Batting Average Calculator

Batting average is hits divided by at-bats

Batting average is hits ÷ at-bats, written to three decimal places. Doubles, triples and home runs each count as one hit. The 2026 American League batting leader, Yordan Alvarez of Houston, had 567 at-bats and 179 hits, so 179 ÷ 567 = 0.3157…, which is written .316.

The divisor is at-bats, not plate appearances. Alvarez came to the plate 692 times, but 125 of those trips ended in a walk, a hit-by-pitch, a sacrifice or interference. Those are not at-bats, so they never enter the average.

When it pays to work out an average yourself

The broadcast always shows an average, so calculating one may seem pointless. But the number on screen is rounded to three places, and when a title race or a .300 line comes down to one point, you need the unrounded ratio.

• Following a batting race: in the 2026 National League, Gabriel Moreno of Arizona (473 AB, 147 H) led Luis Arraez of Philadelphia (596 AB, 185 H) by 0.0004. One more hit for Arraez would have reversed them.
• Checking whether someone really hit .300: Colorado's TJ Rumfield went 164-for-547. His line reads .300, but the true ratio is 0.2998, a shade under.
• Checking qualification: only hitters with enough plate appearances appear in the batting race, and each league counts the minimum a little differently.
• Keeping rec-league or school stats: enter game-by-game lines to see the cumulative average and hitting streaks, and to keep team average from being confused with the average of player averages.

How to use it

1. On the Season AVG tab, enter at-bats and hits. The average appears in large type, and the beads beside it fill in by tenths, hundredths and thousandths. The starting screen is Alvarez, the 2026 AL batting leader.
2. To test qualification, pick a rule above (KBO, MLB, NPB or Custom) and enter plate appearances. Leave team games empty to use that league's full season (KBO 144, MLB 162, NPB 143), or enter the games played so far.
3. Under Batting rank, see where the line falls among 2026 regular-season qualified hitters, with the league average and median. Tap another hitter's row to load that line.
4. In Average going forward, pick a target (.250, .300, .350 or .400). You get the number of hitless at-bats the line can absorb, or how many straight hits it needs, plus the result of 3, 4 or 5 at-bats in the next game.
5. On the Game log tab, write each game as AB-H. Add games one at a time or paste them all in the big box to draw the cumulative average, the last-10-game line and a tile for each game's hits.
6. On the Team AVG tab, enter a name, at-bats and hits for each row. Set a minimum AB for ranking, and small samples drop out of the ranking while staying in the team total.
7. Copy result copies the numbers or the table, and Copy link copies an address that reopens the same screen.

How it is calculated

The formula and rounding

Official Baseball Rule 9.21(b) defines batting average as hits divided by at-bats, as at-bats are defined in 9.02(a). The MLB rule does not say how to round. The KBO rulebook (9.21 note) and the NPB rules (9.21 note) both say to work a rate out to four decimal places and then round. This calculator does the same, so 0.3157… becomes 0.3157 and then .316, and 0.29982… becomes 0.2998 and then .300.

Plate appearances that are not at-bats

Rule 9.02(a)(1) says the following are not counted as at-bats. They count as plate appearances but leave the divisor alone.

• Sacrifice bunts and sacrifice flies
• Walks, intentional walks included
• Hit-by-pitches
• Reaching first on interference or obstruction

By contrast, reaching on an error or a fielder's choice is not a hit, but it is an at-bat. A play the scorer does not rule a hit pulls the average down.

Reading a batting average aloud

A batting average is a decimal with no leading zero. .371 is read "three seventy-one": 371 hits per 1,000 at-bats, or 37.1% of at-bats. The first decimal place counts hits per 10 at-bats, the second per 100 and the third per 1,000, and that is the ladder of beads on the calculator. When a digit is 0, it is spoken as "oh".

The board puts three rows of 10 beads under the big number, one row for each decimal place. As the average rises or falls, beads fill in or empty one at a time, so you can see how many points it moved.

How qualifying is counted

The batting title goes to the best average among hitters with enough plate appearances. Rule 9.22(a) starts from games × 3.1, but which games are counted and how the decimal is handled differ by league.

