FanPost

Hits per Run in the American League

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.

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