Talk:Batting average

"Good"?
I will settle for good :) I actually wrote "good" to start with & then decided to go the superlative.

Just to be a geek, I downloaded the stats and found that 45 out of 151 qualifiers for the BA championship in the majors hit .300 (53/258 with 300 PA, 69/430 with 100 PA). So I agree, "good", at least among regulars. Of course, if you're a bench player hitting .300 you probably won't be a bench player much longer.

Then again, in the American league in 1968, a batting average of .300 was unquestionably excellent. But that was then, and this is definitely an era of offense. User:Dze27
 * Quite. Yaz won the batting title three times without ever hitting better than 326.
 * As compared to, say, 1930, when (I think) there was only one regular in the NL who didn't hit .300. The 1890s were another odd period like this.  User:RjLesch


 * See also : Baseball statistics

Split cricket/baseball or keep together
Hmm.. I'm not big follower of cricket but there is a potential conflict here between cricket and baseball. Althouh I would guess that an obsession with batting averages is more usual for baseball fans than avid followers of cricet where other statistical evaluations are also made. Mintguy 17:39 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * I didn't see this comment before, but I recently added content on cricket batting averages to cover just this. Cricket fans are indeed obsessed with batting averages. :-) Not sure if it should be split out to a separate page and disambiged yet though. dmmaus 02:35, 5 May 2004 (UTC)


 * I think probably in the fullness of time it should be, although there are a heck of a lot of articles, both baseball- and cricket-related, linking to "Batting average" so it would be a fairly major task and might be better left until there's more content in the cricket section. Loganberry 12:05, 20 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, if we are going to do it, the sooner the better really: the list of "what links here" will only get longer. I should have thought that this was a case where we would need batting average (cricket) and batting average (baseball), with batting average being a disambiguation page... -- ALoan (Talk) 13:28, 20 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Actually, I was going to add a section explaining how the two are related. It seems that baseball averages were deliberately invented by Chadwick (who was a cricket fan also) to provide statistics like cricket averages. That would provide more reason to keep the two together, as they are clearly related by lineage. Although I have no objection to splitting them up. -dmmaus 01:20, 23 May 2005 (UTC)