The two methods split when the decimal reaches .5. After 135 games the product is 418.5: the KBO rule gives 418 and the NPB rule gives 419. The MLB rule does not address a .5, so this calculator rounds it up, as NPB does, and shows its work in the qualifying box.

Leaderboards during the season use the games played to date. For a league with a different schedule, choose Custom and set PA per game and the rounding yourself.

Winning the title without enough plate appearances

The exception in 9.22(a) adds the missing plate appearances as at-bats, with no added hits. If the hitter still has the highest average, he is the batting champion, and the average on the record is the real one, before the adding.

The MLB rulebook's own example has a qualified leader at 500 AB and 181 H (.362). A hitter with 490 PA, 440 AB and 165 H (.375) is 12 short. Adding 12 at-bats gives 165 ÷ 452 = .365, still above .362, so he is champion at .375. The Rule 9.22 example on the Season AVG tab loads exactly this case, and the adjusted average appears under the qualifying box.

What an average means in each 2026 league

What counts as a good average depends on the league average. In the 2026 regular season the American League hit .241, the National League .246 and the KBO .268. That is why the same .280 ranks about 12th among 68 AL hitters and about 14th among 69 in the NL, but about 36th among 50 KBO hitters.

"Actually .300+" counts the unrounded ratio. Counted as written, the National League has 5, the KBO 17 and the Pacific League 4. Rumfield (Colorado, 164-for-547, 0.2998), Kim Seong Yoon of the KBO (Samsung, 127-for-424, 0.2995) and Taisei Makihara of the Pacific League (SoftBank, 140-for-467, 0.2997) are all written .300 but are under it.

League average is all league hits divided by all league at-bats, and the NPB Central League figure includes pitchers' at-bats. The qualified median is the average of the middle hitter when qualified hitters are lined up by average, and it shows what a regular typically hits.

How far one at-bat moves an average

As at-bats pile up, a single at-bat weighs less. For Alvarez at 179-for-567, a hit in the next at-bat raises the true ratio by 1.2 points (thousandths) and an out lowers it by 0.6. A hitless 4-AB night costs a 12-AB, 5-hit start (.417) 104 points, but it costs Alvarez only 3.

Holding .300, or getting there

When a line is above the target, the calculator counts how many hitless at-bats it can take before dropping below. When it is below, it counts how many straight hits it needs. The test uses the unrounded ratio.

At 502 AB and 161 H (.321), a hitter can go hitless for 34 at-bats and still be at .300 or better. On the 35th, 161 ÷ 537 = 0.2998, which is written .300 but is below it. Reaching .350 from the same line takes 23 straight hits, ending at 184 ÷ 525 = 0.3504. Alvarez could take 29 hitless at-bats and still be at .300 or better. In the chart, these numbers sit where the upper line (all hits) and lower line (all outs) cross the target line.

Reading a season in game logs

A cumulative average swings early and flattens as games pile up. Add the last-10-game line, and you can see whether a hitter is hotter or colder than his season number.

Alvarez's 2026 log runs 158 games. His average was .333 after five games and finished at .316. His longest hitting streak was 13 games (April 14 to April 28), a run of 12 straight games with a hit was still going at the season's end, and he went 15-for-38 (.395) over his last 10 games. Luis Arraez of Philadelphia hit .310 over 151 games, with a 13-game streak (May 31 to June 13) and .222 over his last 10. Jung Hoo Lee of San Francisco hit .276 in 143 games and had an 18-game streak (May 14 to June 10).

Games that do not break a hitting streak

Under Rule 9.23(b), a hitting streak is not broken by a game in which every plate appearance ended in a walk, a hit-by-pitch, interference or obstruction, or a sacrifice bunt. A sacrifice fly with no hit does break it. The calculator takes only at-bats and hits, so it treats a 0-AB game as one that keeps the streak alive.

Team average is not the average of player averages

Team average is team hits divided by team at-bats. Averaging player averages gives a hitter with few at-bats the same weight as a regular, which changes the answer.

