Guide
Baseball stats, in plain English
Every stat Boxscored shows, what it means, and what counts as good. In the app, tap the i next to any label for the same definition. Benchmarks are rough recent major-league norms; league averages drift a little from year to year.
Hitting Pitching Advanced hitting Advanced pitching Defense Statcast: contact and discipline In-game
Hitting
The classic line. Boxscored shows these on every hitter's card and player page.
| Stat | What it means |
|---|---|
| AVG | Batting average. Hits divided by at-bats. Walks, hit-by-pitches, and sacrifices don't count as at-bats. About .245 is league average; .300 is very good. |
| OBP | On-base percentage. How often a hitter reaches base by hit, walk, or hit by pitch, per plate appearance. About .315 is average; .370+ is excellent. |
| SLG | Slugging percentage. Total bases per at-bat: a single counts 1, a double 2, a triple 3, a homer 4. Rewards extra-base hits. |
| OPS | On-base plus slugging. OBP and SLG added together. A quick one-number summary of a hitter. .800+ is a strong hitter; .900+ is star level. |
| AB | At-bats. Plate appearances that end in a hit, an out, or an error, but not a walk, hit-by-pitch, or sacrifice. |
| H | Hits. Times reaching base safely on a batted ball without the help of an error or fielder's choice. |
| HR | Home runs. Hits that let the batter circle all the bases, almost always by clearing the fence. |
| RBI | Runs batted in. Runs that scored because of this hitter's plate appearance, including his own on a homer. No RBI is credited on a double play or an error. |
| R | Runs. Times the player crossed home plate. |
| SB | Stolen bases. Bases taken by running on the pitch rather than because of a hit, walk, or error. |
| BB | Walks. Bases on balls: four pitches out of the strike zone that the batter didn't swing at. |
| K | Strikeouts. For a hitter, times he struck out. A backwards K on the scorecard means he took a called third strike. |
Pitching
On every pitcher's card and player page.
| Stat | What it means |
|---|---|
| ERA | Earned run average. Earned runs allowed per nine innings. Runs that score because of a fielding error don't count against him. Lower is better. About 4.00 is average; under 3.00 is excellent. |
| WHIP | Walks plus hits per inning pitched. How many baserunners he allows each inning, not counting errors or hit batters. Lower is better. About 1.25 is average; under 1.10 is excellent. |
| IP | Innings pitched. Outs recorded divided by three. ".1" and ".2" mean one-third and two-thirds of an inning, so 6.2 IP is six innings plus two outs. |
| PIT | Pitch count. Total pitches thrown in the game. Starters are often pulled around 100. |
| ER | Earned runs. Runs allowed that would have scored without errors or passed balls. |
| K | Strikeouts (pitching). Batters he struck out. |
| W-L | Win-loss record. Wins and losses go to the pitcher of record, so they reflect his team's offense and bullpen as much as his own work. Read it next to ERA, not instead of it. |
| SV | Saves. Games he finished while protecting a lead of three runs or fewer, or with the tying run on deck or at the plate, or by pitching the last three innings. |
| HLD | Holds. The middle reliever's save: he entered in a save situation, kept the lead, and handed it to someone else. |
Advanced hitting
On the Advanced section of each player page. These adjust for context that the classic stats ignore.
| Stat | What it means |
|---|---|
| WAR | Wins Above Replacement. A player's total value, in wins, compared with a replacement-level player (the kind a team could pick up for free). Combines hitting, baserunning, defense, and position. Boxscored computes its own estimate using the FanGraphs method and public data, so expect small differences from published figures: usually a few tenths of a win for hitters and up to about half a win for pitchers. 2 is a solid starter; 5+ is All-Star level; 8+ is an MVP-type season. |
| wRC+ | Weighted Runs Created Plus. Total hitting value, adjusted for ballpark and league, on a scale where 100 is exactly average. 130 means 30% better than an average hitter; 150+ is elite. |
| wOBA | Weighted On-Base Average. Like OBP, but weights each way of reaching base by how many runs it's actually worth: a homer counts for much more than a walk. Scaled to look like OBP. About .320 is average; .400 is elite. |
| ISO | Isolated Power. Extra bases per at-bat (SLG minus AVG). Measures raw power apart from singles. About .140 is average; .250+ is elite. |
| BB% | Walk rate. Share of plate appearances that end in a walk. For hitters higher is better; for pitchers lower is better. 8 to 9% is about average for hitters. |
| K% | Strikeout rate. Share of plate appearances that end in a strikeout. For hitters lower is better; for pitchers higher is better. About 22% is average; 24%+ is strong for a pitcher. |
Advanced pitching
These help separate how well a pitcher actually threw from what the defense and luck did behind him.
