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The Fairer Sox

Posted by Andy on August 27, 2007

The Red Sox just finished a heck of a 4-game sweep against the White Sox, winning all four games while scoring at least 10 runs in each game and allowing no more 3 in each game.

I used the PI Team Batting Streak Finder to try to find the last such occurrence of that. I did it by setting the outcome to win, runs scored greater than or equal to 10, and then looking for streaks of at least 4 games that all game against one opponent.

In short, I couldn't find any. Here are some near misses:

In 1998, the Yankees swept three (not four) games from Oakland. But they also allowed 4 runs in one of those games and 5 runs in another.

In 1962, the Giants won 5 straight games while scoring at least 10 runs. But there was a loss sandwiched in there, and 3 of the wins were against the Mets while 2 were against the Dodgers. And the Mets scored 4 runs in one game.

The AP report for yesterday's BoSox-ChiSox game notes that:

"The Red Sox outscored Chicago 46-7 in the series. Boston scored at least 10 runs in each game, only the fourth time that has happened in a four-game series since 1900, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. It's the first time it has happened in the American League in 85 years. The St. Louis Browns did it in 1920 and 1922, and the Colorado Rockies in 1996. Boston's run total in the series was the most for the franchise since it scored the same amount against the Browns in 1949"

So here is the Rockies stream from 1996.  All the games were against LA, and they managed to lose one of them 13-10, while winning one 16-15. (Want a little time warp action? Look at the box score of that game, in which both Todd Worrell and Bruce Ruffin blew saves. Not to mention Curt Leskanic, Darren Holmes, and Scott Radinsky also blowing saves.)

Check out the Browns 1920 schedule and you see that it was the Red Sox they beat up on from June 12th to June 15th, scoring an average of 10.8 runs and allowing an average of 5.5 runs while winning 4 straight games.

The 1922 occurrence by the Browns was against Cleveland, from September 4th to September 6th (it, like the recent BoSox series, included a double-header.) They scored an average of, again, 10.8 runs while allowing an average of 4.0.

All in all, it was a very impressive showing by the Red Sox. Scoring 10 runs these days isn't as tough as it used to be, but allowing so few runs over 4 games while scoring so many is quite impressive.

2 Responses to “The Fairer Sox”

  1. denniscookfanclub Says:

    I noticed in the Rockies box score that only 8 of the 16 runs were earned. I wonder how often a team has scored 10 or more runs with at least half of them unearned?

  2. Andy Says:

    Thanks for the question...I posted an answer here:

    http://www.baseball-reference.com/sotd/archives/241