Editing Sabermetrics (section)

=== Batting measurements ===
[[File:Ted Williams 1940 Play Ball.jpeg|thumb|right|[[Ted Williams]], the last MLB player to bat .400 for a season (in 1941)]]

A ballplayer's [[batting average]] (BA) (simply [[Hit (baseball)|hits]] divided by [[At bat|at-bats]]) was the historic measure of a player's offensive performance, enhanced by [[slugging average|slugging percentage]] (SA){{efn|name=powerhouse|Calculated by dividing [[total bases]] (the non-situational cumulative tally of all hits) by the total number of times at bat.}} which incorporated their ability to hit for power.  

Bill James, along with other early sabermetricians, was concerned that batting average did not incorporate other ways a batter can reach base besides a hit – as a batter on base can score runs, and runs, not hits, win ballgames.<ref name=":12">{{Cite book|last=Albert|first=Jim|title=Mathematics and Sports|publisher=MAA|others=Contributor : Mathematical Association of America|year=2010|isbn=9780883853498|editor-last=Joseph A. Gallian|pages=3–14|chapter=Sabermetrics: The Past, the Present, and the Future|volume=43|chapter-url=http://www.mathaware.org/mam/2010/essays/AlbertSabermetrics.pdf|jstor=10.4169/j.ctt6wpwsw.4}}</ref> 

Even though slugging percentage and an early form of [[on-base percentage]] (OBP) &ndash; which takes into accounts [[base on ball]]s ("walks") and [[Hit by pitch|hit-by-pitch]]es &ndash; date to at least 1941,<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/117560636/the-powerhouse-column/ |title=The PowerHouse (column) |first=Jimmy |last=Powers |newspaper=[[New York Daily News|Daily News]] |location=New York City |page=45 |date=June 3, 1941 |accessdate=January 30, 2023 |via=newspapers.com}}</ref> pre-dating both Bill James (born 1949) and SABR (formed 1971),<ref name=":12" /> enhanced focus was put on the relationship of times on base and run scoring by early SABR-era baseball statistical pioneers. 

SA and OBP were combined to create the modern statistic [[on-base plus slugging]] (OPS). OPS is the sum of the on-base percentage and the slugging percentage. This modern statistic has become useful in comparing players and is a powerful method of predicting runs scored by any given player.<ref name=":022">{{cite web|url=http://baseball1.com/baseball-archive/sabermetrics/sabermetric-manifesto/|title=The Sabermetric Manifesto|last=Grabiner|first=David J.|work=The Baseball Archive}}</ref>  An enhanced version of OPS, "OPS+", incorporates OPS, historic statistics, ballpark considerations, and defensive position weightings to attempt to allow player performance from different eras to be compared.

Some other advanced metrics used to evaluate batting performance are [[weighted on-base average]], [[secondary average]], [[runs created]], and [[equivalent average]].