What Is a Good Batting Average? MLB Benchmarks and Youth Reality

3 September 2026 · 6 min read

It's the first question every baseball parent asks, and the internet answers it badly. You'll find pages confidently listing "a good batting average for 10U is .350" with no source at all behind the number. Here's what can honestly be said, and what can't.

What is a good batting average in Major League Baseball?

This part has a real answer, because the numbers are published. Across all 30 clubs in the 2025 regular season, the league-wide batting average was .245, computed from official MLB team totals.

One thing worth noticing immediately: the league average is .245, not .300. A hitter who fails to get a hit in three of every four at-bats is a perfectly ordinary big leaguer. That's a useful thing to say out loud to an eleven-year-old having a bad month.

What is a good batting average for a youth player?

There isn't an honest single number, and anyone who gives you one has made it up. Here's why the question doesn't have the answer people want:

• Pitching quality varies wildly between leagues. A .400 average against coach pitch and a .280 average against a good 12U travel arm are not the same accomplishment.
• Errors inflate everything. At younger ages a huge share of balls in play are misplayed, and depending on the scorekeeper, many are recorded as hits.
• Sample sizes are tiny. A rec season might be 40 at-bats. Going 2-for-4 in one game moves a season average by 30 points. Professional averages are judged over 500 at-bats for a reason.
• Scorekeeping is inconsistent. Two parents scoring the same game will not produce the same hit total.

What to look at instead

Four comparisons that are actually meaningful for a young player, in rough order of usefulness:

1. The player against themselves, over the season. A .180 average in April that's .280 by June is a player who is improving. That's the whole story, and it needs nothing but consistent logging.
2. The player against their own previous season. Same kid, a year older, probably a level up. This is the comparison that shows development.
3. The player against their own league's leaderboard. If your league publishes one, it accounts for the pitching, the field and the scorekeeping conventions your player is actually facing.
4. On-base percentage instead of average. For youth ball this is genuinely the better number — it counts walks, and at ages where pitchers are wild, plate discipline is often the most valuable and most coachable skill on the field.

Why OBP beats average for young players

Two hitters both go 1-for-4. One struck out three times; the other walked twice on top of the four at-bats. Their batting averages are identical at .250. Their on-base percentages are .250 and .500.

The second player is doing something much more valuable, and batting average is structurally incapable of showing it — walks aren't at-bats, so they neither help nor hurt the average. For context, the 2025 MLB league-wide OBP was .315 against that .245 average. There's a fuller comparison in OBP vs batting average.

How to actually know

All of this depends on one unglamorous thing: someone recording the games consistently, all season, in one place. Not the good games. All of them.

You can do it on paper with the free printable scorecard or the game stat sheet, then run the totals through the batting average calculator. By August the shoebox of paper is usually the reason people stop, which is what MyBallPlayer is for — a minute after each game, and the season charts itself.

Frequently asked questions

What is a good batting average?

In Major League Baseball, the 2025 league-wide average was .245; .270 to .290 is a good regular and .300 is an excellent season. For youth players there is no reliable published benchmark, so compare a player against their own earlier games, their previous season and their league's leaderboard.

What is the average batting average in MLB?

Across all 30 clubs in the 2025 regular season it was .245, computed from official MLB team totals.

What is a good batting average for 12U?

Nobody can answer that honestly with a single number, because it depends entirely on the level of pitching, how errors are scored in your league and how many at-bats the season contains. Judge the trend across the season and compare against your own league's leaderboard instead.

Is .300 a good batting average?

Yes. In MLB it is well above the .245 league average and has long been the traditional mark of an excellent hitter. In youth leagues, .300 can mean very different things depending on the pitching faced.

Why is my child's average dropping when they're hitting the ball well?

Hard-hit balls straight at fielders are outs, and over a short youth season a handful of them can move an average 50 points or more. This is exactly why on-base percentage and the season-long trend tell you more than a single average.

Do walks lower batting average?

No. A walk is not an at-bat, so it does not appear in the batting average calculation at all. It does raise on-base percentage.