&gt;Comparing them is like comparing the number of hits made by two different baseball teams in a season without considering how many of those hits were foul balls, grounders, home runs, etc. One team may have a higher number of hits than another, but if they hit a lot more foul balls, while the team with fewer hits had a higher proportion of home runs and RBIs (runs batted in), the higher number of hits is revealed as a misleading statistic.<p>For what it&#x27;s worth, in baseball, a foul ball or grounding into an out do not count as hits; a hit means a batter successfully reached first base without a fielder&#x27;s choice.  Number of hits is still not very meaningful — something like slugging, on-base percentage, or OPS is more instructive — but it&#x27;s not as bad as this example is making out.