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Why did F.C. Lane argue that batting average was an incomplete statistic?

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Green retro manual baseball scoreboard beyond an empty, neatly mowed baseball field with brown infield dirt and striped grass outfield. — Sabermetrics A scoreboard provides some – but not necessarily the most useful – data on player and team performances in baseball.

F.C. Lane argued that batting average—a ratio of base hits to official times at bat—was an inadequate indicator of a player's performance because it treated all hits as equal.12

Lane pointed out that it made little sense to count a single the same as a home run when evaluating a batter's contribution. To address this, he developed his own system that assigned specific, more accurate values to different types of hits, including singles, doubles, triples, and home runs. During his long tenure as editor of Baseball Magazine, he consistently challenged conventional statistical wisdom, advocating for a more nuanced approach to measuring offensive output.1