How many ABs required to qualify for batting title?

MCMLVTopps

Anyone know how many ABs you need to qualify for a batting title?

Chipper Jones of the Braves is currently ahead of Pujols, but it seems to me that Jones is constantly on the DL for one reason or another. Now Jones needs an MRI for yet another "problem" and is probably not gonna be in the lineup again.

Seems to me that you need "x" number of ABs to qualify, but I don't know what that number is.

TheVon

There's a good discussion on this topic on this thread:

Batting Title Discussion

MCMLVTopps

Thanks Von-

BTW, your mailbox should have a prize today or tomorrow.

Piman58

If Chipper's season is finished because of injury he would need to take an 0-64 to see if his adjusted average would still be better than Pujols. Chipper's average would fall to .318 so Pujols would have the better average. The extra 64 at bats added to Jones's totsl would get him to the minimum requirement of 3.1 ABs for each game your team has played, assuming the Braves play 162 this season.

digicat

<< <i>If Chipper's season is finished because... >>



You're confusing "plate apperances" with "at bats". Chipper has the minimum "plate apperances" to qualify for the batting title.

Plate appearances = at-bats + walks + hit by pitch + sacrifice hits + sacrifice flies + times reached on defensive interference

bigfische

Nice pinch hit homerun last night. He might have been playing more if there was a reason besides the batting race, since we are about 18 games out, whats the point?

WinPitcher

What digicat said is correct.


Steve

WinPitcher

A player needs 3.1 plate appearances per each game their team plays.

in 1996 Tony Gwynn had less then the required amount but had he went 0 for (whatever the amount needed)
he still would have had a higher Pct. Thus he won without the riquired plate appearances.


Not sure when MLB instituted this rule and what it was before that.


Steve

markj111

At one time there was a minimum # of ABs (rather than plate appearances) required. I am not sure of the details, but Ted Williams lost a batting title to Bobby Avila that the Splinter would have won under today's rules.)

I found this:

Pre-1920 – A player had to appear in 60% of his team's games to qualify for the league title.

1920-1937- A player must appear in 100 games.

1938-1944 – A player had to appear in 400 at bats to qualify in AL but the NL stayed with 100 games. The lone exception was 1938: By order of the AL president, Jimmie Foxx (.349, in 149 games and 565 at-bats) was awarded the batting title over rookie Taffy Wright (.350, in 100 games and only 263 at-bats).

1945-1956 – A player needed 2.6 at bats per team game. (With the 154-game schedule of the time, that meant a rounded-off 400 at-bats.) Note that 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 (for example, 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.

1957 to the present – A player has needed 3.1 plate appearances per team game; thus, players were no longer penalized for walking so frequently or benefited for 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 1981 and 1994.)

Also note that 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 plate appearances until qualification (for example, 5 PA's, 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.)

WinPitcher

Thanks Mark I knew that the current rule was not the rule from years past.

I forgot that Mad dog won it that way too.


Steve

Piman58

<< <i>You're confusing "plate apperances" with "at bats". Chipper has the minimum "plate apperances" to qualify for the batting title.

Plate appearances = at-bats + walks + hit by pitch + sacrifice hits + sacrifice flies + times reached on defensive interference >>



Thanks for catching that for me digicat. I must have been taking my afternoon nap while typing the post.