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19-549: A slugger most often means a baseball or softball player with a high slugging percentage . Slugger or Sluggers may also refer to: Slugging percentage Unlike batting average , slugging percentage gives more weight to extra-base hits such as doubles and home runs, relative to singles. Such batters are usually referred to as sluggers . Plate appearances resulting in walks , hit-by-pitches , catcher's interference , and sacrifice bunts or flies are specifically excluded from this calculation, as such an appearance

38-427: A batter reaches base . An official Major League Baseball (MLB) statistic since 1984, it is sometimes referred to as on-base average ( OBA ), as it is rarely presented as a true percentage . Generally defined as "how frequently a batter reaches base per plate appearance ", OBP is specifically calculated as the ratio of a batter's times on base (the sum of hits , bases on balls , and times hit by pitch ) to

57-639: A 4.000 career slugging percentage for a short amount of time by hitting a home run in their first major league at bat . However, no player in MLB history has ever retired with a 4.000 slugging percentage. Four players have tripled in their only MLB plate appearance and therefore share the record—without consideration of a minimum number of games played or plate appearances—of a career slugging percentage of 3.000. They are Eric Cammack ( 2000 Mets ); Scott Munninghoff ( 1980 Phillies ); Eduardo Rodríguez ( 1973 Brewers ); and Chuck Lindstrom ( 1958 White Sox ). For

76-523: A batter with more than 3,000 plate appearances is .482 by Ted Williams . The lowest is by Bill Bergen , who had an OBP of .194. On-base percentage is calculated using this formula: where In certain unofficial calculations, the denominator is simplified and replaced by Plate Appearance (PA); however, the calculation PAs includes certain infrequent events that will slightly lower the calculated OBP (i.e. catcher's interference , and sacrifice bunts ). Sacrifice bunts are excluded from consideration on

95-422: A majority of at bats result in either 0 or 1 base. The stat awards a double twice the value of a single, a triple three times the value, and a home run four times. The slugging percentage would have to be divided by 4 to actually be a percentage (of bases achieved per at bat out of total bases possible). As a result, it is occasionally called slugging average , or simply slugging , instead. A slugging percentage

114-424: A slugging percentage of .974 in 1937. Until the 2024 incorporation of Negro league statistics into major league records, the MLB career leader in slugging percentage was Ruth (.6897), followed by Ted Williams (.6338) and Lou Gehrig (.6324). Ruth was displaced by Josh Gibson , who has a career slugging percentage of .718. The maximum possible slugging percentage is 4.000. A number of MLB players have had

133-415: A theoretical maximum of 4.000. The actual numbers do not show as big a difference, with Grosnick listing .350 as a good "on base" and .430 as a good "slugging." He goes on to say that OPS has the advantages of simplicity and availability and further states, "you'll probably get it 75% right, at least." On-base percentage In baseball statistics , on-base percentage ( OBP ) measures how frequently

152-399: Is a simple addition of the two values. Because it is easy to calculate, OPS has been used with increased frequency in recent years as a shorthand form to evaluate contributions as a batter . In a 2015 article, Bryan Grosnick made the point that "on base" and "slugging" may not be comparable enough to be simply added together. "On base" has a theoretical maximum of 1.000 whereas "slugging" has

171-409: Is calculable for professional teams dating back to the first year of National Association of Professional Base Ball Players competition in 1871, because the component values of its formula have been recorded in box scores ever since. The statistic was invented in the late 1940s by Brooklyn Dodgers statistician Allan Roth with then-Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey . In 1954, Rickey, who

190-412: Is not counted as an at-bat (these are not factored into batting average either). The name is a misnomer , as the statistic is not a percentage but an average of how many bases a player achieves per at bat. It is a scale of measure whose computed value is a number from 0 to 4. This might not be readily apparent: a Major League Baseball player's slugging percentage is almost always less than 1 because

209-589: Is usually expressed as a decimal to three decimal places, and is generally spoken as if multiplied by 1000. For example, a slugging percentage of .589 would be spoken as "five eighty nine." Slugging percentage can also be applied as an evaluative tool for pitchers. This is not as common, but is referred to as "slugging-percentage against". As an example: with the New York Yankees in 1920, Babe Ruth had 458 at bats during which he recorded 172 hits: 73 singles, 36 doubles, 9 triples, and 54 home runs. This

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228-411: The 2023 season, the average slugging percentage for all players in MLB was .414. The highest single season league average was .437 in 2000, and the lowest was .305 in 1908. Long after it was invented, slugging percentage gained new significance when baseball analysts realized that it combined with on-base percentage (OBP) to form a very good measure of a player's overall offensive production (OBP + SLG

247-531: The best on-base percentages bat as leadoff hitter , unless they are power hitters, who traditionally bat slightly lower in the batting order . The league average for on-base percentage in Major League Baseball has varied considerably over time; at its peak in the late 1990s, it was around .340, whereas it was typically .300 during the dead-ball era . On-base percentage can also vary quite considerably from player to player. The highest career OBP of

266-445: The influential 2003 book Moneyball highlighted Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane 's focus on the statistic. Many baseball observers, particularly those influenced by the field of sabermetrics , now consider on-base percentage superior to the statistic traditionally used to measure offensive skill, batting average , which accounts for hits but ignores other ways a batter can reach base. Traditionally, players with

285-447: The sum of at bats , bases on balls, hit by pitch, and sacrifice flies . OBP does not credit the batter for reaching base on fielding errors , fielder's choice , uncaught third strikes , fielder's obstruction , or catcher's interference . OBP is added to slugging average (SLG) to determine on-base plus slugging (OPS). The OBP of all batters faced by one pitcher or team is referred to as "on-base against". On-base percentage

304-461: The two modern-day statistics, multiplying them together to form what is now known as "SLOB" (Slugging × On-Base). Bill James applied this principle to his runs created formula several years later (and perhaps independently), essentially multiplying SLOB × at bats to create the formula: In 1984, Pete Palmer and John Thorn developed perhaps the most widespread means of combining slugging and on-base percentage: on-base plus slugging (OPS), which

323-498: Was (73 × 1) + (36 × 2) + (9 × 3) + (54 × 4) = 388 total bases . His total number of bases (388) divided by his total at bats (458) is .847, which constitutes his slugging percentage for the season. Ruth's 1920 figure set a record in Major League Baseball (MLB), which stood until 2001 when Barry Bonds achieved 411 bases in 476 at bats for a slugging percentage of .863. Josh Gibson , who played in Negro league baseball , had

342-513: Was originally referred to as "production" by baseball writer and statistician Bill James ). A predecessor metric was developed by Branch Rickey in 1954. Rickey, in Life magazine, suggested that combining OBP with what he called "extra base power" (EBP) would give a better indicator of player performance than typical Triple Crown stats. EBP was a predecessor to slugging percentage. Allen Barra and George Ignatin were early adopters in combining

361-558: Was then the general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates , was featured in a Life Magazine graphic in which the formula for on-base percentage was shown as the first component of an all-encompassing "offense" equation. However, it was not named as on-base percentage, and there is little evidence that Roth's statistic was taken seriously at the time by the baseball community at large. On-base percentage became an official MLB statistic in 1984. Its perceived importance jumped after

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