| Stat | What it means |
|---|---|
| FIP | Fielding Independent Pitching. An ERA-scale measure built only from what a pitcher controls: strikeouts, walks, hit batters, and home runs. A FIP well below his ERA suggests bad luck or bad defense; well above suggests good fortune. |
| BABIP | Batting average on balls in play. Average on batted balls that stay in the park, excluding homers and strikeouts. Swings a lot with luck and defense. About .290 is normal; values far above or below often even out. |
| LOB% | Left-on-base rate. Share of baserunners a pitcher strands. About 72% is normal; extreme values tend to drift back. |
Defense
| Stat | What it means |
|---|---|
| OAA | Outs Above Average. Statcast's range-based fielding measure: how many more (or fewer) outs a fielder made than an average fielder would have on the same balls, accounting for how far he had to go and how much time he had. From Baseball Savant. 0 is average; +10 or better is Gold Glove territory. |
Statcast: contact and discipline
From MLB's ball- and player-tracking system, via Baseball Savant. Shown under Contact & discipline on player pages, often with a season-versus-recent comparison.
| Stat | What it means |
|---|---|
| Exit velo | Average exit velocity. How hard the ball comes off the bat, in miles per hour, averaged across batted balls. For pitchers, how hard hitters are making contact against him. |
| Hard hit% | Hard-hit rate. Share of batted balls hit 95 mph or harder. |
| Barrel% | Barrel rate. Share of batted balls with the ideal mix of exit velocity and launch angle, the kind that usually become extra-base hits. |
| Chase% | Chase rate. How often a hitter swings at pitches outside the strike zone. Lower is better for hitters; higher is better for pitchers. |
| Whiff% | Whiff rate. Share of swings that miss the ball entirely. |
| xBA / xSLG | Expected batting average and slugging. What a hitter's average and slugging would be based only on how hard and at what angle he hit the ball, ignoring where it landed. Boxscored's luck check compares these with his actual numbers: results well above expected suggest some regression ahead; well below suggest he's been unlucky. |
| xwOBA | Expected wOBA. The same idea applied to wOBA, adding strikeouts and walks. |
In-game
| Stat | What it means |
|---|---|
| Win prob. | Win probability. MLB's estimate of each team's chance of winning, from the game state alone: inning, outs, runners, and score. It knows nothing about who's playing, which is why every game starts at 50/50. |
| WPA | Win Probability Added. How much a player's plate appearances swung his team's chance of winning a game. +0.30 means he added 30 percentage points; a negative number means his outs hurt. |
| Fantasy pts | Fantasy points. A player's single-game fantasy score under ESPN's default scoring, shown on each game's player page. Boxscored doesn't manage fantasy leagues; this is just for reference. |
How 🔥 and 🧊 streaks are decided
Badges are computed from each player's recent game log. A player gets a badge if any one rule below is met, and tapping the badge shows which ones.
🔥 Hitters
- Batting .350 or better over his last 6 games (at least 15 at-bats), or .300 or better over his last 9 (at least 22 at-bats)
- A hitting streak of 7 games or more
- An on-base streak of 7 games or more (when it's longer than his hitting streak)
- 3 or more home runs in his last 5 games
🔥 Pitchers
- An ERA of 2.00 or lower over his last 3 outings, covering at least 15 innings
- Back-to-back quality starts (6+ innings, 3 or fewer earned runs) with 8+ strikeouts in each
🧊 Hitters
Over his last 10 games, with at least 25 plate appearances so part-timers aren't labeled:
- Batting under .150
- An OPS under .450
- Striking out in more than 35% of plate appearances while posting an OPS under .600
🧊 Pitchers
- Starters, over the last 3 starts: an ERA above 7.00, a WHIP above 1.80, or opponents posting an OPS above .900. A strikeout-to-walk ratio under 1.5 is listed as supporting evidence but never earns the badge on its own.
- Relievers, over the last 5 appearances (rate stats need at least 4 innings): an ERA above 8.00, a WHIP above 1.80, opponents posting an OPS above .900, or 2 or more blown saves and losses combined.
During a live game, Boxscored also flags a hitter who is one hit away from the cycle.
Where the numbers come from
Standard stats, play-by-play, and win probability come from MLB Advanced Media's public data. Statcast measures and Outs Above Average come from Baseball Savant. WAR, wRC+, wOBA, and FIP are calculated by Boxscored with published methods (FanGraphs-style) and may differ slightly from the figures on FanGraphs or Baseball-Reference. Boxscored is not affiliated with MLB, FanGraphs, or Baseball-Reference.