Question:

Does a MLB player begin a season with no average, or .000?

by Guest58618  |  earlier

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Asking other questions, a debate came up about whether a player's batting average is .000 or there is no average when he has 0 hits for 0 at bats. (Since technically there is no result dividing anything by 0.) I looked up Eddie Gaedel's stats on MLB.com who as the shortest professional baseball player ever, had only 1 official plate appearance in his career; they listed his average as .000. However, Wikipedia and other sources list it as n/a or ---. So what officially is it?

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  1. The average does not exist so the average is ---.


  2. it is the same thing

  3. No average.

    Once a player goes 0 for 1, it's .000

    So there's a difference between 0 for 0 (at the very beginning of the season = no average) and 0 for whatever (.000)

  4. you can't divide by zero so it does not exist

  5. both

  6. Same thing ... just two different ways of annotating it. Most baseball sites use .000 because baseball's a numbers game and it fits in with the scheme. As for N/A? I would think Not Applicable is slightly different than .000

  7. i have seen then batting averages listed simply as blanks.  a good example is eddie gaedel's stats on baseball-reference.com.  you'll see they just leave his batting average as blank.  his OBP is 1.000 since he walked in his only plate appearance.

  8. IT'S ACTUALLY BOTH.

  9. No average

  10. they haven't batted  yet so its a n/a

  11. Since he starts the season with 0 at bats (and since at-bats are what batting averages are calculated by), then there is nothing to divide by.

    Since dividing by 0 is impossible, a player starts the season without a batting average.

    For that matter, it would make just as much sense for a player to start with a .000 batting average than it would for him to start with a 1.000 batting average...but anybody who tells you he starts with either of these is wrong.

    Which means MLB.com is wrong.

  12. technically it is both no average is both .000 and---
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