Blue Jays' Lenyn Sosa has a higher on-base percentage than batting average this season
This is a statistical quirk.
Blue Jays' Lenyn Sosa has a higher on-base percentage than batting average this season originally appeared on The Sporting News . Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here . Almost always, you'll see OBP as being higher than batting average.
But once in a while, like with the Toronto Blue Jays ' Lenyn Sosa, it can work in reverse. An on-base percentage can actually be lower than a hitter's average. That's what Sosa is doing in the early going, both in his stats just with Toronto and also when combining with his early season numbers with the Chicago White Sox .
We'll use the combined numbers to take a look at this quirk. Sosa has a . 257 batting average through Saturday, May 2.
He has a . 254 on-base percentage through the same time. MORE: Kazuma Okamoto blamed a quesadilla for a missed opportunity The key here is that batting average is based on hits out of at bats, while on-base percentage factors in walks, hit by pitches and uses plate appearances instead of ABs.