SABR Baseball Research Journal #35

SABR publications seem to come in spurts. Nothing for a few months and them bam...a bunch in the mailbox. Last week I received the Baseball Research Journal. A decent publication, nothing too spectacular but some interesting things occasionally. This issue was lead of by an article about the Monroe Monarchs (who is that?), well I wouldn't have paid attention but it was about a negro team in Monroe, LA (where I spent the better half of a month working). Small world...

Other articles of interest was the spin of a baseball released by a pitcher (two halves of the baseball leather is called the ovals of cassini), George Michael's continuing saga of mystery photos, David Smith's article on Batting Order which he presented at the 2006 SABR convention, an article about the manual scoring board at Fenway, and finally another good article from David Smith on how often a team scores if the pitcher allows the first batter on base (this was based on a Tim McCarver comment about allowing the first batter to reach base, by a walk). David's look over a 29 year period and found:

Events Runs Scored
Single 183,468 72,841 .397
Double 48,364 30,961 .640
Triple 6,573 5,793 .875
HR 27,205 27,205 1.000
Walk 82,637 33,002 .399
HP 6,217 2,543 .409
INT 81 22 .272
E 12,105 5,298 .438

So giving up a single or issuing a walk or basically allowing the runner to reach first gives that runner about a 4 in 10 shot of scoring.