 * I've gone ahead and made my change. I decided to rearrange the order of the sections on baseball and cricket because I think it makes sense to discuss cricket averages before baseball, given that the baseball average is descended from the cricket one, and it allows a chronological discussion in the sensible order. -dmmaus 02:25, 23 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Right, having seen what dmmaus has done, I've changed my mind; it looks good as it is, and unless either section gets enormously long the benefits of having a single page probably outweigh the drawbacks. Loganberry 03:35, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I now believe there are strong advantages to keeping the discussion of cricket and baseball batting averages on one page, as they are related historically and discussing each in the context of the other is valuable and provides insights that fans of either sport alone may never discover otherwise. -dmmaus 22:43, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Split
This article should be split into separate Batting average (baseball) and Batting average (cricket) articles. While the concept of "batting average" in both cricket and baseball are certainly related, and do share many similarities, there is a distinct difference between the two. The history behind the statistic is obviously related (and the content will therefore be basically the same for either article), once you move beyond the history behind the term the concepts of how it's calculated and used diverge rather strongly. While the following is admittedly a straw man argument, it strikes me that the arguments to retain only a single batting average article could be applied equally to the main cricket/baseball articles as well, which I don't think would garner the same amount of support as having this article be a single article has here. There's no evidence visible to the "benefits of having a single page probably outweigh the drawbacks" argument, other than that stance being the personal preference of a couple of editors from several years ago. I don't really edit Wikipedia any longer because I have no interest in getting involved in the pissing matches that these discussions inevitably become, but if there's someone out there that wants to pick up the ball here and run with it then I hope that I've provided an opportunity for them to do so. Regards, — V = IR (Talk&thinsp;&bull;&thinsp;Contribs) 22:12, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
 * First of all, I don't accept that these discussions must inevitably become one thing or another. I have a slight preference toward splitting into two articles despite the fact that I am a fan (though not a fanatic) of both games.  However, I do wish to propose what I think might be the best reason on which to base a decision:  which way (splitting or keeping together) would be most likely to encourage further improvement of the articles, ideally bringing it (or them) up to GA or FA status.  I'm not sure what the answer is, but if a good argument is made on this basis one way or the other, I would support that decision.   YBG (talk) 05:30, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I would suggest that splitting would be the most likely way a GA or FA would be acheived. Most rated content is acheived by a single editor being driven enough to put the work into an article. Except for prehaps a few Aussies and expats most people are not going to have the skills or knowledge to get an article on baseball and cricket to that level. I disagree that this is the best reason to propose a split however. A better one in my opinion would be to estimate what would suit the readers best. How many people are going to come here wanting information on both compared to just one of the sports. AIR corn (talk) 10:52, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree that a split would probably be best: although the two statistics derive from similar bases, they are now completely different statistics. Mention can be made on each page of the other, and this page can remain as a disambig page.  Harrias  talk 22:35, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
 * According to WP:DAB you can't use a disambig page in this case. (See the first sentence of DAB). SteveBaker (talk) 15:39, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Object - I can't support a simple article split. I would, however Support a third alternative: To reduce this article as a much smaller 'stub' that would simply discuss the concept of a batting average in general - linking to two new (separate) articles for cricket and baseball.  Because:
 * Both uses of the term aim to measure the 'quality' of a player - so there are things you can say about batting averages in general that would be missed in two separate articles. That information belongs here.
 * Henry Chadwick was influential in the statistics of both sports and that common link is important because it suggests that the concept of batting averages for baseball derives from the far older tradition in cricket. That needs to be said in some common place.
 * The present lede mentions that batting averages are used in softball - and that information would be lost in a split article.
 * The "Other contexts" section is valuable and needs to reside someplace - it shouldn't be duplicated.
 * Furthermore, if the article is simply split then I guarantee that the very next question will be "Which article is the 'primary' article that Batting average redirects to?" - this will either cause a holy war to erupt between cricket and baseball enthusiasts - or it would result in a silly two-line disambiguation page that would actually contravene WP:DAB ("If the primary meaning of a term proposed for disambiguation is a broad concept or type of thing that is capable of being described in an article, and a substantial portion of the links asserted to be ambiguous are instances or examples of that concept or type, then the page located at that title should be an article describing the broad concept, and not a disambiguation page."). Since the WP:DAB guidelines say that you can't have a dab page we would have to decide whether Batting average should redirect to Batting average (Cricket) with a "See also" to Batting average (Baseball) or whether it should be the other way around?  I don't wish to have to adjudicate that particular holy war!  Hence only sane way forward is to leave this article as a stripped-down version with single paragraph discussions for each of Cricket and Baseball (and maybe, eventually, a third paragraph for softball) - the present "Other contexts" section should remain here, there should be some mention of how the goals of calculating a batting average is to be able to compare players over the length of their careers and to each other - and explain how and why they are done differently in the two sports and how Henry Chadwick is responsible for that. SteveBaker (talk) 15:37, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Split plus stub - I concur with with SteveBaker for many of the same reasons. This idea seems to include the best qualities of splitting and keeping joined. YBG (talk) 22:36, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

.400 hitters/55+ averages
Just a little (possibly silly) thought that I set down here for consideration... if we accept the Steven Jay Gould argument that the decline of the .400 hitter in baseball is because of the tendency for (simplistically speaking) top stats to get lower as well as bottom stats to get higher, why has the benchmark for the very top Test cricketers been an average in the high fifties for decades now? The extraordinary one-off of Bradman aside, no-one has ever averaged over 61 in Tests - Herbert Sutcliffe averaged 60.73 before the war, while Rahul Dravid is currently averaging 57.86 and seven other current players are over the 55 mark. Loganberry (Talk) 04:10, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Hmmm... good point. I'm tempted to say that, as admirable as Gould's knowledge of baseball statistics is, his one failing was a lack of an appreciation for cricket. :-) More seriously, there are almost certainly other factors at work that make baseball averages a better analogy of "naturally evolving" systems than cricket averages. I think the fact that baseball averages display this sort of behaviour is more coincidence than rule, despite Gould getting a whole book out of it. -dmmaus 23:40, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, I've added some text about this to the article, as I think it's a valid point. -dmmaus 11:04, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * I think this point may be less valid than you think. Gould's explanation entails two statistical measurements that he did: 1. That the variance of batting averages decreased, and 2. That the across-league average of batting averages stayed unchanged. Only because of the combination of these two conditions, did the top batting average go down (and below 0.400). Condition #2 - the fact that the league average didn't change - is far from obvious. Gould measured this fact using the heaps of statistics he collects, and he attributes this fact to changes in the rules of the game (when players became better, the rules were changed to be harder). My guess (not backed by any cricket statistics) that this fact is simply not true of cricket: probably the variance of cricket skill went down, and at the same time, the leage average went up - because rules weren't changed, or even changed in the wrong direction. Unless you (or someone else) can refute this guess (with real cricket statistics), you can't use cricket to invalidate Gould's explanation. Nyh 21:35, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I've moved the following contribution from the article to here. It may well be worth discussion in the article, but the contributed text as it stands could use some clean-up and NPOVing, preferably from someone with a better understanding of the baseball history involved than I have. -dmmaus 00:12, 28 July 2005 (UTC) Moved text follows:


