Tiny Baseball Lessons: Baseball Terms Explained for Beginners

Hey babes!

Welcome back to another episode of Baseball for Girls - the first episode of the new Tiny Baseball Lessons series! No recap this week, I've been living my southern France dream

Baseball stats can feel like learning an entirely new language ~ 

In this Tiny Baseball Lessons episode, we’re breaking down some of the most common baseball stats you hear during games, without making it overly complicated. These are key terms every beginner needs to know to understand what the heck those baseball broadcasters are talking about!

We cover:

• batting average
• ERA
• RBIs
• strikeouts
• home runs
• pitcher wins and losses
• OPS

and what these stats actually tell you about a player.

Whether you’re brand new to baseball or just tired of pretending you know what OPS means (like I have for the past few years!)… this episode is for you! 

Welcome to the softest corner of sports media!

Follow me on Instagram!

Subscribe to my Substack!

Get my Baseball Score Log on Amazon!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey babe. Welcome to Baseball for Girls. Well, baseball meets soft girl energy. Oh see, in here we do baseball with hot humanity and a little humor. So we'll bring into the game or deep in the baseball home. You're in the wrong place. So we want something cozy. So we'll skip into today's episode of Hey babes.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Welcome back to another episode of Baseball for Girls. And today we're gonna be doing a tiny baseball lesson episode where we're gonna focus on some of the more commonly used terms and like vocab that is found in baseball games that you probably hear all the time, but you're just like, I have no idea what those letters stand for, and even if I did, I wouldn't know what it meant. So it'll just be a couple of key terms for today. I am making a more in-depth episode that'll be more of like a glossary of different words and acronyms, but for today I thought I'd just give you a quick and dirty, really easy to follow list of terms that you can start using and learning and understanding today. So I really wanted to go over some stats that I personally think are really important to know, especially as a beginner. So, like I said, it's not gonna be every single statistic, but these are the ones that you're definitely gonna hear when you're watching a game. So the first one I'm gonna start with is the batting average. Sometimes it's just denoted as AVG or average, but it's always referencing the batting average. So basically, the batting average just tells you how often a player gets a hit. So if someone has an a batting average of 300, or like it'll be denoted as 0.300, that just means that they get a hit about 30% of the time. And so 70% of the time, they do not get a hit. And so in baseball, that's actually really good. 30% of the time hitting the ball, that's like a really, really good player. Um, which is why people refer to baseball as a game of failure because over half, literally 70 to 80 percent of the time, you go up there and you don't get a hit, and you have to go back and sit down and wait for your next your next plate appearance. So generally a 300 is like an excellent batting average. Most players are around 250, so 0.250, which is a pretty average batting average, so anything around there, but then if you're below 200, so below 0.200, that indicates that you're probably struggling, or you really just haven't had that many play appearances or at bats that count towards your batting average, but announcers are always mentioning this stat um throughout a game. The next stat I wanted to mention is the ERA. So the ERA stands for earned run average, and this is specifically a statistic for pitchers. So basically, it measures measures how many runs a pitcher gives up on average in every nine innings. So a lower ERA, earned run average, is better. So if a pitcher has like a 2.50 ERA, that's super good. Anything below 2.5 is considered to be very good. If your ERA is in the threes, that's like a solid, more of an average ERA. Fours are kind of average, but not that great. But anything above five is not good. Um, it means you probably have had a couple of outings or you know, a couple of times where they went up to pitch that they gave up a lot of runs. And so when I am saying stuff like giving up runs basically just means when the pitcher throws a pitch, that the batter either hit a home run or the batter was able to hit the ball in a way that allowed for someone else that was on base to reach home plate and therefore a run was scored. So this stat really matters because pitchers don't really get judged by how many points like that they score, obviously. They're really being judged by how often they are able to prevent the other teams from scoring. And so this statistic is really good for getting an understanding of how well the pitcher helps the team to win. The next stat I want to touch on is the RBI. So this stands for runs batted in. I did kind of mention this in one of my previous episodes. I kind of described what an RBI is, but just so that you can also get a good understanding about it here. The RBI basically means did you help someone score with your hit? So if there's a runner that's already on base and you hit a double and then they are able to score, that means that batter gets an RBI. So the stat is often used to talk about players who are really good at driving in runs uh during very important moments. So basically, if I am at bat and I hit the ball and it goes into the outfield, and there's already a runner that was on base, so the batter before me was already on second base. Whenever I hit the ball into outfield, that but that runner that was on second base is now probably, if he's fast enough, is probably gonna be able to go all the way home and score. So because my hit allowed for that batter to get all the way home and score, that means I get an RBI. And just to connect back to the ERA, that also means that that runner who scores is now affecting that pitcher's ERA. So that is in RBI or a run batted in. And next I'll just talk about home runs. Like, obviously, that's a little bit more self-explanatory. So it's basically whenever you hit the ball over the fence and everybody gets to score. So you get to score, and anyone else that was already on base also scores. And obviously, home runs are a huge part of baseball culture. People always are tracking how many home runs a player has throughout the season and in their career. We're always tracking the home run leaders. I do that in my weekly MLB recap, and announcers do constantly reference them during their broadcasts. Next, I'll talk a little bit about strikeouts. So we know that a strikeout is basically when a pitcher strikes out a batter. When that happens, whenever the pitcher will throw a couple of pitches, and once they get to the third strike, that counts as a strikeout. So let's say the first pitch he throws ends up being a strike, it goes straight through the strike zone. The second pitch he throws, um, the batter swings through it. Um, so then that counts as a strike, and then the third pitch he