Womack: Run totals throughout baseball history
From SABR member Graham Womack at Baseball Past and Present on August 18, 2014:
It started out as a simple question, one I’ve had since reading in The Book that teams scored just under five runs per game from 1999 through 2002 and that generalized run expectancy totals could be gleaned based on that. Many have treated The Book as the definitive tome for sabermetrics since its publication in 2007. Candidly, I was a little irked by its use of run totals from such a peak era of baseball history to suggest normative conditions. It couldn’t be right to suggest teams all through history have averaged five runs a game. Could it?
With the help of Baseball-Reference.com and a willingness to kill a few hours making a spreadsheet, such questions can easily be answered. Going through 139 seasons of data, I found the answer to my question: through baseball history, teams have averaged 4.53 runs per game. There’s more worth saying here, granted. A more detailed, though still admittedly cursory look at what I discovered in my research follows below.
Read the full article here: http://baseballpastandpresent.com/2014/08/17/run-totals-baseball-history/
Originally published: August 19, 2014. Last Updated: August 19, 2014.