In baseball, the batting average (BA) is defined by the number of hits divided by at bats. It is usually reported to three decimal places and pronounced as if it were multiplied by 1,000: a player with a batting average of .300 is "batting three-hundred." A point (or percentage point) is understood to be .001. If necessary to break ties, batting averages could be taken to more than three decimal places.
Catcher Josh Gibson, whose career ended in 1946, has the highest batting average in Major League Baseball (MLB) history.[1][a] He batted .372 over 14 seasons, mostly with the Homestead Grays. In addition, he also holds the single-season record for highest batting average in major league history at .466 in 1943. Gibson never recorded a batting average of under .310 in any full season. Ty Cobb is second all-time with a career batting average of .366. He won a record 11 batting titles in the American League from 1907–1909, 1911–1915 and 1917–1919. Oscar Charleston is third with a career batting average of .364. He is the only player to have won consecutive Triple Crowns, having done so in 1924 and 1925.
A player must have a minimum of 5,000 at-bats to qualify for the list. For Negro League players, the minimum is set at 1,800 at-bats, or 5,000 at-bats combining both Negro League and AL/NL appearances.[1]
Different sources of baseball records present somewhat differing lists of career batting average leaders. Until the incorporation of statistics from Negro league baseball into major-league records in 2024, Ty Cobb was the consensus leader. Subsequently, he was supplanted by Josh Gibson on the official MLB leaderboard.[2]
As of 20 September 2024[update], no active player appears in the below list; the active player ranking highest is Jose Altuve, tied in 146th with a .3062 career batting average.[1]
Source:[1]
