The Jeff McNeil Example

Wait a second…

No, that can’t be right.

It must be a mistake.

I stared confusedly at Jeff McNeil’s Baseball Reference page, trying to make sense of the numbers in front of me. It was the summer of 2019, and McNeil was leading the National League in batting average. 

Or at least I thought he was.

You see, McNeil’s average had been listed as a league-leading .337 at the end of play on August 11th. But when I checked the leaderboards the next morning, McNeil had slipped to second in the NL batting race with a .334 mark.

After further research, I learned that a ball that had previously been ruled a hit for McNeil was retroactively classified as a fielding error. As a result, McNeil’s season average dipped and Christian Yelich was now atop the NL leaderboard.

The scoring change made sense, but as a Mets fan rooting for McNeil to win the batting title, I was annoyed. From a rational standpoint, I understood that batting average is a relatively primitive and outdated stat. Yet deep down, I couldn’t shake the desire for him to be crowned the National League batting champion at the end of the season.

In this moment, I realized that although average has fallen out of favor with the baseball intelligentsia, the batting title still has significance.

The Cat and Mouse Game

Batting average is nowhere near the most accurate way to gauge a player’s hitting ability. On-base percentage has a much stronger correlation to run scoring, and players who pair mediocre averages with robust slugging percentages are more productive than high-average singles hitters. As the above McNeil example demonstrates, batting average is also affected by the decisions made by official scorers.

So why do I, a researcher at the major league level, still care who finishes the season with the highest average?

For the most part, it comes down to the fact that the one-on-one battle between the pitcher and the hitter remains the focal point of any baseball game. The beauty of Major League Baseball is that the most dominant pitchers on the planet are facing off against the most skilled hitters.

In a given at-bat, a pitcher might employ every weapon in his arsenal to try to retire the hitter. But if the hitter is tenacious enough, he can still reach base. In most cases, drawing a walk or getting hit by a pitch is just as valuable as recording a base hit. Even so, the hit feels like more of a triumph for the batter.

Whereas a walk or HBP can be attributed to pitcher wildness, a hit makes a more convincing statement that the batter is superior to the pitcher. A player with a high average is someone who frequently wins his individual battles against opposing pitchers.

Stamina and Consistency

Winning the batting title is also a commendable achievement because it requires remarkable stamina. The marathon nature of the 162-game major league season demands a lot of players, and maintaining consistent production over a six-month stretch is a challenge for any athlete. Slumps are inevitable, no matter how talented a hitter may be.

To win a batting title, a player must keep those cold stretches to a minimum. Most importantly, the hitter must avoid a notable drop-off as the season drags on. Even if a hitter has a sizable lead in the batting race going into the season’s final month, a September slump can derail his chances of becoming a batting champ.

In this sense, the batting title helps us identify which player was the most effective at staving off fatigue and minimizing stretches of futility.

Ultimately, the batting race is worth following because it makes for great drama. When a player is vying for the batting crown, every at-bat has the utmost significance. Normally, a player who goes 0-for-4 at the plate can shake it off and look forward to the next game. But when it’s late in the year and a player is looking to sustain a high average, that type of performance can have a profound impact.

The knowledge that a batting race might come down to the slimmest of margins puts enormous pressure on each contending hitter. It is not uncommon for the race to come down to the final day of the season, so hitters must make the most of every at-bat and avoid making unnecessary outs.

Searle’s Final Say

Batting average does not measure a player’s production as effectively as more advanced stats like OPS or wRC+. But the batting race creates a heightened level of suspense that is magnified with each late-season at-bat. Whenever a player in contention for the batting crown comes up to hit, fans become emotionally invested in the outcome of that plate appearance.

 In addition to creating drama, the batting race evokes nostalgia for earlier eras of baseball. Batting average may be an outdated metric, but it hearkens back to a time when the leader of that category was considered to be the league’s best hitter. While such a belief was misguided, finishing a season with the league’s highest average is still an astounding achievement.