Hitting for Average - Part 2

In my previous post, I examined the hitting for average skill of Tigers batters using the following statistics - batting average, contact percentage, strikeouts per at bat and line drive percentage. The purpose of that post was not so much to project into the future but more to see which batters displayed this skill in 2008. Later, I'll look at other skills: power and plate discipline. In this post, I'll present the hitting for average leaders in Major League Baseball in 2008. As before, the data were abstracted from Fan Graphs. Here are the highlights:

• As most know, Chipper Jones and Albert Pujols were far ahead of the pack in batting average (Table 1).

• The contact percentage leaders were mostly singles type hitters without a lot of power - Juan Pierre and Jeff Keppinger in the National League and Placido Polanco in the American League. The most powerful hitter in the top ten was Dustin Pedroia (Table 2).

• The K/AB leaders included many of the same players with Keppinger and Cesar Izturis leading the majors. Polanco was the American League leader (Table 3).

• Old friend Omar Infante topped the majors in line drive percentage. Jamey Carroll and Ramon Vazquez were the AL leaders (Table 4).

• Combining all the stats together, the hitting for average leaders were Albert Pujols, Chipper Jones and Joe Mauer. (Table 5).

Table 1: MLB batting average leaders in 2008

player	avg
Chipper Jones	.364
Albert Pujols	.357
Manny Ramirez	.332
Joe Mauer	.328
Dustin Pedroia	.326
Mike Aviles	.325
Matt Holliday	.321
Milton Bradley	.321
Ian Kinsler	.319
Ryan Doumit	.318

Table 2: MLB batting contact percentage leaders in 2008

player	contact %
Juan Pierre	.936
Jeff Keppinger	.935
Brian Giles	.928
Placido Polanco	.927
Cesar Izturis	.926
Dustin Pedroia	.923
David Eckstein	.923
Ryan Theriot	.919
Marco Scutaro	.915
Ichiro Suzuki	.910

Table 3: MLB strikeouts per at bat leaders in 2008

player	K/AB
Jeff Keppinger	.052
Cesar Izturis	.063
Juan Pierre	.064
Yadier Molina	.065
Bengie Molina	.072
Placido Polanco	.074
Casey Kotchman	.074
Yuniesky Betancourt	.075
Dustin Pedroia	.080
Jason Kendall	.087

Table 4: MLB line drive percentage leaders in 2008

player	line drive %
Omar Infante	.301
Jamey Carroll	.273
Ramon Vazquez	.273
Andre Ethier	.266
Ryan Ludwick	.263
Brian Schneider	.257
Denard Span	.257
David Wright	.256
Darin Erstad	.255
John Bowker	.253

Table 5: MLB hitting for average leaders in 2008

player	avg	contact %	K/AB	line drive %	adjusted avg
Albert Pujols	.357	.901	.103	.224	.325
Chipper Jones	.364	.827	.139	.241	.321
Joe Mauer	.328	.908	.093	.226	.316
Dustin Pedroia	.326	.923	.080	.212	.315
Ryan Theriot	.307	.919	.100	.232	.309
Aaron Miles	.317	.909	.098	.210	.308
Cristian Guzman	.316	.883	.098	.225	.308
Ian Kinsler	.319	.867	.129	.242	.308
David DeJesus	.307	.903	.137	.247	.307
Brian Giles	.306	.928	.093	.213	.307