MLB Scoring in the Years 1933 and 2016

Baseball is a sport that is all about stats and if you’re a stat geek like we are then you love the game of baseball. The evolution of baseball has obviously happened on the field, but also statistically speaking. There are more ways than ever to look at how we grade the best players in the game.

Recently a very informative and stat heavy Twitter account compared the year 1933 to 2016 in terms of scoring. We thought it was so interesting that we wanted to share it with you today. Huge hat tip to @HighHeatStats for the research done.

Runs Scored:
1933 – 4.48
2016 – 4.48

Home Runs:
1933 – 0.94
2016 – 1.16

Singles:
1933 – 6.93
2016 – 5.67

Walks:
1933 – 3.00
2016 – 3.11

Strikeouts:
1933 – 3.04
2016 – 8.03

On-Base Percentage:
1933 – 3.30
2016 – .322

Slugging Percentage:
1933 – .376
2016 – .417

If you take an overall look at the scoring for both of these years, you’ll see that they are identical! Even though these seasons are 83 years apart, both year’s teams averaged 4.48 runs per game. While the scoring was identical, there were many stats far different from each other. For instance, power hitting is such a huge part in today’s game and we see that with .72 more home runs per game (and 4.99 more strikeouts per game). Generally speaking, power hitters struggle to consistently put the ball in play and we see that is the case from these stats. From the stats shown above, which do you think are the craziest?

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Photo credit: David Lee / Shutterstock.com