 * Yes, for example, in the 1960's the pitchers mound was raised that made batters have a disadvantage. Also, talent searching for players to play in the pro leagues is more efficient by the number of personnel who have jobs to search for players versus 80 years ago and the pool to choose from is wider to account for a greater amount of players to decrease the lower batting averaged players. The invention/application of the split fingered pitch also added pitchers, along with "Tommy John" surgery for extended good pitching arms and also the pitchers of old were pitching full games as now you have three pitchers of specialty that could show up in any game: starting, set-up, and closing pitchers. Some could argue these points by saying that the ball is more lively today than yesterday which makes homeruns of what would otherwise be outs to increase batting average but these are all ways of understanding baseball stats apart from Gould's reference.


 * The "Gould effect", if I can call it that, has been offset in cricket by the move to covered pitches and the pressure on groundsmen to produce "TV freindly" pitches. Whereas years ago a test match finishing in 3 days was fine, these days too much TV revenue would be lost if the match doesn't go to at least 4 days, preferably the full 5. --LiamE 01:53, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

-- You're kidding, right? When was hitting .400 common? There were only 13 cases of an average above .400 between 1900 and 1941. That's considered common? Take in the fact that those 13 times were accomplished by only 8 men. So only 8 talented men were capable of hitting .400 after 1899, and this is called a "not uncommon" occurance? I think this needs to be edited. Here's the list of men: --24.169.128.137 04:11, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Nap Lajoie
 * Rogers Hornsby
 * George Sisler
 * Ty Cobb
 * Joe Jackson
 * Ted Williams
 * Harry Heilmann
 * Bill Terry

Histogram
What real use is the histogram as illustrated? It is just a list of numbers in picture form which says no more than reading the list of numbers does. It would be more useful if it had a column listing runs scored innings-by-innings linked to an indication of career batting average innings-by-innings and possibly current "form" as a moving average, last five innings for example. This would be useful too for baseball stats. Baseball statisticians are fond of winning/losing streaks. The drawback is that 3 at-bats per game over a 160-game season is too many columns for one chart, which rules out Albert Pujohls, but the principle is sound enough. It could be particularly useful for post-season analysis.

Guy 15:32, 30 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I guess you're just not a visual person. I find diagrams much more interesting to look at and easier to absorb than a list of numbers, and it makes a nice visual break-up of the article text. It distils the voluminous data down into a histogram that shows in a glance the distribution of averages. If you want to make additional or replacement graphs showing more pertinent information, please do so, but this page isn't the place for a large statistical list. We could create them separately at List of moving cricket batting averages and List of moving baseball batting averages, for example - but it would be difficult to keep them up to date. -dmmaus 23:08, 30 April 2006 (UTC)


 * G'day. I am a former statistician, and also quite skilled at presenting the data pictorially.  You are right, there is little point in doing it here for somebody whose career is still under way, as it will need constant revision.  Cricinfo and the MLB sites do this very well.  My point is that the graph should show something not easy to spot from looking at the raw numbers.  There is no need for a picture giving score-by-score game-by-game.  However, if the career moving average game-by-game is also arrayed, and also recent "form" (moving average of a few most recent games), then the picture is, as you say, much more interesting and worth having.  There is a picture on the Zaheer Abbas page which is more like it.  ;-)
 * Guy 00:54, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Bradman
Bradman's final average was 99.94. What is amazing about this is that in his final innings he needed just one run to take his average to 100, and was out for a duck (no runs). Incredible then that he didn't play again so that he could have made the career average of 100, clearly a different era meant a different attitude! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.9.63.199 (talk)


