What is Slugging Percentage? As the term implies, slugging percentage is baseball’s way of measuring a hitter’s overall power and effectiveness. It’s obviously much easier just to compare home run numbers or RBI’s, but using those statistics alone takes some of the fun out of baseball statistics. Put concisely, slugging percentage is calculated as the total number of bases accumulated by a hitter divided by the number of official at-bats for that particular hitter.
How to Calculate a Hitter’s Slugging Percentage The most involved part of calculating slugging percentage is sorting out what counts as an at-bat and what does not. Anytime a batter is walked, hit by a pitch, or sacrifices (such as bunting or hitting a fly ball in order to move a runner to the next base), it is not counted as an official at-bat. Everything else (anything from a strike out to a home run) is considered an at-bat. To calculate slugging percentage, divide the total number of bases accrued by a batter, and divide it by the number of at-bats for the hitter. For instance, if a hitter begins the season and in his first time up to bat he hits a home run, his slugging percentage is 4.000 (four bases divided by one at bat). If a hitter goes one for three in a game and hits one single, his slugging percentage for that game is 0.333 (one base divided by three at bats). Slugging percentage is usually calculated out to three decimals, such as 0.550.
