Putting Baseball Performance Into Perspective

I was having lunch with my friend Keith yesterday, and he brought up some interesting points about baseball and sports stats in general. Keith is great with numbers... for work he has to be, and he brought up a funny point about baseball... looking at it from a corporate standpoint.

He said, "You know, in sports, and in baseball, a person gets rewarded for getting it right two-thirds of the time. I mean, a guy hits .300 and you think he's actually doing good and he gets his picture on a Wheaties box."

I have never thought about this! He's right... look at the benchmark standards for baseball... percentages are based on a .1000 scale system... meaning .1000 is perfect:

• A .300 batting average is considered good, even the upper .200's is good
  
• A .400 batting average is considered incredible... I mean, Ted Williams has a career batting average of .344 which basically makes him a baseball legend.
• A winning season is .500 or better, that means if the number of games you win is just ONE more than the number of games you lost... you're considered a winning team.
  
• A good on-base-percentage for a single season is about .400

So, based on baseball's standards... the game of baseball is either really really difficult... or they have low standards. If my job adopted baseball's standards, I would be like Babe Ruth.