 * Actually he needed four runs from his final innings, since he finished with 6,996 Test runs from 80 innings, of which 10 were not out. Loganberry (Talk) 23:58, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Dead or alive?
The time has come for the tables of leading batting averages to be revised. Firstly by date. Both games are very different nowadays from what they were decades ago. Hence there should be tables for currently active players separate from those retired. Baseball should have a separate tables for regular season and post-season, possibly a further split between championship series and world series, and possibly split again for semi-finals since the start of wild cards. For cricket, one-day stats are equally as useful and relevant as full-term games nowadays, and there should be tables for first-class averages as well as test match. A lot of table-making for somebody. Guy 04:33, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Issues arising from Test and ODI batting averages
It seems clear that the international game has changed in the era of the ODI (the last thirty-five years). A simple batting average is not adequate to compare test-match batsmen over a 120-year period. The ICC stats, published here do not seem to be totally satisfactory either. One feature is the recent introduction of Zimbabwe and Bangladesh to the list of ten test-playing countries. Some averages have been inflated by batsmen filling their boots against weak opposition - Sri Lanka too was a softer opponent when they were first admitted. India and New Zealand also won very few test matches for many years, but that was at least forty years ago (until Geoffrey Boycott became the first losing England captain in New Zealand in 1978). At the risk of falling foul of the Wikipedia strictures about original research, it should be possible for a proper statistician to analyse the numbers over the years to compare averages (for example, a correlation between average and tests/innings played for batsmen averaging over 50, or fitting the histograms to bell-shaped curves). The ODI histogram is significantly narrower in the base than the test histogram. I am inclined to think that the test averages of players active since the introduction of ODIs will converge in a similar manner to those of ODI batsmen. I think one factor is that the modern batsmen who have sustained a high average are all exceptional players who have responded to the higher pressure of the game compared to, for example, timeless tests against South Africa in the old days, but then W.R. Hammond will have felt the pressure walking out on the Melbourne Cricket Ground. There is plenty here for cricket-lovers to discuss - for my part all contributions made to the discussion in the spirit of the game are welcome, and will be taken seriously - call me an idiot if you like, as long as you supply supporting evidence.

Guy 05:13, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Addition of current player and ODI cricket batting averages
As ardent a cricket fan as I am, I must say that I oppose the addition of these extensive tables of batting averages to this article. Firstly, I don't think Wikipedia is an appropriate place for lists of frequently updated sports stats - other sites that we link to do a better job of that. Secondly, this makes the article look cricket-heavy, at the expense of baseball. I strongly believe that fans of both sports gain an advantage by discussion of batting average being combined on one page, rather than split into two, as the statistics are historically related, and discussing them in the context of one another provides valuable insights and comparisons. Overloading the page with current cricket stats interferes with that insightful comparison and may make people start to agitate to split this article up into a separate article for each sport, which would be a tragedy. Therefore, I suggest we remove the additional tables, perhaps placing them on a separate page such as List of cricket batting averages. I'm listing this here for discussion rather than just removing the tables, because I suspect some people might feel differently, and I want everyone to know why I think they should be removed from this article. -dmmaus 22:37, 21 December 2006 (UTC)


 * This change has been discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cricket, with consensus to move the extended tables of cricket averages to List of cricket batting averages. They should not be reinstated here. -dmmaus 04:27, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Cricket ahead of Baseball?!
Baseball is far more popular (especially regarding this term) AND baseball is first alphabetically. Really no excuse not to have baseball be the first thing you see. 63.145.155.66 17:25, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Two points: Cricket is more popular than baseball on a global scale (although in fact that point is completely irrelevant to the ordering in this article - I am merely correcting your factual error). The main point is that baseball batting average is directly descended from cricket batting average. Therefore, to give proper historical context, it is necessary to discuss cricket batting average first, so that people researching baseball batting averages can learn about the history of the statistic. This point has been discussed several times previously on this talk page, and consensus reached that the current ordering makes the most sense. -dmmaus 00:11, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

