Understanding Sabermetrics SLG%
Understanding sabermetrics and the use of slugging percentage is a better process of evaluating a hitter and is superior than using the ancient method of batting average is our focus in this article.
Again. all hits are not created equal. So what is slugging percentage?
A measure of a hitter’s productivity, with added weight given to extra base hits.
Double, triples and home runs are more valuable than singles. Therefore, they receive additional weight. How is slugging percentage calculated?
SLG=singles+doubles X 2 + triples X 3 +home runs X4/atBats
An example is Jose Abreu led the American League in 2019 with these numbers:
72 singles, 38doubles, 1 triple and 38 homers in 634 at bats for SLG%=.503
SLG isn’t perfect. It’s not going to tell you everything you need to know in one stat. But it does take things one step further and tells us what kind o hitter a player is. SLG is one of the best stat that evaluate power in the game, not just a big home run hitter.
How is it broken down?
Excellent .550 or higher
Great .500
Above Ave .450
Average .420
Below Ave .400
Poor .390
Awful .380 or below
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Some of the best hitters in the game were not sluggers. In 20 seasons, Tony Gwynn only reached .500 SLG four times.
About the author– Tom Knuppel has been writing about baseball and sports for a few decades. As an avid St. Louis Cardinals fan he began with the blog CardinalsGM. Tom is a member of the United Cardinals Bloggers and the Baseball Bloggers Alliance. He also maintains the History of Cardinals website. More recently he has been busy at KnupSolutions and the primary writer of many sports at KnupSports and adds content at Sports 2.0. Tom is a retired High School English and Speech teacher and has completed over one hundred sportsbook reviews. He also can be followed on Twitter at tknup.
Feel free to contact Tom at tknuppel@gmail.com
