What Is Plate Appearance in Softball?

A plate appearance is counted every time you come to bat and the trip ends: a hit, an out, a walk, a hit-by-pitch, a sacrifice, or reaching on an error. If you finished the turn, it's a plate appearance.

This is the broadest denominator available, which makes it the right one for rate stats that should count walks — on-base percentage, walk rate and strikeout rate all use plate appearances or something close to them.

The distinction from an at-bat matters. Every at-bat is a plate appearance, but not every plate appearance is an at-bat — walks, hit-by-pitches and sacrifices are excluded from at-bats specifically so they don't distort batting average.