The PI has a neat feature about team scoring and records by inning. It can be reached from the main PI page.

Here are the runs score for all teams in 2007:

Runs Scored by inning.

 Inning   #    0  Any    1    2    3    4   ≥5  Most Total  Avg Avg/9inn
+------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+
    1   4862 3276 1586  845  394  191  100   56   11 2921  0.60 5.41
    2   4862 3507 1355  782  337  133   54   49    8 2357  0.48 4.36
    3   4862 3445 1417  736  360  174   78   69    8 2670  0.55 4.94
    4   4862 3434 1428  757  362  182   63   64   10 2631  0.54 4.87
    5   4862 3427 1435  717  379  187   82   70   11 2777  0.57 5.14
    6   4858 3363 1495  764  367  205   90   69   11 2869  0.59 5.32
    7   4856 3500 1356  723  331  169   71   62    8 2519  0.52 4.67
    8   4854 3525 1329  695  334  151   77   72   11 2534  0.52 4.70
    9   3754 2819  935  524  237  100   42   32    7 1640  0.44 4.00
   10    440  323  117   79   20   12    3    3    8  185  0.46 4.13
   11    246  180   66   49   11    3    2    1    5   93  0.41 3.72
   12    128   89   39   25    6    2    4    2    6   70  0.58 5.24
   13     62   44   18   10    5    3    0    0    3   29  0.51 4.61
   14     30   21    9    6    1    2    0    0    3   14  0.50 4.50
   15     12    8    4    2    1    0    0    1    5    9  0.75 6.75
   16      6    5    1    1    0    0    0    0    1    1  0.18 1.59
   17      4    2    2    1    1    0    0    0    2    3  0.75 6.75
+------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+
        43560 30968 12592 6716 3146 1514  666  550   11 23322  0.54 4.83

So, for example, let's say you want to know how many times a team scored 1 run in the 7th inning of a game. Well, you go down the list to Inning # 7, then read across to the column for "1" and you see it happened 723 times in 2007.

There are so many interesting things we can glean from the data above:

• Firstly, it provides a nice summary of the total length of games this year. We can see that there were 4862 team games (meaning 2431 actual games since each game has 2 teams.) Then there were 4 games that went just 5 innings, since only 4858 games went at least 6 innings. Did you realize that 4 team games (2 actual games) went 17 innings this year?
• Check out scoring of 1 run in an inning (the "1" column.) From innings 2 through 7, it's pretty constant at about 757 runs, meaning any given team has roughly a 1 in 6.5 chance of scoring 1 run in each inning, 2 through 7, based on this year's actual numbers. But inning #1 saw a lot more 1-run innings at 845, about 1 in 5.8 chance. One run in the 9th happened 524 times, but in many fewer games (remember that winning home teams don't bat in the 9th), about 1 in 7.2.

So let me give you all that data:

             1               2               3               4               5+

1          5.8            12.3            25.5            48.6            86.8
2          6.2            14.4            36.6            90.0            99.2
3          6.6            13.5            27.9            62.3            70.5
4          6.4            13.4            26.7            77.2            76.0
5          6.8            12.8            26.0            59.3            69.5
6          6.4            13.2            23.7            54.0            70.4
7          6.7            14.7            28.7            68.4            78.3
8          7.0            14.5            32.1            63.0            67.4
9          7.2            15.8            37.5            89.4            117.3

So this are the odds of a team scoring a given number of runs (1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 or more) in any given inning (just 1 through 9 shown.) The lower the odds, the more frequently it happened in 2007.

You can see that for 2 runs in an inning, the first inning was still the best (1 in 12.3) but the fifth inning was close (1 in 12.8), and generally the first inning has a smaller overall advantage than for scoring 1 run in an inning.

Now look at 3 runs. It's actually most likely to score 3 runs in the 6th inning (1 in 23.7), followed by the first inning (1 in 25.5.)

For 4 runs, the first inning becomes most common again, but then for 5 runs, the first inning is actually one of the least likely times.

We can't read too much into the data for 3, 4, and 5+ run innings because they are fairly rare events compared to 1 and 2-run innings. I just found it interesting.

Notice too that scoring a lot of runs in the 9th is really difficult, especially 3 or more.

Anyway, this page has a lot of cool info. This column just scratches the surface of what's there.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 2nd, 2007 at 8:08 am and is filed under Innings Summary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.