Gautam Mukunda wrote:
> OK, Gautam, I'm missing something. Lets look at the denominator of the
> first term of that equation. It is:
>
> (at bats + sac. flies + sac. bunts + hit by pitch)
>
> Why should the on base percentage go down as the percentage of at bats that
> are sac. flies, sac. bunts and hit by pitch go up. For example, using your
> formula, if a person is hit by a pitch on every at bat, then his on base
> percentage is 50%, not 100%. Further, lets say that two players gets
> either a walk or a hit 40% of the time. Neither has been hit by a pitch.
> The first player sac bunts or sac flies 20% of the time, the second player
> never. By your formula, the first player has an OBP of 33% (40%/120%),
> while the second and has OBP of 40%. That seems to indicate that its better
> to strike out than to hit a sac. fly.
>
> Did you have a sign error someplace?
>
> Dan M.
>
> I don't think so. My denominator should have been:
> (at bats + walks + sac. flies + sac. bunts + hit by pitch)
> I missed the walks part.
>
Actually, according to the statistics glossary at ESPN.com
OBP is: (H + BB + HBP) divided by (AB + BB + HBP + SF) I
don't know why they include sac flies but not sac. bunts.
> At bats are (I think) plate appearances that result in a hit or an out, but
> don't include sac. flies or sacrifice bunts. That's why sac. flies and sac.
> bunts aren't included in calculating a batting average. They are included
> in OBP, however. So it is possible to have an OBP _lower than_ your batting
> average. Does that make sense?
They don't define ABs on the glossary but I'm relatively
certain that you are correct - only hits and non sacrifice
outs count as an at bat.
URL for the glossary:
http://espn.go.com/mlb/statistics/glossary.html
--
Doug
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.zo.com/~brighto
