Qualifications for Batting Title (and Other Rate Statistics)

[Porb]

If a player doesn't have enough plate appearances to qualify for a batting title (3.1 per game or 502 for a 162 game season), he can still theoretically lead the league in batting average, or other rate statistics, if the number of plate appearances needed to qualify are added to his totals as hitless at-bats, he and still leads the league after recalculation.

From Wikipedia:

From 1967 to the present, if the player with the highest average in a league fails to meet the minimum plate-appearance requirement, the remaining at-bats until qualification (e.g., 5 ABs, if the player finished the season with 497 plate appearances) are hypothetically considered hitless at-bats; if his recalculated batting average still tops the league, he is awarded the title. (This policy was invoked in 1981, securing Bill Madlock his third NL batting crown, and in 1996, when NL titlist Tony Gwynn finished the year with only 498 PAs.)

It bums me out in OOTP when I see a player who would lead the league in Batting Average by a wide margin, if only he had 5 more plate appearances, not even show up on the leaderboard.

This is the biggest thing I still miss about Catobase (which got it right).

[Chicagofan76]

how? if they player doesnt have the AB's he shouldnt qualify...I had a player on High Heat bat .505 but it was in 412 AB's....he was injured and couldnt hit righties....but he was prob 100+ ab's shy of the batting title. He is the only player with more then say 50 ab's that i have seen bat over .450 let alone .500.

[Carplos]

Originally Posted by Chicagofan76

how? if they player doesnt have the AB's he shouldnt qualify...I had a player on High Heat bat .505 but it was in 412 AB's....he was injured and couldnt hit righties....but he was prob 100+ ab's shy of the batting title. He is the only player with more then say 50 ab's that i have seen bat over .450 let alone .500.

It's based on PA not AB, and in MLB, as he posted, if you don't qualify, if the number of hits (or other rate stats) divided by the minimum PA still leads your league, you're the batting champ.

[professor ape]

Originally Posted by Carplos

It's based on PA not AB, and in MLB, as he posted, if you don't qualify, if the number of hits (or other rate stats) divided by the minimum PA still leads your league, you're the batting champ.

That is almost correct. For batting average, you don't divide the hits by the min PA automatically (e.g. 502 in the current MLB) because walks count as PA but not AB. You assume that the PA which the player is short are AB and add them to their actual AB number. You calculate the batting average based on that revised number to see if they are still the batting champion.

Using ChicagoFan's example, his player had a .505 average in 412 AB (208 hits). For this example suppose that there is another player in the league with 600PA and a .420 batting average.

If the .505 batting average player some how had no other plate appearances (BB, HBP, SH, etc) then the calculation would be:

502 min PA - 412 player PA = 90 PA short.
208 H / (412 actual AB + 90 PA short of min) = .414

This .414 average is lower than the qualifying player with the .420 average so the second player wins the batting title.

Using the same player let's say that along with his 412 AB he had 50 walks on the season giving him 462 PA, closer to the 502 minimum but still not there. In this case the calculation is:

502 min PA - 462 player PA = 40 PA short.
208 H / (412 actual AB + 40 PA short of min) = .460

This time the adjusted .460 average is still over the .420 of the top qualifying player. Therefore the player with the .505 average is crowned the batting champion.

[Chicagofan76]

Professor Ape has it always been 502 PA? for some reason I was thinking it used to be higher but that might just have been in High Heat...the player who won the Batting Title that yr hit .336 in 610 AB's...i'll see if i still have both players complete stats i know I have the 2nd guy but maybe not the 1st.
the guy who hit .505 1 season was a DH who couldnt barely play 1B hen i took away the DH he barely played after that. but does have a the 7th highest career BA in my league at .352

BTW I was always bothered by the fact the guy hit .505 and didnt win the batting title.

[Mike R]

From Wikipedia:

To determine which players are eligible to win the batting title, the following conditions have been used over the sport’s history:

Pre-1920 – A player generally had to appear in 100 or more games when the schedule was 154 games, and 90 games when the schedule was 140 games. An exception was made for Ty Cobb in 1914, who appeared in 98 games but had a big lead and was also a favorite of League President Ban Johnson.

1920–1949 – A player had to appear in 100 games to qualify in the National League; the AL used 100 games from 1920–1935, and 400 at-bats from 1936–1949. The NL was advised to adopt 400 at-bats for the 1945 season, but League President Ford Frick refused, feeling that 100 games should stand for the benefit of catchers and injured players. (Taffy Wright is often erroneously said to have been cheated out of the 1938 batting title; he batted .350 in exactly 100 games, with 263 ABs. Jimmie Foxx hit .349, in 149 games and 565 AB. But since the AL requirement that year was 400 at-bats, Foxx's batting title is undisputed.)

