These days, most fans realize that batting average is one of those stats that's illuminating only at the margins. If a player is hitting .350, he's necessarily good. If he's hitting .180, he's necessarily not. However, it's possible for a player who's hitting .240 to be better than the player who's hitting .290. That's because a batter's secondary skills -- i.e., getting on base and hitting for power -- are more important than his ability to hit for high averages.
After all, batting average tells you only how often a player reached base by hit. It doesn't tell you how often he reached base by all means available to him (as on-base percentage does), and it doesn't tell you to what extent he put up power numbers (as slugging percentage does).
And this lengthy intro brings us to White Sox punisher-of-baseballs Adam Dunn, who recently had this to say of his .226 average: "Honestly, I really don't look at batting average. I know my job is to drive in runs and get on base and things of that nature. I don't care how I get on. I mean, whatever: Walk, hit, I don't care. But it's down at the bottom." [MLB.com]
He's right. Dunn on the season is hitting .226/.369/.557. The last two figures of that "triple slash" -- the OBP and the SLG -- are the ones that matter. Dunn is getting on base at a nifty clip, and he ranks eighth in the AL in slugging. (Oh, and he's also on pace for 54 homers.) Yes, you'd prefer that Dunn hit for a higher average, but if shortening his swing/choking up/going the other way/whatever comes at the expense of his power and walk rate, then it's a losing trade for a player like Dunn. Dunn at .226/.369/.557 is a better hitter than Dunn at .280/.350/.470. No, Dunn isn't a good player when he's batting .159 as he did in 2011, but he can be a good player when he's batting .226, as he is in 2012.
And what of those strikeouts? Sure, it'd be preferable if Dunn didn't swing and miss so much, but strikeouts aren't that much worse than any other flavor of out. From the 1999-2002 period, for instance, each batter strikeout cost the team in question -0.31 runs on average. All offensive outs taken together, meanwhile, cost the team -0.299 runs on average. As you can see, the distinction is at the fractional level. Besides, strikeouts are often a natural consequence of swinging as hard as Dunn does, and, again, you don't want Dunn to do anything to compromise his power stroke.
So, yes, when Adam Dunn's OBP and SLG are high, he's a highly productive hitter no matter what the rest of his stat line says.
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