As I've heard said when - I'm guessing - Americans have claimed that cricket isn't popular: "Yeah? A billion Indians would say different."Kiwifruitrulz (talk) 12:30, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Statistical Error in .400 Section
I'll try to reword it, but in case I fail (or don't get back to it) this note should let someone else know the problem exists. The article claims that the increase in strikeouts and walks makes it more difficult to hit .400. But the walks should actually make it easier to hit .400, because they pad the Plate Appearance total (which needs to be at least 502 in a 162 game season) without adding extra at-bats (which are the denominator in the batting average calculation). As such, a higher walk rate increases the chances of hitting .400 by increasing the statistical noise within a small sample (the smaller number of at-bats). The rewrite will need to note that while the increase in strikeouts makes the .400 average less likely, the increase in walks makes it more likely. --Llewdor 22:52, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Llewdor is correct. Walks do "power" a hitter's BA. Two examples to prove my and Llew's statement. Rod Carew, finished the 1977 season with 616 AB's, 239 Hits and 69 BB's for a .388 BA. Ted Williams, ended the 1941 season with 456 AB's, 185 Hits and 145 BB's for a .406 BA. Williams .406 was "powered" by BB's, not Hits. This "section" of the article needs clarification.Dcrasno (talk) 00:55, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Citation for relation between sports
An anonymous editor has added a request for a citation for the statement that baseball averages descend directly from cricket averages. I have the citation at home, and will add it as soon as I get home from work. -dmmaus 22:03, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Turned out it wasn't in Koppett's History of Major League Baseball as I thought. I know I've read it explicitly somewhere - must have been in another book on baseball history. The link is pretty clear though. It's well established that Henry Chadwick invented the baseball batting average statistic (    and the aforementioned Koppett), and he was originally a cricket journalist and statistician, so was intimately familiar with cricket's batting average and other statistics. It's pretty much impossible that he couldn't have been influenced by his familiarity with cricket statistics when devising his baseball statistics, though making that deduction could be construed as "Original Research". Until a better cite turns up, I've cited a website with the closest thing to a direct statement I could find. -dmmaus 22:12, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Phil Tufnell example is weak
The example given batting averages being inflated by not-outs about Phil Tufnell is a pretty weak example of the point that is trying to be made. The issue with his average is not that it was inflated by not-outs, but that he was only out once and trying to take a statistical average over one sample point is not going to produce a reliable result. i.e. the issue with Phil Tufnell is the same issue as somebody having played one innings and scoring 200 then having an average of 200. I'm not what value this paragraph adds to the article, but if it does stay then removing the example or fining a better one would be a good idea. 150.101.103.206 (talk) 03:13, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

I basically agree. However, it is not so much that the example is weak, but rather that that this aternative measure is weak. Phil Tufnell has an arguably inflated average not due to an intrinsic problem with the method of calculation, but rather with the fact that he hadn't played enough innings for a reliable statistic. Batting average is the perfect statistic as long as a batsman has played a sufficient number of innings. Batting average comes down to "number of runs per number of outs", which is exactly what it should be. To illustrate the point, if one were to use runs per innings, even the great Sir Donald Bradman would have had a poor average if he were the number 11 batsman throughout his career. Put another way, if Phil Tufnell had played ten thousand innings at number 11, scored a ten thousand runs in total, and got out only once, his average would be very high yes, but deservedly so given that he scored ten thousand runs and only got out once (that would make him a genius of sorts). In short, runs per inning is a vastly inferior measure of a batsman's prowess to runs per number of outs. It isn't even a debatable point. Either the comment regarding runs per innings should be taken out completely, or it should be made clear that the notion of it being a more reliable statistic than runs per out is non sensical.

Barryvz (talk) 00:55, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

In fact, a lower order batsman is clearly disadvantaged by even the batting average statistic in that he more infrequently gets the opportunity to "bat himself in". A batsman is more likely to get out with a delivery during the early stages of his inning than later stages.

Barryvz (talk) 02:07, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Mendoza Line
The Mendoza Line is named for Mario Mendoza. The version of the story that I understand is that one Sunday, George Brett walked into the Royals clubhouse and picked up the paper (newspapers on Sunday used to publish the batting statistics of every player in the league with a minimum number of plate appearances) and said, "So, let's see who's below the Mendoza Line this week," and the name stuck. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jimpoz (talk • contribs) 17:32, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Bot report : Found duplicate references !
In average&redirect=no&oldid=228139725 the last revision I edited, I found duplicate named references, i.e. references sharing the same name, but not having the same content. Please check them, as I am not able to fix them automatically :) DumZiBoT (talk) 12:53, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
 * "BaseballRefBattingTitles" :

this makes no sense
""1920-1944 – A player had to appear in 100 games to qualify. The lone exception was 1938: By order of the AL president, Jimmie Foxx (.349, in 149 games and 565 at-bats) was awarded the batting title over rookie Taffy Wright (.350, in 100 games and only 263 at-bats).""

