A player's batting average is found by dividing the number of hits by the times at bat. It is rounded to the nearest thousandth place. It is never pronounced as it should be. While 0.250 should be pronounced "two hundred fifty thousandths", baseball people pronounce it "two-fifty". A person with a batting average of 0.267 is said to be hitting "two sixty seven". And so on.
If two of the pieces are known, the third can be found with a little algebra. As of this moment, these numbers are current numbers for these players:
David Ortiz has 41 hits in 128 at-bats. What is his batting average? (41/128 = x; x = .320)
Zach Cozart has 113 at-bats and is hitting .319. How many hits does he have? (x/113 = .319; x = 36)
Eric Hosmer is batting .336 with 47 hits. How many times at bats does he have? (47/x = .336; x = 140)
Also of interest might be the fact that sometimes thousandths place isn't enough accuracy. In 1949, George Kell won the batting title over Ted Williams even though they were both listed as batting .343. George was 179 for 522 (0.3429) and Ted was 194 for 566 (.3428).Pretty much the same thing happened in 1970, with Alex Johnson (.3289) defeating Carl Yastrzemski (.3286) by a whisker.
