How a stat is worked out

Every number on your stats page is arithmetic over the at-bats you recorded — here is which at-bats go into each one, and what deliberately stays out.

No stat is stored anywhere. Every number is worked out from your at-bats at the moment the screen opens, on the phone and on the website alike, so there is nothing to recalculate and nothing that can fall out of step. Correct one at-bat and every average that touched it is right the next time you look — including on a card you shared, which is redrawn each time somebody opens it.

Two counts sit under everything else, and the difference between them is where most of the surprises live. A plate appearance (PA) is every trip to the plate you saved, whatever happened. An at-bat (AB) is that count minus the five outcomes that are deliberately not at-bats: a walk, an intentional walk, a hit by pitch, a sacrifice fly and a sacrifice bunt. Those five keep your batting average exactly where it was rather than counting against it, which is the whole reason the two numbers are separate — a night of three walks and one single is 1-for-1, not 1-for-4.

Batting average is hits divided by at-bats, and hits means the four of them: a single, a double, a triple and a home run. Two outcomes people expect to be let off are not — a fielder's choice and reaching on an error are at-bats you did not get a hit in, so they pull the average down exactly as an out does. That is the standard rule rather than a choice this app made, and it is why both columns exist on the box-score grid instead of being folded into the outs.

On-base percentage is the times you reached — hits, walks, intentional walks and hit by pitches — over at-bats plus walks plus hit by pitches plus sacrifice flies. Read that denominator twice, because it is the part that is not obvious: a sacrifice fly is added back in, so it does count against your on-base percentage even though it is not an at-bat, while a sacrifice bunt appears in neither half and so leaves the number untouched. A fielder's choice and an error are in the denominator through AB and not in the top half, and a dropped third strike counts as a strikeout here rather than as a time on base, even though the batter is standing on first.

Slugging is total bases over at-bats, where a single is one base, a double two, a triple three and a home run four — so it is the same denominator as the average, asking how far rather than how often. OPS is simply the two added together, each one rounded to three places first, which is why adding them yourself off the full decimals can land a point away from what the app prints.

The rest of the slash-line family is built from the same counts. ISO is slugging minus average — extra bases per at-bat, with the singles taken out. BABIP is hits minus home runs, over at-bats minus strikeouts minus home runs plus sacrifice flies: how often a ball you actually put in play fell in. wOBA weights each way of reaching rather than treating them as equal — .69 for a walk, .72 for a hit by pitch, .89 for a single, 1.27 for a double, 1.62 for a triple and 2.10 for a home run — over at-bats plus walks plus hit by pitches plus sacrifice flies. Walk-to-strikeout ratio and at-bats per home run are the two that simply are not shown when their divisor is zero, because there is no honest number to print.

Three counting stats come from somewhere other than the outcome. R counts the at-bats you were marked as having come round to score on. RBI is the number you set yourself when you saved the at-bat, except on a game scored play by play, where it is worked out from where the runners finished. SB hangs on the at-bat that put the runner on base rather than on the batter at the plate, and the SB column only appears at all once something in the slice you are looking at has a steal in it — most slowpitch leagues never steal, and a column of noughts is worse than no column.

On your phone

  1. Open the Stats tab. Under the big AVG / OBP / SLG line, the small row reads your games, your record, then your PA and your AB — the two counts everything else divides by.
  2. Under the Spray Chart row, a strip holds the counting stats: H, HR, RBI, BB and K, plus SB once anybody has stolen a base in the slice you are looking at.
  3. Season Breakdown at the foot of the tab has AB, H, AVG, OBP, SLG and the rest, one row per season — scroll it sideways for the columns that do not fit.
  4. Narrow to a single season and that same table becomes the Game Log for it, one row per game, with the same columns. That is the level to check an average at.
  5. For one game, open the Games tab, tap the game, and stay on Me — your line and the at-bats behind it on one screen.

On the web

  1. Open Performance in the sidebar. The four tiles across the top are AVG, OBP, SLG and OPS for whatever slice the filters above them leave.
  2. The card under the tiles holds the counting stats those four are built from — further down, under the spray chart, on a phone-sized window. It is headed Totals, after Career or the season's name, and holds G, PA, H, HR, 2B, 3B, RBI, R, BB, K, TB and HBP.
  3. AB is not in that card, deliberately: it is a column of the By Season table and of the Game Log under it, where it sits beside H on the same row. Read those two off one row and you have checked that row's average.
  4. PA is a column of the By Season table too, on a wide window. The gap between it and AB on the same row is exactly your walks, hit by pitches and sacrifices for that season.
  5. For one game, open it from Games. Your line for that game sits beside the at-bats it was worked out from, so a number you doubt can be counted back to the plays it came from.

The arithmetic is the same everywhere it is printed: your own screens, the team's season table, a shared card and the CSV export all run the same calculation over whichever at-bats they are looking at. So two screens disagreeing is never the maths — it is the slice. Your own record beside your batting line counts only the games you batted in, a team's record counts every game the team played, and a filter you forgot you set is the most common reason of all.

A note on how they are printed: the rate stats are rounded to three places with the leading nought dropped, so a .333 is a third of the time, and a .000 with no at-bats behind it means there was nothing to divide rather than that you went hitless. A game typed in from a box score lands as ordinary at-bats and is counted exactly like a game recorded a plate appearance at a time — the only thing it cannot carry is where the balls went.

Not sure what a stat on this screen means? The glossary explains it.

Related guides

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