throws, the batter swings through it again. That is a strikeout. And let's say for the third strike, instead of the batter trying to swing through it, maybe the batter doesn't swing at all because he thinks it's gonna be a ball, like he's not gonna be able to hit it, and so he is what we would say caught looking. So the ball goes straight through the strike zone, the batter does not try to swing for it, and he is then struck out, but he is struck out looking, and that is denoted with a backwards K. So a regular strikeout is a regular K, like uh just like how you would normally write a K. But if the batter doesn't swing through the strikeout, then it is a cot looking, which is a backwards K, which is just like a fun little random tidbit that you'll see when you're at a baseball game, like physically there. Sometimes some stadiums keep track of the strikeouts, and so they'll be denoted by K's on a wall somewhere, and so sometimes the K's will be just like a regular K, and then sometimes they'll be backwards. So, this statistic is really important for pitchers. Obviously, if you have a lot of strikeouts, that means that you're a pretty dominant pitcher, you've had a very dominant performance. For hitters, too many strikeouts can definitely be a bad thing. Um, so really it just depends on context who you are really paying attention to here. If you're really paying attention to the pitcher, um, having 10 strikeouts in a game, amazing. But you're talking about your hitters, not so much. Next, I'm gonna talk about wins and losses. So, pitchers get credited a win or a loss in each game, or sometimes a no decision, and that honestly deserves its own entire episode because the rules are really weird. I am planning to record an episode that will really go into the nitty-gritty about wins and losses for pitchers because it is pretty confusing, and honestly, I don't even understand it, so it'll just be a good excuse for me to finally sit down and figure out what the heck it all means. But really, the short version: a winning pitcher was one that pitches when their team took the lead for good and the team ends up winning, while the losing pitcher gave up the lead during their outing or during that inning, and the team was never able to recover from losing that lead. But the statistic can actually be kind of misleading sometimes because baseball is so team dependent. I also really want to make an episode about winning and losing for pitchers because sometimes I'm like, I don't even know if this is really fair. I mean, the pitcher could be super good, but because the team lost the lead, then sometimes that also just means that the pitcher ends up losing or it's a no decision. And it's just I think in my mind it seems like a very controversial, a controversial statistic, but no one really ever seems to talk about it in a negative way. And the last statistic that I want to touch on is called OPS. It's one that I literally figured out while preparing for this episode because I never really understood what it meant. I just knew what a good one was and a bad one was. Basically, this is one of the most advanced statistics to try to understand. So the OPS basically stands for on base plus slugging, which sounds really random and kind of intimidating, but basically the OPS is a combination of two things. So it is the on base percentage, which is how often a player gets on base, plus the slugging percentage, which indicates how much power they hit for. So basically, an OPS is basically trying to answer the question how good is this player offensively overall? Because it rewards getting on base, hitting for power, and doubles, triples, and home runs. So like hitting for power, just so like being able to hit um in very important situations. And that is why broadcasters really love it. So basically, it's an all-in-one kind of offensive statistic. It combines getting on base with hitting for power. And so generally, the higher the OPS, the more dangerous the hitter is. But honestly, as a beginner, you really do not need to memorize like what an OPS is or really understand what it actually means. Just know that the closer the OPS number is to one, the better the player is. So for example, Jordan Alvarez from the Houston Astros, he's a designated hitter, he has an OPS of 1.01, and Corbin Carroll, who is a right fielder for the D Backs, he has an OPS of 0.973, and both of those are considered to be very, very good OPS statistic scores. So anything less than that is just getting further away from being like a very dangerous hitter. But most importantly, I think it is good to remember that you really don't need to understand or know every single stat in order to enjoy baseball. I definitely didn't when I first started watching. I didn't know what any of the words meant, um, maybe except for batting average, but I still didn't really, I didn't really appreciate what it meant to have a good or a bad batting average until I really started watching baseball more. You kind of naturally learn everything over time because broadcasters will repeat things constantly, and every now and then they will kind of explain it in a way that you it will make sense to you. And eventually you're gonna hear someone say, like, he has a 312 batting average with a 900 OPS, and you're gonna be like, Oh, I understood that this is gonna be a really good hitter, we should watch out for this person, kind of thing, and that's kind of how it started eventually clicking for me, just hearing the same things over and over again. I think I've said it before, but baseball is really like learning a new language. I'm also learning French, and my listening skills have been getting so much better. Like, the more you just hear phrases over and over again, it becomes to the point where you might not actually understand the point of being able to translate every single word, but you just kind of get the gist, you just kind of get what the person is trying to trying to tell you, and that's like the first level of just basic understanding. So I think that'll be all for today. Like I mentioned, I'm gonna make a much more in-depth episode. I've already made it, but I don't really like it, so I'm probably gonna redo it, and I just wanted to make a quicker one that could help you get and understand these stats a lot easier and a lot quicker. But if there are any baseball stats or terms that still confuse you, honestly, same, but please let me know. And I'd love to make some more tiny baseball lesson episodes, maybe focusing on certain statistics that are really confusing for a lot of people. Um, I'm also thinking about making a tiny baseball lessons episode that kind of goes over each position and why each position is important. Um, so yeah, so let me know what you're thinking or what you really want to know about that you're not necessarily too embarrassed to ask, but you know, you just want someone else to just sit down, have a chat with you, and help you figure it out because I'm here to help. So, thank you again for hanging out with me in the softest corner of sports media. I hope to see you in the next episode. Don't forget to rate and review and have a great rest of your week. Bye.