Calculating Baseball Statistics - Range Factor (RF)

Range Factor (or RF for short) is a baseball statistic designed to help to quantify a baseball player's fielding ability. Taken together with Fielding Percentage (FP%), it can be quite helpful in evaluating a player's defensive abilities.

Fielding Percentage is simply a ratio that shows the percentage of plays a particular fielder makes out of all plays he attempted to make. The formula is:

Fielding Percentage = (Assists + Putouts) / (Assists + Putouts + Errors)

While a useful statistic, Fielding Percentage does have a few flaws that would make using it alone to evaluate a fielder a mistake. One of the biggest issues is that it only counts those plays that a fielder attempts to make. If Player A has limited fielding range, but makes most of the plays he gets to, he'll have a high Fielding Percentage. What about the balls he didn't get to, though, that a player with more range might have gotten to? Those all went for hits. Now, what if Player B makes all the plays that Player A made, plus attempted 1/3 more total plays, only making half of them. Well, he'll have turned about 15% more possible hits into outs, a very good thing, but his fielding percentage would actually be lower than that of Player A.

Range Factor measures the number of plays a fielder attempts in an average game. The formula is:

Range Factor = (Assists + Putouts) / Games

Range Factor is displayed as a number with two numbers after the decimal point. For example, say a player has 344 Assists and 211 Putouts in 150 games. The RF is calculated by adding 344 and 211 (a total of 555) and dividing by 150 and is written as 3.70.