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With fantasy baseball just as popular as the real thing, amateur Steinbrenners want the most accurate way to determine the power of their prospective players. Of course there are home runs, batting averages, and RBIs, but many enthusiasts argue that a player's slugging percentage is a far more telling statistic. It's actually very simple to calculate. To figure out a batting average, you take the number of hits and divide by the number of at-bats. A slugging percentage, on the other hand, assigns a bigger value to bigger hits. So the calculation becomes "total bases" divided by the number of at-bats. For example, let's say a batter has 40 singles,
20 doubles, 5 triples, and 10 home runs in 250 at-bats. When figuring a batting average, a single counts the same as a home run, so the player's batting average is .300. With slugging percentages, it's a whole different ball game. We multiply each single by 1, each double by 2, each triple by 3, and each home run by 4. Then you add them together and divide by 250 for a slugging percentage of .540. Of course, a slugging percentage isn't the be-all and end-all of batting statistics. For instance, it doesn't take walks into account, which, as any Little League coach will tell you, are just as good as a hit. Also, a slugging percentage assumes the value
of a hit increases proportionally, which isn't necessarily true.
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