The rec-league example on the Team AVG tab has nine players with 327 AB and 94 H, a team average of .287. Average the player averages equally, including a player who went 4-for-8 (.500), and you get .301. The bars are as wide as each player's at-bats, so the narrow .500 bar barely moves the team figure. Two players with the same rate (10-for-44 and 5-for-22) share the same rank.

Common mistakes

• Dividing by plate appearances: 179 ÷ 692 for Alvarez is .259, but his average is .316.
• Counting a reach on an error as a hit: it is an at-bat with no hit.
• Reading a written .300 as a true .300: a ratio of 0.2998 is still written .300. Check four decimals before saying someone hit .300.
• Mixing up the games used for qualifying: MLB uses scheduled games, while the KBO and NPB use games played. A KBO leaderboard in season uses the games played to that date.
• Averaging player averages for the team: divide total hits by total at-bats.
• Swapping the AB and H boxes: the calculator flags it when hits exceed at-bats.
• Entering games in the wrong order: last-5, last-10 and hitting streaks follow the order you enter.

Limits

• Batting average leaves out walks and extra bases. FanGraphs names two big weaknesses, that it ignores times on base that are not hits and that it values every hit the same. Look at on-base percentage, slugging and OPS alongside it.
• Rankings and league figures are final 2026 regular-season numbers, with no postseason. NPB's official site could not be reached, so the qualified table comes from an npb.jp archive copy (October 8) and the league totals from summed Sports Navi team pages.
• Rankings use the real ratio. If you enter a line whose PA, AB and H all match a listed hitter, the calculator treats it as that hitter and leaves him out of the count.
• The qualifying rules and the exception follow the rule text as written. If an official league record differs, go with the official record.
• Hitting streaks count a 0-AB game as continuing, so if a game had a sacrifice fly and no hit, the streak ended there and you should adjust by hand.
• The Season AVG tab saves nothing. Game logs and rosters you type are saved in this browser only and never sent to a server.

As of The rules for average, qualifying plate appearances and hitting streaks were checked on 2026-10-23 against the MLB 2026 Official Baseball Rules, the KBO 2026 rulebook and the NPB official rules. Leaderboards and game-log examples were calculated on 2026-10-22 and 23 from the MLB Stats API, the KBO record room, an npb.jp archive copy and Sports Navi 2026 regular-season records.

Sources

• 01KBO — 2026 Official Baseball Rules (PDF, Korean)9.02(a)(1) what is not an at-bat, 9.21(b) and note on rounding, 9.22(a) exception and note on qualifying, 9.23(b) hitting streaks
• 02MLB — 2026 Official Baseball Rules (PDF)Rule 9.22(a) and Comment: 162 × 3.1 = 502.2 → 502, and the example of a hitter short of qualifying (.362 vs .375 → .365)
• 03NPB — Official Baseball Rules 9.00, Rules on Records (PDF, Japanese)9.21 note (four decimals, then round), 9.22(a) note (fractions rounded), 9.22 note (games played)
• 04NPB — How records are calculated (Japanese)Calculating and rounding batting average and other rates
• 05KBO record room — hitter recordsPA, AB and H of the 49 hitters who reached the 2026 regular-season qualifying mark of 446 PA
• 06KBO record room — daily log (Koo Ja Wook)AB and H for each of 114 games in the 2026 regular season (420 AB, 156 H in total)
• 07MLB Stats API — 2026 qualified hitters, league totals, game logs135 qualified hitters (67 in the AL, 68 in the NL), batting totals for the 30 clubs, player game logs including Alvarez, Arraez and Lee
• 08npb.jp — 2026 qualified hitters (archive copy, Central and Pacific)Archive copy of 2026-10-08: 19 Central League and 26 Pacific League hitters
• 09Sports Navi — NPB batting stats by team (Japanese)2026 league totals from adding AB and H for the players on all 12 clubs
• 10MLB Glossary — Batting Average (AVG)Hits ÷ at-bats, from .000 to 1.000; walks and hit-by-pitches are not reflected
• 11FanGraphs Library — Stats to Avoid: Batting AverageTwo weaknesses: it ignores times on base that are not hits, and it values every hit the same

Frequently asked questions

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