Trying to keep track of progress and establish company-wide benchmarks. I understand that each language is different, but are there general benchmarks for these sorts of things?
Developers probably shouldn't make a TON of changes at once and do it all as one commit. But they probably shouldn't commit at every line change.
Any thoughts on performance standards?
While I agree that for some tracking the number of commits and lines isn't the most useful metric for quality code, it can still provide you with a good birds eye view of how your company is doing. For development teams of more then 20 people being able to track your coders and make sure everyone is on track and moving forward with projects is a good thing to know.
Additionally some argue that it can take an entire day to solve one bug, but being stuck on a single problem can also be unproductive. Its better to keep moving forward then to get bogged down on a single item. Being able to know who is stuck helps me allocate my resources better and find those are frankly just not getting anything done.
If you looking for metrics like that i would recommend CodeGraphite or git-stats