The Coach's Guide to Quality At-Bats (QAB)

Your third baseman just ripped a line drive right at the shortstop. She's 0-for-2. Her dad in the bleachers is shaking his head. But you saw something different: a compact swing, hard contact, good pitch selection. That was a great at-bat that happened to result in an out.

Batting average says she failed. Quality at-bat says she competed.

That distinction is why QAB is becoming the most important offensive stat in youth baseball coaching. This guide covers everything — the criteria, how to track it, how to use it in evaluations, how to build a lineup around it, and how to communicate it to players and parents who've never heard of it.

An at-bat is a QAB if it meets any one of these criteria. The full list and definitions are on the QAB stat page →, but here's the practical version:

Results that are obviously good: A hit. A walk. A hit-by-pitch. A sacrifice that moves a runner.

Process that was good, even if the result wasn't: A hard-hit ball that the defense caught. A long at-bat (8+ pitches) that made the pitcher work. A productive out that advanced a runner. Fighting back from an 0-2 count and driving the pitch count up.

The key insight: QAB tracks what the batter controls. A batter can't control where the ball lands after contact. They can control whether they swing at good pitches, hit the ball hard, and compete in tough counts. QAB measures those controllable actions.

We're not saying batting average is useless. We're saying it's incomplete — and at the youth level, its incompleteness causes real coaching problems.

Problem 1: Batting average rewards luck. A soft grounder through a hole in the infield is a hit. A screaming line drive right at the center fielder is an out. Over a full MLB season (600+ at-bats), luck evens out. Over a 15-game rec season (45 at-bats), it doesn't. Youth batting averages are noisy, volatile, and unreliable.

Problem 2: Batting average punishes good at-bats. A player who hits .220 but has a .500 QAB percentage is doing almost everything right at the plate. If you bench them because of their batting average, you're coaching against the data.

Problem 3: Batting average creates anxiety. A 12-year-old who's worried about "going 0-for" will swing at bad pitches to avoid a strikeout. That's the opposite of a quality approach. QAB frees players to focus on the process — "hit the ball hard, take good swings, work the count" — because even an 0-for-3 day can include 2-3 quality at-bats.

Problem 4: Batting average doesn't capture walks. OBP fixes this, but QAB goes further — it also captures hard outs, productive outs, and competitive long at-bats. It's the most complete single measure of offensive approach.

There are two ways to track QAB during games:

Have a coach or scorer mark each at-bat as QAB or non-QAB immediately after it happens. In Rizzler's scoring feature, this takes one extra tap per at-bat. The benefit: you have the data instantly and don't rely on post-game memory.

After the game, review the scoring data and apply the QAB criteria retroactively. This works but is less accurate — you might not remember whether that groundout in the third inning was hard-hit or routine.

This player is 0-for-3 with a walk. Batting average for the game: .000. QAB: 3 out of 4 (75%). Very different story.

QAB is one of the most valuable inputs for player evaluations because it captures approach and competitiveness — things that predict future development better than current batting average.

A player with a declining batting average but an improving QAB percentage is usually on the right track. The hits will come as their skills catch up to their approach.

A player with a high batting average but a low QAB percentage might be getting lucky — soft singles, slow rollers, balls that found holes. Their offensive ceiling is limited until their approach improves.

In mid-season and end-of-season evaluations, compare QAB trends alongside OBP, strikeout rate, and OPS for the fullest picture.