Fun quiz...

Postby The Last Druid » Sat May 26, 2012 8:38 am

94. Giving the actual numbers and the main team were way too big hints.
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Postby Outta Leftfield » Sat May 26, 2012 8:44 am

[quote:847bbe880e="danielz"]81
Triples are hard[/quote:847bbe880e]

Yes! Mostly because it's players from the very early days of baseball. Doubles and singles are a pretty well mixed scatter of players from all eras, but HR are dominated by players from 1920 on (really, with a few exceptions, from 1950 on) while triples are mostly pre-1920.

My theory about those early triples is that outfielders tended to play shallower before they had to worry about the HR or the high, deep fly to the warning track. They were more concerned with cutting out the singles in front of them. When a hitter did really get ahold of one against a shallow-positioned OF, it could be a triple. When outfielders started playing deep to protect against the HR and the near-HR (the high drive to the wall), they started cutting off the triple. So the rise in HR drove out the triple.

But doubles have stayed consistently around the same level pretty much since 1901, I think.
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Postby rburgh » Sat May 26, 2012 1:04 pm

All stats here are on a per team per game basis, ignoring stats before 1876.

Doubles have ranged from 1 to about 1.9 per game. The low was around 1905, and the peak about 1929. For the last two decades, they have been around 1.8.

Triples were about 0.5 for most of the 19th century, with a peak of about 0.8 in (surprise!) 1894. They didn't decline below 0.5 until the 1930's, and since then have reached the modern level of about 0.2.

Home runs were rare until the age of Ruth; in 1894 they peaked at about 0.4, a figure that would not be reached again until 1920 or so. Except for WW2, they steadily increased until the peak of the roid era in the 1990's, reaching about 1.2. Currently they are hovering around 1.0.

All of these numbers, of course, fluctuate from year to year. The Roger Connor article posted a couple of days ago has a nice explanation of the whys and wherefores of the triple and HR in the 19th century. I suspect the decline in triples resulted from (a) Ruth, (b) ballparks with reachable fences, and (c) better fielding equipment. I leave it to you all to reach your own conclusions about which was most to blame. Having been to about a dozen games in Forbes Field, I would suspect B was the main culprit, but it's hard to know without a lot of number crunching that I am not of a mind to do.
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Postby ironwill1 » Sat May 26, 2012 5:28 pm

86 when I tried it. Missed Burkett for 2 spots...
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Postby guardian154 » Sun May 27, 2012 6:34 am

48...missed to many obvious...Tried every cub I could think of in the HR category but Banks. Completely drew a blank on Molitor, knew who I wanted couldn't come up with the name. Should be kicked for forgetting Foxx, Speaker and Mcgwire....fun though
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