The Red Sox scored a rare 1-0 win over the Giants yesterday, plus the Padres knocked off the Cubs by the same score. I used the PI to search for all 1-0 victories. (In case you're curious how I did that, I used Team Batting Game Finder, set for only games that were won, where runs scored by the team was exactly 1.)

As you might expect, the rate of such victories is dwindling. In the late 1960s (1966 to 1969) there were 61 such games in an average year. By the late 1970s, that figure declined to 47 games per year. In the late 1980s, it was level at an average of 48, but by the late 1990s it slipped to just 28 games won by a score of 1-0 per year.

(Click below for further comments and analysis)

We seem to be in a bit of a reniassance period now with 1-0 games, though. In 2006, there were 39 such games, preceded by 40 games in 2005 and 35 games in 2004. So far in 2007, we have 16 such games including the two yesterday. There was an earlier reniassance period from the years 1988 to 1992, where there were about 53 such games in an average year.

I think the reason for the overall decline in such games is obvious (generally increasing offense in the period from 1960s to present), but who has some good theories on the two reniassance periods around 1990 and present?

It's interesting to note that both of yesterday's 1-0 victories saw the game's only run score on a solo home run. If you restrict 1-0 victories to games where the run scored on a homer, there is no trend from the late 1960s to present, with an average of 10 such games per year. That means that the fraction of 1-0 games with a homer has been going up (since the total number of such games has been declining.)

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 17th, 2007 at 10:15 am and is filed under Game Finders. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.