1950–1956 – A player needed 2.6 at bats per team game originally scheduled. (With the 154-game schedule of the time, that meant a rounded-off 400 at-bats.) From 1951–1954, if the player with the highest average in a league failed to meet the minimum at-bat requirement, the remaining at-bats until qualification (e.g., 5, if the player finished the season with 395 ABs) were hypothetically considered hitless at-bats; if his recalculated batting average still topped the league, he was awarded the title. This standard applied in the AL from 1936–1956.

1957 to the present – A player has needed 3.1 plate appearances per team game originally scheduled; thus, players were no longer penalized for walking so frequently, nor did they benefit from walking so rarely. (In 1954, for example, Ted Williams batted .345 but had only 386 ABs, while topping the AL with 136 walks. Williams thus lost the batting title to Cleveland’s Bobby Avila, who hit .341 in 555 ABs.) In the 154-game schedule, the required number of plate appearances was 477, and since the era of the 162-game schedule, the requisite number of PAs has been 502. (Adjustments to this 502 PA figure have been made during strike-shortened seasons, such as 1972, 1981, 1994, and 1995.)

From 1967 to the present, if the player with the highest average in a league fails to meet the minimum plate-appearance requirement, the remaining at-bats until qualification (e.g., 5 ABs, if the player finished the season with 497 plate appearances) are hypothetically considered hitless at-bats; if his recalculated batting average still tops the league, he is awarded the title. (This policy was invoked in 1981, securing Bill Madlock his third NL batting crown, and in 1996, when NL titlist Tony Gwynn finished the year with only 498 PAs.)

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batting_average_(baseball)

[Le Grande Orange]

What you don't want to ask about are the qualifications are for the pitching ERA title. That's really a can of worms, at least in the AL (the NL's rules were much clearer and consistent).

[Tony M]

I wonder what the qualifications are for the pitching ERA title?

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Tony M

I wonder what the qualifications are for the pitching ERA title?

I'll let someone else go first, then correct as necessary.

[Carplos]

Currently it's 1 IP per team game, so 162 IP for most teams unless they have a rainout they don't make up.

No idea historically.

[Porb]

Originally Posted by Carplos

Currently it's 1 IP per team game, so 162 IP for most teams unless they have a rainout they don't make up.

No idea historically.

Before 1951, at least 10 CGs and 100 IP? That was the only answer I found after briefly looking around. I haven't found anything yet on the difference between the NL and AL rules though.

Now, Winning Percentage...until 1900, a pitcher only had to appear in 25 games to qualify. That was in the era where every outing was expected to be a complete game, though. It looks like most changes to pitching qualifications were due to the ever-expanding role of the relief pitcher.

[Chicagofan76]

just guessing since I want to see what LGO is gonna say but I thought it was above 150IP
heres what i found
Earned Run Averages were based on at least 10 complete games pitched (1900-49), at least 154 innings pitched (1950-60), and at least 162 innings pitched since 1961 in the AL and 1962 in the NL. In the strike years of 1981, '94 and '95, qualifiers had to pitch at least as many innings as the total number of games their team played that season

[Le Grande Orange]

The subject of pre-1951 ERA titles was examined in an article by Dan Levitt in SABR's The National Pastime No. 25. What follows is a summary of that article.

In 1917 the NL adopted the standard that a pitcher had to have pitched a minimum of 10 complete games in order to qualify as an ERA leader. Before that, the league used a variety of standards: 1912, 15 games pitched; 1913, 5 complete games; 1914-15, 15 games pitched; 1916, 12 games pitched.

The AL adopted the 10 CG standard in 1946. Before then, the league used various criteria. Up until 1919, the AL simply listed the top pitchers by ERA without identifying a standard. In 1919 the AL finally adopted a standard: a minimum of 45 innings pitched. The next year it changed to 10 CGs, but then in 1921 it reverted to 45 IP. The following year it switched back to 10 CGs, where it remained for three seasons. In 1925 it once again reverted back to 45 IP.

The result of such actions was often a difference between the pitchers topping the AL's official list as opposed to how The Sporting News ranked pitchers. The latter invoked either a 100 IP or a 10 CG minimum, depending on the year, in order to determine what it considered the proper ERA leading pitcher if the publication felt the pitcher heading the AL's list wasn't really deserving of the title.

In 1951 the standard was changed to one IP per team game. (The affiliated minor leagues use a lower threshold of 0.8 IP per team game.)

[jmm8356]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

In 1951 the standard was changed to one IP per team game. (The affiliated minor leagues use a lower threshold of 0.8 IP per team game.)

It's amazing... the things you learn when you own a National Association rulebook. As a resident of a AAA-town (Now we're the Mets! But we were the Indians... and the Pirates... and the White Sox... and so on...), I had no idea that there even _was_ a lower ERA standard in the minors.

Makes sense... after all, all doubleheaders are only 7 innings...

... But the fact that I didn't know that still blows my mind!