If you only had to play in 100 games then Jimmie Foxx who played in 149 games would have qualified. I have heard this story before but I don't know where the mistake is. --Npnunda (talk) 16:07, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I found the correct answer and fixed the article. --Npnunda (talk) 16:16, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

THE AMERICAN LEAGUE QUALIFICATION FOR WINNING THE BATTING TITLE IN 1938 WAS 400 AT-BATS. WRIGHT WAS DISQUALIFIED BECAUSE HE HAD ONLY 263 AT-BATS. THE RULE APPLIED ONLY TO THE AMERICAN LEAGUE WHICH ENACTED SUCH IN ITS MEETING ON DECEMBER 9, 1936. THE NATIONAL LEAGUE CONTINUED WITH THE 100 GAME QUALIFICATION UNTIL 1950 WHEN BOTH LEAGUES BECAME UNIFORMED WITH 400 AT-BATS.

Hatcher (talk) 00:32, 25 May 2015 (UTC)STEVE HATCHER stevejoycehatcher@gmail.comHatcher (talk) 00:32, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Leading Test batting averages ranked by career total runs scored
This section seems very incongruous in an article devoted to batting averages rather than overall tallies. The edits seems to indicate that the table is relevant to assessing a batsman's relative status. So what? This is not the subject matter of the article. If that is the purpose of the table then (a) it should be deleted and moved to an article which is devoted to assessing Test crcket batsmen's status (if such a thing exists and can be written in a non-partisan manner). Or otherwise (b) delete it as the data is already recorded under the relevant section of the Tect cricket records article here. Or failing that (c) reformat the table for the present article and describe it as something like "Leading averages for batsmen who have scored 9,000+ Test runs" (in which case it will need to be re-ordered). But at the moment the table looks out of place. For the purposes of this article I propose either option (b) or instead option (c). I note that the baseball section of the article does not have an analagous table for all-time runs scored, as clearly that is not the subject matter of the article. Kind regards-- Cala braxthis  (talk) 11:52, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Based on the arguments presented above and given that my suggestion of deletion has not triggered any discussion or adverse reaction, I will now delete this section from the article. Kind regards--  Cala braxthis  (talk) 16:29, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Career average over 60
I must be missing something really obvious.
 * Career records for batting average are usually subject to a minimum qualification of 20 innings played, in order to exclude batsmen who have not played enough games for their skill to be reliably assessed. Under this qualification, the highest Test batting average belongs to Australia's Sir Donald Bradman, with 99.94. Given that a career batting average over 50 is exceptional, and that only four other players have averages over 60, this is an outstanding statistic.

Yet the table in this article and the one in the linked article both list Bradman and just three others — Pollock, Headley and Sutcliffe. Who is the fourth? It seems to me it should say
 * Given that a career batting average over 50 is exceptional, and that only three other players have averages over 60 (and none over 61), this is an outstanding statistic.

YBG (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 00:13, 19 April 2009 (UTC).
 * It was changed from three to four two and a half years ago when Mike Hussey was going great guns he has since returned to Earth and it's back to three. I have made the alteration. --Jpeeling (talk) 12:21, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
 * That explains it! Thanks!  YBG (talk) 23:13, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Sequence: cricket or baseball first?
Starting a discussion here due to recent reverts to the article. There seems to be a disagreement on which should come first. I see a discussion further up on this page on this topic, which also references earlier discussions which I can't seem to locate.

