The NUT Score

The number the box score doesn't want you to see.

NUT stands for Net Unbiased Total. It's one number that measures how many wins a player adds — or costs — their team using only hitting and pitching.

No defense. No opinion. Just the number.

Most fans reach for the box score line — batting average, ERA, wins, RBI — to answer “who's actually good?” The box score tells you what happened. It doesn't tell you what mattered. A .310 hitter can be costing his team wins. A pitcher with a 4.50 ERA can be one of the best in baseball. NUT cuts through that noise.

The other place fans land is WAR — but there are two of them. Baseball Reference's bWAR and FanGraphs' fWAR routinely disagree by 1-2 wins on the same player, mostly because they use different defensive metrics that don't agree with each other. NUT skips that argument by leaving defense out, then settles on one calculation that's the same everywhere.

The result: when you want a single number that captures real value — without the back-and-forth between bWAR and fWAR, without defensive guesswork, without box-score myths — NUT is the answer.

How NUT Is Calculated

For hitters, NUT uses weighted on-base average (wOBA) — a stat that values each way a batter reaches base by its actual run contribution. NUT compares a player's wOBA to the league average and converts the difference into wins.

For pitchers, NUT uses Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) — which only considers strikeouts, walks, and home runs allowed. ERA gets influenced by the defense behind a pitcher. FIP strips that out.

NUT tracks every plate appearance and every pitch across all 162 games. The number is always live, always updating, and color-coded so you can tell at a glance whether a player is having an elite year or a rough one.

Rating Scale

Every NUT Score maps to a tier. The thresholds are different for hitters and pitchers because pitchers accumulate value at a different rate.

Each tier has its own color — from Below Avg to Nutty. You'll see these colors on player profiles, leaderboards, and game summaries. Once you learn them, you can read any NUT score at a glance.

Player (Season)

Team (Season)

Career (Cumulative)

Total NUT

Every finished game gets a Total NUT — the combined NUT produced by all players across both teams in that single game. It tells you at a glance how much standout player production happened.

Total NUT sums every positive individual contribution from hitters and pitchers. A dominant starter, a three-homer night, or a lights-out closer all push the number higher. A game with few standout performances stays low.

On the scoreboard and game detail pages, Total NUT is shown as a per-team split— each side's NUT under its score. Add the two numbers to get the game's Total NUT. The split makes it clear which side carried the production, even when the final score doesn't.

Total NUT Scale

Weekly NUT (Trending Players)

The Trending Playerspage ranks players by their 7-day NUT — total NUT generated over the past week. This tells you who's hot right now.

Weekly NUT Scale

Top Performer NUT (Single Game)

Every finished game shows its top 3 performers ranked by individual game NUT. These are single-game contributions — how much one player helped their team win in that specific game.

Top Performer Scale

NUT vs WAR Leaderboards

The best way to understand NUT is to see where it agrees — and disagrees — with WAR. The gaps tell the story.

About Baseball Nut

Every major baseball app is built around things that get in your way. ESPN shows you sponsored articles when you just want a score. CBS pushes Paramount+ subscriptions. The official MLB app autoplays video spoilers. And all of them bury what you came for under banner ads, breaking news tickers, and betting odds.

Baseball Nut exists to fill the gap. Scores, standings, stats, and a single number that tells you how much a player is worth. No ads, no gambling, no account required, no noise.

Whether you've watched baseball your whole life or just started following a team, you don't need to know what WAR stands for or why FIP matters. A positive NUT means the player is helping their team win. A negative NUT means the opposite. The bigger the number, the bigger the impact. That's it.

Beyond the Number

NUT is just the starting point. Every player page breaks the score down so you can see what's driving it and whether it's sustainable.

• NUT Breakdown — see how much of a hitter's NUT comes from power, contact, or discipline. For pitchers: strikeouts, HR prevention, and walk avoidance.
• Expected vs Actual (xNUT) — compares the player's NUT to their expected NUT based on quality of contact. Available for hitters (via xwOBA) and pitchers (via xwOBA-against). Reveals who's overperforming or due for a breakout.
• Percentile Rankings — where the player ranks among all MLB players for key stats, displayed as color-coded bars.
• Tier Progression — a progress bar showing how close a player is to reaching the next NUT tier.
• Park Factors — every game page shows whether the venue favors hitters or pitchers, so you can put the numbers in context.
• Live Game NUT — during live games, watch the Game NUT and top performers update in real time.
• ABS Challenge Tracking — see how each team is performing with the automated ball-strike challenge system: total challenges, wins, losses, and win rate.

Who Built This

I was born in LA the day the Dodgers won the 1981 World Series against the Yankees — so baseball was kind of inevitable. I grew up playing all through high school, and it's the only sport I'm truly in love with. My all-time favorite player is Mike Piazza, and I still collect baseball cards mostly to look at the stats on the back.

I made Baseball Nut because I wanted a simple way to check MLB scores without being bombarded with things I didn't care about. I invented the NUT Score because I wanted an easy way to see which players were doing well without reading a bunch of numbers. If you have thoughts, I'd love to hear from you.