How to Read a Baseball Box Score

By 4Baseball Staff · · 7 min read

A line-by-line guide to the box score: the R H E line, batting and pitching lines, the odd .1 and .2 in innings pitched, decisions, and the notes underneath.

A box score is a whole game compressed into about forty numbers. Nothing in it is decorative, and almost all of it is defined in the Official Baseball Rules rather than invented by whoever published it. Here is every part, in the order your eye moves down the page.

The line score: innings, then R, H and E

The line score sits at the top: two rows, one per club, with a column for each inning and three summary columns at the end.

  • R is runs, the only one that decides anything
  • H is hits
  • E is errors, charged to the defence, not the batting side

The away club is always the top row, because it always bats first. Read across and you get the shape of the game: a 4 in the first tells you somebody got hit early; a row of zeroes and then a 5 tells you a bullpen came apart.

The X. In the bottom of the final inning you will often see an X instead of a number in the home club's row. It does not mean zero. It means the home club never batted, because it did not need to. Rule 7.01(e)(1) states that a completed regulation game ends when the visiting team finishes its half of the ninth with the home team ahead. There is nothing left to play for, so nobody plays it. Some publications print a lower-case x; it means the same thing.

The batting lines

Each batter gets a row. The standard columns are AB, R, H, RBI, BB, SO, usually with a season AVG on the end.

AB is at-bats, and the important thing is what does not count as one. Rule 9.02(a)(1) charges no time at bat when a player hits a sacrifice bunt or sacrifice fly, walks, is hit by a pitch, or is awarded first base for interference, obstruction or a shift restriction violation. So a batter who walks twice and singles once in four trips to the plate shows up as 1-for-2, not 1-for-4.

R is runs scored by that player, however he reached base. H is safe hits. RBI is runs batted in, credited when the batter's action drives a run home, including a bases-loaded walk or hit by pitch, but not when the run scores only because of an error or a ground-ball double play. BB is a base on balls, the scorebook's abbreviation for a walk, and SO is a strikeout (the scorebook symbol is K). A batter who reaches on an uncaught third strike is still charged with a strikeout.

AVG is batting average: safe hits divided by times at bat. Most published box scores carry the hitter's season average rather than anything from that night.

You will also often see OPS, on-base plus slugging, which is exactly what the name says. Slugging is total bases on safe hits divided by at-bats. On-base percentage is hits plus walks plus hit-by-pitches, divided by at-bats plus walks plus hit-by-pitches plus sacrifice flies. Note that denominator: sacrifice flies are in it, sacrifice bunts are not.

LOB appears at the foot of the batting block. For a club it is the number of runners left on base across the game: everyone who reached by any means and neither scored nor was put out. Beside an individual batter it means something narrower: how many runners were still standing when that batter made an out.

The pitching lines

Each pitcher gets a row too: IP, H, R, ER, BB, SO, usually with HR allowed and a season ERA.

IP is innings pitched, and it is where newcomers get stuck, because a pitcher can throw 5.1 or 6.2 innings and those are not decimals. Outs are counted in thirds: every out recorded is one-third of an inning, so .1 means one out into an inning and .2 means two outs into it. A starter pulled with one out in the sixth has five full innings plus one out, printed 5.1. There is no .3, because three outs is a whole inning. The rulebook states the rule in fractions and stat lines render them as decimals, which is the entire source of the confusion.

H, R, BB, SO are hits, runs, walks and strikeouts allowed. ER is earned runs, a run for which the pitcher is held accountable. To decide, the official scorer replays the inning without the errors and passed balls, giving the pitcher the benefit of the doubt on every judgement call. Runs that only scored because of a misplay come out of the ER column but stay in the R column. That is why you see lines like 6 IP, 4 R, 1 ER, shorthand for a defence that let him down.

ERA is earned run average: earned runs multiplied by nine, divided by innings pitched including fractions. Nine innings is the yardstick, so an ERA is earned runs per nine innings of work. Our stat calculator will do the arithmetic for you.

One more thing about those two columns. A reliever who inherits runners and lets them score is not charged with those runs; they belong to the pitcher who put them on base. A short outing can look immaculate while having lost the game.

Decisions

Next to a pitcher's name you will see a letter in parentheses, usually with a season record: (W, 12-6), (L, 8-9), (S, 24).

W, the win. The winning pitcher is the one in the game when his club takes the lead for good. There is a catch for starters: under Rule 9.17(b), a starter who has not completed five innings in a game lasting six or more innings on defence does not get the win, even if his club led throughout. The scorer gives it to the most effective reliever instead. That rule is why a starter can leave with a 7-1 lead after four and two-thirds and finish with nothing.

L, the loss. The pitcher responsible for the run that gives the winning club a lead it never gives back.

S, the save. Rule 9.19 requires all four of: finishing a game his club wins, not being the winning pitcher, being credited with at least a third of an inning, and meeting one of three situations. Those three are entering with a lead of no more than three runs and pitching an inning, entering with the potential tying run on base, at bat or on deck, or pitching three innings.

H and BS, the unofficial ones. A hold goes to a reliever who enters in a save situation, records at least one out and hands over the lead intact. A blown save is charged when a reliever enters in a save situation and allows the tying run to score. Both are tracked everywhere and neither appears in the Official Baseball Rules; MLB says as much about the hold. The same goes for the quality start, six or more innings with three or fewer earned runs, which MLB defines in its glossary but the rulebook does not.

The notes underneath

The block below the tables is where the game's texture lives. Common labels:

Label Meaning
2B, 3B, HR Doubles, triples, home runs, with the batter named
TB Total bases
SB, CS Stolen bases and caught stealing
E Errors, with the fielder and often the type of misplay
DP Double plays, listing the fielders in order
GIDP Grounded into a double play
LOB Runners left on base by each club
WP Wild pitch, charged to the pitcher
PB Passed ball, charged to the catcher
HBP Hit by pitch, naming batter and pitcher
IBB Intentional walk
T, Att Time of game and attendance

Wild pitch versus passed ball is a judgement call about whose fault it was. Runs scoring on either are unearned, but the blame lands in different places.

A check you can run yourself

The rules contain a neat test of whether a box score is internally consistent. A club's at-bats, walks, hit batters, sacrifice bunts, sacrifice flies and awarded bases should add up to that club's runs, plus its runners left on base, plus the opposing club's putouts. If the two totals match, the box score balances.

Try it on any final from the scoreboard. And if you would rather build one than read one, that is a different and more satisfying skill: how to keep a baseball scorebook.

Sources

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