I want to start this diary by pointing out that I do not really know the relative merits of this statistic. I haven't really seen it widely used, but when I checked on Google, it does give a lot of hits. A newspaper article in the 1960s mention it, along with Mets and Astros blogs bemoaning their teams' horrible inefficiency. I think on the face of things, H/R is a lot like TBA, a meaningful way to "combine" a couple of different counting statistics.
I can tell that the teams with the highest number of runs usually have the lowest ratio.
Anyway, for this season, in the American League, the totals looks like this, arranged in order of runs scored.
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Tm | H/R | AB | R ▾ | H |
NYY | 1.67782426778243 | 1439 | 239 | 401 |
TBR | 1.64159292035398 | 1440 | 226 | 371 |
TOR | 1.63839285714286 | 1507 | 224 | 367 |
BOS | 1.81818181818182 | 1497 | 220 | 400 |
TEX | 1.88995215311005 | 1464 | 209 | 395 |
MIN | 1.89473684210526 | 1439 | 209 | 396 |
LgAvg | 1.94270833333333 | 1442 | 192 | 373 |
DET | 2.04232804232804 | 1440 | 189 | 386 |
KCR | 2.19148936170213 | 1492 | 188 | 412 |
LAA | 1.96756756756757 | 1460 | 185 | 364 |
CHW | 1.84393063583815 | 1353 | 173 | 319 |
OAK | 2.17058823529412 | 1451 | 170 | 369 |
CLE | 2.17105263157895 | 1345 | 152 | 330 |
BAL | 2.47368421052632 | 1476 | 152 | 376 |
SEA | 2.18543046357616 | 1391 | 151 |
330 |
It is not a pretty table, to say the least. In 2009, the Orioles finished with a H/R ratio of 2.03, better than only Kansas City and Seattle. In 2008, the Orioles were actually above league average in runs and in their H/R ratio, which was 1.90. However, looking over the past three seasons, there has been no team that has finished the season at a least efficient rate than the Orioles have put up so far. If things continue, I might have to try to find out what the worst mark is of all time. Seattle has finished the last two seasons with identical 2.23 H/R ratios, for worst in the AL.
On some level, I guess this will be corrected by luck, but the 2.48 the Orioles are making right now is by far the worst in the League and definitely not statistically improbable.