Bats, which means he was struck out or got a hit (and it looks like he got one hit) four times. (See, box scores look intimidating, but they really are simple as pie. )

R - Runs . That’s how many runs the batter made by making it all the way around the bases and stepping on home plate. The total of runs at the bottom of the total always equals the total score of the team. Mariners lost this game to the Nationals, 5-2.

H - Base Hits. You know this one! This is when the ball is hit by the batter resulting in the batter reaching base.

BI (or RBI) Runs Batted In. Another way to judge how good a batter is. RBI stands for Runs Batted in reference to how many runs are scored due to the batter’s performance. Lots of times the heavy hitters have the best RBI records. RBIs includes runs made by others because of your performance, but also include the batter himself in the case of a home run. (He made it home because of his hit.)

BB - Base on Balls. that’s how many “walks” at batter earns. While walks don’t show up in the batting average, they are important because a good batter has a good eye and can distinguish balls from strikes. Sometime a really good hitter may have a lower batting average because he walks a lot. So batting average isn’t everything. Getting on base is what counts

SO- Strike Outs You''ll see strikeouts also designated as "K" when looking at pitching statistics. A strike out is happens when the batter receives three strikes during his time at bat. A really good pitcher can be the reason for a strike out. So can a really bad hitter (though I'm convinced there are no really bad hitters in the Major Leagues. Except maybe American League pitchers during inter-league games.) But a power hitter such as a DH (Designated Hitter) can generate a lot of strike outs as well. (Updated and Corrected 7/2/08)

You will see these stats announced or posted during the game as well, either on the scoreboard or posted at the bottom of the television just before the commercial break. There are also stats that deal specifically with pitching and fielding, such as earned run average or errors, but that’s a whole ‘nother entry.

Just remember, for batting and hitting, higher numbers are good for hits (H), batting average (AVG), balls on base (BB) and runs batted in (RBI). And the higher your seat number, the farther you are from home base. Which doesn’t matter as long as you show up for the game.