page_title: Baseball
section_title: Statistics
hierarchical_section_title: Baseball / Statistics
caption_attribution_description: Rickey Henderson steals third base for the New York Yankees under the tag of Seattle Mariners Third baseman Jim Presley in the first game of a doubleheader at Yankee Stadium on August 19, 1988.
context_page_description: Baseball is a bat-and-ball game played between two opposing teams who take turns batting and fielding. The game proceeds when a player on the fielding team, called the pitcher, throws a ball which a player on the batting team tries to hit with a bat. The objective of the offensive team is to hit the ball into the field of play, allowing its players to run the bases, having them advance counter-clockwise around four bases to score what are called "runs". The objective of the defensive team is to prevent batters from becoming runners, and to prevent runners' advance around the bases. A run is scored when a runner legally advances around the bases in order and touches home plate. The team that scores the most runs by the end of the game is the winner.
  The first objective of the batting team is to have a player reach first base safely. A player on the batting team who reaches first base without being called "out" can attempt to advance to subsequent bases as a runner, either immediately or during teammates' turns batting. The fielding team tries to prevent runs by getting batters or runners "out", which forces them out of the field of play.
context_section_description: Organized baseball lends itself to statistics to a greater degree than many other sports. Each play is discrete and has a relatively small number of possible outcomes. In the late 19th century, a former cricket player, English-born Henry Chadwick of Brooklyn, was responsible for the "development of the box score, tabular standings, the annual baseball guide, the batting average, and most of the common statistics and tables used to describe baseball." The statistical record is so central to the game's "historical essence" that Chadwick came to be known as Father Baseball. In the 1920s, American newspapers began devoting more and more attention to baseball statistics, initiating what journalist and historian Alan Schwarz describes as a "tectonic shift in sports, as intrigue that once focused mostly on teams began to go to individual players and their statistics lines."
  The Official Baseball Rules administered by MLB require the official scorer to categorize each baseball play unambiguously. The rules provide detailed criteria to promote consistency. The score report is the official basis for both the box score of the game and the relevant statistical records. General managers, managers, and baseball scouts use statistics to evaluate players and make strategic decisions.
  Certain traditional statistics are familiar to most baseball fans. The basic batting statistics include:
  At bats: plate appearances, excluding walks and hit by pitches—where the batter's ability is not fully tested—and sacrifices and sacrifice flies—where the batter intentionally makes an out in order to advance one or more baserunners
  Hits: times a base is reached safely, because of a batted, fair ball without a fielding error or fielder's choice
  Runs: times circling the bases and reaching home safely
  Runs batted in (RBIs): number of runners who scored due to a batter's action (including the batter, in the case of a home run), except when batter grounded into double play or reached on an error
  Home runs: hits on which the batter successfully touched all four bases, without the contribution of a fielding error
  Batting average: hits divided by at bats—the traditional measure of batting ability
  The basic baserunning statistics include:
  Stolen bases: times advancing to the next base entirely due to the runner's own efforts, generally while the pitcher is preparing to deliver or delivering the ball
  Caught stealing: times tagged out while attempting to steal a base
  The basic pitching statistics include:
  Wins: credited to pitcher on winning team who last pitched before the team took a lead that it never relinquished (a starting pitcher must pitch at least five innings to qualify for a win)
  Losses: charged to pitcher on losing team who was pitching when the opposing team took a lead that it never relinquished
  Saves: games where the pitcher enters a game led by the pitcher's team, finishes the game without surrendering the lead, is not the winning pitcher, and either (a) the lead was three runs or less when the pitcher entered the game; (b) the potential tying run was on base, at bat, or on deck; or (c) the pitcher pitched three or more innings
  Innings pitched: outs recorded while pitching divided by three (partial innings are conventionally recorded as, e.g., "5.2" or "7.1", the last digit actually representing thirds, not tenths, of an inning)
  Strikeouts: times pitching three strikes to a batter
  Winning percentage: wins divided by decisions (wins plus losses)
  Earned run average (ERA): runs allowed, excluding those resulting from fielding errors, per nine innings pitched
  The basic fielding statistics include:
  Putouts: times the fielder catches a fly ball, tags or forces out a runner, or otherwise directly effects an out
  Assists: times a putout by another fielder was recorded following the fielder touching the ball
  Errors: times the fielder fails to make a play that should have been made with common effort, and the batting team benefits as a result
  Total chances: putouts plus assists plus errors
  Fielding average: successful chances (putouts plus assists) divided by
caption: Rickey Henderson—the major leagues' all-time leader in runs and stolen bases—stealing third base in a 1988 game
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