While I usually like the concept of alphabetical formatting; in this case, I support leaving the article with Cricket first for two reasons. First, that's how the article has been structured for quite some time with no issues; unless there's good reason to change it, the sequence should be left with Cricket first. Second, and more importantly, I support leaving Cricket first because chronologically that is the most logical sequence; the use in baseball was based off of the concepts created for cricket - so cricket should come first to give the correct background. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 22:15, 14 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Hopefully this doesn't escalate into a petty dispute. The reasons above are perfectly reasonable; it should stay as is, imo. Zeng8r (talk) 22:52, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

The decline of the .400 hitter
Until October 15, 2009, the article contains a section about the "decline of the .400 hitter". At that date, an anonymous editor deleted the entire section, and nobody ever brought it back. I miss that section: I think that the "0.400" batting average and its disappearance is a very common issue when discussing batting averages (which, after all, is the topic of this article), and not even mentioning once in this article is strange. Books have been written about it (e.g Gould's Full House), so the least we can do is write a paragraph about it! Nyh (talk) 10:27, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I added the following sentence to the article. I think we need to do at least that, and that we should live the lengthy discussion of Gould's explanations to the article on that book - not in this article.
 * There have been numerous attempts to explain the disappearance of the .400 hitter, with one of the more rigorous discussions of this question appearing in Stephen Jay Gould's 1996 book Full House.
 * Nyh (talk) 10:39, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Cricket averages over 60 Part II
Hello. Having read the section on cricket averages it mentions that there are 4 other players (excluding the Don) with an average over 60, which is immediately contradicted by the list of leading averages, where only 3 other players have an average over 60. A previous discussion took place further up the page (several years ago) mentioning this, and I assume something was changed, but over time it appears to be have been changed back.

I edit to make the required changes.Scoops81 (talk) 10:29, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Females don't count?
Why are hypothetical players only referred to in a male sense? I am not referring to the term 'batsmen'. There are lots of instances where this article uses 'he' and 'his' where 'they' and 'their' would suffice, and be more accurate, as lots of females also have betting averages.

I am only concerned with the cricket section of the article, and the baseball section seems to be fine in this regard.


 * The word 'he' means both males and/or females when the context allows, eg. see meaning 2 at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/he Mmitchell10 (talk) 21:28, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

From a different person: You're objecting to the use of masculine pronoun in a context where you could be referring to either sex? That's not the first time I've seen that come up. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.63.16.20 (talk) 16:07, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia's manual of style specifically states to avoid the generic 'he', where this can be done with clarity and precision. This should apply here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Gender-neutral_language — Preceding unsigned comment added by 14.203.161.119 (talk) 10:38, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

✅ - updated to gender neutral language. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 23:07, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

lowest integer meeting or exceeding than the minimum?
Yesterday, I put in a note about this in the "list of batting champions" talk page. For example, if you are requiring 2.6 at-bats per game in a 154-game schedule, the exact solution is 400.4, thus the lowest integer meeting or exceeding that is 401, not 400.

That's List of Major League Baseball batting champions which I am referring to.

Adam Voges
As at 24 February 2016, Adam Voges appears to qualify for inclusion in the cricket portion of the article with a batting average of 95.50. However, given that Voges has only completed 14 innings (albeit played 21 innings), and instinct and conservatism tell me that perhaps it is statistically premature to draw any conclusions, I have only added in a very brief line of text.

I have also not updated the table which appears to be constructed on the basis of a minimum of 20 completed innings, rather than innings played (and which I note is different to the approach taken by Cricinfo). Kind regards Cala braxthis  (talk) 03:10, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Ty Cobb's career BA lead over Rogers Hornsby
Cobb's career BA was originally reported here as .366, just 8 points ahead of 2nd place Hornsby's. It (Cobb's career BA) was adjusted to .367 by Ryk72 (talk | contribs) at 16:00, 2 December 2015 to reflect the variance reported by leading statistics-mongers. See the Ty Cobb page for a full explanation of this variance, due partly to a suspected error of double-reporting a game. I completed this adjustment by fixing the delta over Hornsby: Cobb's .367 leads Hornsby's .358 by 9 points. Bookerj (talk) 19:01, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Discussion on splitting
Discussion on splitting this article at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Cricket Galobtter (pingó mió) 16:57, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

I see the idea of splitting the article has arisen again. As in the past, I prefer to see this article kept together, for 2 reasons:
 * The page is short enough that having both together is not onerous.
 * More importantly, the batting average statistics in cricket and baseball are historically related. Having them on separate pages would remove a lot of the context that relates the two sports to one another, which I strongly believe would be a loss to people coming here to read about the statistic in their favoured sport. Even if you like one sport and don't care at all about the other, learning their historical connections is still interesting and worth preserving. - dmmaus (talk) 02:01, 26 January 2018 (UTC)


