Okay, so today I want to talk about what a “LOB” is in baseball. I’ve been watching a lot of games lately, and I kept hearing this term. It got me curious, so I decided to figure it out.
First, I tried to find out what the heck “LOB” even stood for. Turns out it’s short for “Left On Base.” That made a little more sense, but I still wasn’t totally clear on what it meant. So, I started digging a little deeper.
I watched more games and started to notice that LOB was mentioned when runners were still on the bases at the end of an inning. Like, if there were guys on first and second when the third out was made, those dudes would be “left on base”. I figured it had something to do with that, but I needed more info.
So, I went online and started searching. I found a bunch of stuff, but a lot of it was super technical and hard to understand. But I kept reading, and I eventually figured out that LOB is basically a stat that shows how many runners a team or a batter didn’t manage to bring home to score.
For example, if a team had runners on first and third when the inning ended, that’s two LOB for the team. And if a batter came up to the plate and left those runners stranded, it’s also two LOB for that batter’s stats. I guess it’s a way to show how many scoring opportunities a team or a player didn’t capitalize on. In another word, they were unable to convert their chances to win the game.
I also learned that there’s something called LOB%, which is like the percentage of runners left on base. From what I read, the average LOB% for teams is usually around 72%. So if a team or a pitcher has a really high LOB%, it means they’re leaving a lot of runners on base, which I guess isn’t good.
So, yeah, that’s what I found out about LOB in baseball. It’s basically a way to measure how many times a team or player fails to score runs when they have the chance. I’m still learning about all the ins and outs of baseball, but I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on this LOB thing now. Hope this helps anyone else who was wondering about it!
