History

• Part of baseball's obsession with statistics is they haven't changed much in more than 100 years. Look at a baseball stat sheet (also known as a box score) from 1910 and it will look very similar to one from 2010. That means it is easy to examine stats between generations and eras because the criteria is basically the same.
  
  

Hitting Figures

• There are numerous statistics that are used to calculate and examine hitting. The most commonly recognized is batting average, which is the number of hits divided by at-bats for a player. For example, a person who gets one hit in three at-bats has a .333 batting average. Another popular term is slugging percentage, which gives added weight to extra-base hits such as doubles, triples and home runs. A player's slugging percentage should always be higher than his batting average. A third figure is on-base percentage, which factors in other ways a hitter reaches base, including walks (four balls). It, too, should usually be higher than batting average.
  
  

Pitching Figures

• Pitching figures are a little trickier. Winning is the most important part of the game, but the best pitcher doesn't always win a game because of statistics such as their own team's fielding and hitting. To "earn" a win, a pitcher must throw at least five innings in a nine-inning game and leave the game with his team in the lead. A pitcher can also throw all nine innings and win if his team has scored more runs. Other key baseball figures are strikeouts, walks, and earned-run average, which is the amount of runs given up per nine innings. A final key figure is a save, which is awarded to the reliever who protects his team's lead throughout the final inning or innings.
  
  

Fielding Figures

• The basic fielding stats include: errors, which a player wants to avoid; putouts, which are credited to the player who catches the ball to make an out; and assists, which are given to a fielder for aiding an out. For example, if the shortstop throws to the first baseman to force a person out, then the first basemen is awarded the putout and the shortstop gets an assist.
  
  

Advanced Figures

• In recent years, groups such as Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) have begun to delve more deeply into the game's facts and figures. Part of the research is an attempt to clarify records such as past season totals, all-time leaders in various categories and career bests for players. A second subset of the research is learning more about the stats themselves by looking at which players do better in the clutch, how home fields factor into a player's careers, how a player performs in certain months and a player's real value.