 * I found the suggestion at the previous discussion to keep this article but to make it an overview of the concept and to create daughter articles relating to cricket and baseball as well quite persuasive. AIRcorn (talk) 07:03, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Split discussion
I believe this articles should be split, as they are two different sports using the same term, and so the article is really just two articles in one. No need for this combined articles, as it's likely readers will be looking for either cricket or baseball information, but probably not both. Joseph2302 (talk) 21:56, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
 * There is already a recent discussion above about this. Other sports use batting average, their is a shared history and the article is not very large. I am personally not against a split, but feel this article should remain as the main page and cover softball and the shared history with summary style sections on cricket and baseball. Then there can be two new daughter articles going into more detail for cricket and baseball. AIRcorn (talk) 23:26, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Agree with the article being divided into a "main page", and separated into separate articles for cricket and baseball. Natg 19 (talk) 05:17, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Absolutely agree with a main page for the overall concept and the relationship between the 2 sports, plus 2 separate daughter articles for details specific to the 2 sports. The 2 concepts have significant separate lives of their own in the 2 sports and merit their own sport-specific pages. It would then be consistent with Run (cricket) and Run (baseball), for example. I think each sport already has more than enough material to justify a separate page, certainly they have more than a lot of other articles. If not, then it's up to us to add more! :-) Mmitchell10 (talk) 21:17, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree with a relatively short main page for Batting average, and then independent pages for Batting average (baseball) and Batting average (cricket), to hold most of the current, plus future, sport-specific content. Next steps? Dmoore5556 (talk) 02:23, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

With the consensus in favour, it's done. (Only 15 years after it was first suggested :-) Mmitchell10 (talk) 17:59, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Well done, now for the process of moving all the links! I've edited / requested edits of a few major templates that link here to see how much that cuts things down, but it may be a major project! Spike &#39;em (talk) 20:20, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
 * There are approx 23k transclusions of both Infobox cricketer and Infobox baseball biography. The first has a hard-coded link to Batting average (I've requested this is changed to BA (cricket)), but the latter uses parameters to link to BA, so the individual articles will need to be changed (for batters only, as pitchers tend to have a different set of stats).Spike &#39;em (talk) 22:17, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

Shouldn't Baseball/Cricket be in alphabetical order?
I notice on wikipedia typically when there are regional variations on a thing, alphabetical order is used to provide objectivity. Why is Cricket going first here? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:602:0:231B:40F2:1F84:BD58:A2D9 (talk) 01:49, 26 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Chronological order perhaps? HiLo48 (talk) 03:13, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
 * This is discussed above Mmitchell10 (talk) 21:02, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

Edit of incoming links
As per the split discussion above, there are still 15k links to this page, the vast majority of which should probably link to the sport specific link. I'm trying to do some AWB searches to see what the crossover of the links with Category:Cricketers and Category:Baseball players is to help make a start. On an initial browse through pages linking here, 4 baseball players I checked all had links from the article text and 2 had a link in an infobox. I thought it may be easy to get a bot to replace the infobox text as a clearly defined task, but is it acceptable to replace the link in the article on an automated basis based on a category? Spike &#39;em (talk) 09:29, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
 * There are
 * 30k Cricketers, of which 3k link to Batting average
 * 29k Baseball players, of whom 11.5k link to Batting average
 * 8 intersections between all three groups, which I will clear by hand. Done
 * Category:Seasons in baseball, Category:Years in baseball, Category:Seasons in cricket, Category:Years in cricket combine for 800ish more.
 * 369 pages that link here, but are not in any helpful category. I'm doing these by hand.
 * I'd suggest getting a bot to replace pages in the categories. Spike &#39;em (talk) 09:57, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I think it's acceptable to automate replacing links in articles of cricketers or baseball players based on their categories. There's no way we could manually change 14.5k articles. The (surely few) instances where the bot does it wrong can be manually corrected as the errors are identified in the normal editing fashion. Mmitchell10 (talk) 19:46, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Bot request made: WP:BOTREQ Spike &#39;em (talk) 20:32, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Another possibly important question : Which pages should link directly here instead of the sport's specific ones? Spike &#39;em (talk) 11:30, 1 April 2019 (UTC)