Numbers In Sports

Every sport uses numbers in some way, whether it's for scoring, determining averages, or

figuring percentages. And when numbers are involved, it usually means math is as well.

How could you play a friendly game of basketball without knowing how to keep score? How could you figure out your best friend's batting average? How would you know how many pins you needed to knock down in the last two frames of a bowling game in order to beat your opponent? Without math these questions could not be answered and sports could not be played.

Baseball is a sport engulfed in numbers, averages, distances, and speed. It's no surprise that the statistics for assessing a hitter's performance are based on the number of hits. Hits can be of 4 different types:

Ð'* Singles

Ð'* Doubles

Ð'* Triples

Ð'* Home runs

and a player's statistics will include the actual number of each type of hit. A player's batting average gives the percentage of hits the player makes when he is at bat. It is found by dividing the total number of hits made by the total times at bat. If a player has 120 hits in the 300 times he is at bat, his batting average is .400 (120/300). Certain numbers associated with a hitter's not hitting the ball are also used to measure a batter's performance. These include

Ð'* SO Ð'- the number of times the hitter struck out

Ð'* BB Ð'- the number of times the batter walked

Ð'* HBP Ð'- the number of times the batter was hit by a pitch

Of these, the strike out figure is the only one which measures a negative aspect of the batter's performance. A large number of strikeouts is not a good thing. A large number of walks shows the batter is patient and has a good eye for pitches. The "hit by pitch" statistic is one a batter certainly wants to be low, ideally 0, but it does mean the batter takes a base.

There are other pieces of data collected to analyze hitters. Numbers such as the RBI (runs batted in) reflect a player's ability to directly score runs while a count of sacrifice fly outs show how often the hitter was willing to assist his team. There are also numbers for evaluating the hitter's performance once they are on base such as their number of stolen bases (SB) and the times they were thrown out while attempting a steal (CS) along with the number of times they have crossed home plate themselves to generate a run. Any action a baseball player can take during a game is recorded, measured, and studied. Next we look at the two important averages used to evaluate batters. Whenever a player gets a hit, you would expect their batting average to go up.

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