We have moved to our new permanent home at HighHeatStats.com!

All existing content will remain, but all new content is posted at our new location.

Once again, five runs is enough to win

Posted by Andy
Here's yet another way of looking at the effect of the Steroids Era. When a team scores exactly 5 runs, they win more often than they lose. That's always been true. But check out the team winning percentage when scoring exactly 5 runs over the last 25 years:



In the late 1980s (save the whacked out homer-happy 1987), five runs meant nearly a 70% chance of winning. But then the juice kicked in and there was a rapid decline in 5-run-winning-percentage in the mid 1990s. The valley was in 1996, when teams scoring exactly 5 runs won only 55% of the time.

After offense peaked in 2001, the win percentage went back on the rise, continuing mainly upwards through 2011, when teams scoring exactly 5 runs won 65% of the time.

That difference--55% in 1996 vs 65% in 2011--might not sound like a lot, but consider this: a team that finishes the season with a .550 winning percentage has gone 89-73 while a team that finishes at .650 has gone 105-57. That's the difference between a team with a shot at the wild card and a runaway winner for the best record in baseball.

No comments:

Post a Comment