by 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.