What is the difference between an "at bat" and a "plate appearance"?

Question

My daughter plays travel softball and the book they kept had different numbers between plate appearances and at bats. I thought that the two were the same.

Answer 1

A player is credited with a plate appearance whenever he bats and is credited with a hit, a walk, hit batsman, reaching on a fielder's choice, reaching on an error, reaching on a wild pitch, reaching on a passed ball, reaching on interference, reaching on obstruction, or hits a sacrifice fly or bunt.

A player is not credited with an at-bat when he walks, reaches on interference or obstruction, hits a sacrifice fly or bunt, or is hit by a pitch that entitles him to first.

Note: You can't say, for the sake of brevity, that a player is credited with a plate appearance each time he goes to the plate, as no appearance will be charged if the batter is replaced and he is not credited with a walk or strikeout.

Answer 2

You are credited with plate appearance any time you enter the batters box no matter what you do at the plate. However for the purpose of some stats. (mainly batting ave) the result of that plate appearance determines whether it counts as an official at bat. If you walk, get hit by a pitch, or sacrifice yourself to advance another runner you are not charged with an AB.

Why? your Batting Ave. should not be penalized because you were out at first base because you bunted a runner into scoring position. Likewise, you do not get rewarded with 1 for 1 if you walk.

Answer 3

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RE:
What is the difference between an "at bat" and a "plate appearance"?
My daughter plays travel softball and the book they kept had different numbers between plate appearances and at bats. I thought that the two were the same.

Answer 4

These guys can't even spell rockit sientist and they still go there to get their posters printed ... or no ... that was the sign-n-tist or something like that. It's all just too complicated. I thought Sister Mary Frances had retired but no ... SHE is STILL here ... on Yahoo/Answers posing as Tippy ... arrghhhh ... screeeeeamm ... oh the pain. But yes I totally agree with your conundrum here. Having been thru a Jesuit education I can concur with you omnificence over the unitelligible duplicity and mass stupidity that seems to be the product of a public skewl education. Now I know what they mean by "No Child Left Behind". If you flunk you go to Iraq. Hmmmm .... THAT might get the grades up, u thnk? But Tippy, you can't call them all idiots to their faces or they will give you citations so whadyadoo? And after all if everyone uses TSI as their mentor what can you expect? BTW ... TSI stands for THE SUPREME IDIOT and that would be none other than? You can guess the rest right? Oh of course ... we ALL learned that in Grammar School. The nuns were mean though. If you said it's over their they would beat you bloody with a ruler so you learned NOT to make THAT mistake. So we just kept it to ourselves on the playground and just prayed that there were no spies for Sister Helen Patricia out their. :-) Pax Vobiscum ... et *** Spiritu tuo

Answer 5

Plate Appearance means how many times you went up to bat.
At Bats means when you get a hit, for an example Arod went 4 for 4 with a walk, he got up 5 times but they dont count the walk as an official at bat.

Answer 6

You do not get an at bat if your count is 3 and 2 and a runner gets thrown out stealing for the third out of the inning - but you do get a plate appearance.

Answer 7

All good answers- one more thing to add. at-bats are used to figure out batting average, hits divided by at-bats. plate appearances are used to figure out on-base percentage. divide number of times a player reaches base (hit, walk, ROE....) by plate appearances. so a sac bunt actually hurts OBP, but doesnt affect batting average.

Answer 8

plate appearances also include walks, HPB and SacFlies
At Bats do not

Answer 9

sac bunts also do not count for ab's