Those “stats” are the way that the performance of any baseball player, from Little Leaguers through our favorite Major Leaguers, can be measured.  That’s why we are going to occasionally use this space to explain some of the numbers that are utilized in compiling baseball statistics.

This month we will discuss Slugging Percentage.  A batter is usually measured by batting average (BA).  That number is easily found by dividing the number of hits (H) by the number of  at bats (AB).  Let’s say that Roderick Rivereel has 35 hits in 100 at bats; he has a batting average of .350.

Slugging Percentage (SP) takes that stat up one level by factoring in the number of total bases (TB). To explain: a single results in one total base; a home run results in four total bases.  The formula used is:

Slugging Percentage equals Total Bases divided by At Bats     or    SP = TB/AB. 

Using Roderick Rivereel again:  if 5 of his hits were home runs (20 TB) and 5 of his hits were doubles (10 TB), that would leave 25 singles (25 TB).  55 TB divided by 100 AB equals .550 Slugging Percentage.  As you can see, this stat, coupled with batting average, gives a more complete picture of the player’s real value to his team.

If you have questions about other baseball “Numbers,” send an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and we will attempt to answer them in a future column.