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This is off-site and a bit off-topic, but very interesting nonetheless:
http://www.mfooz.com/bblog/?p=179
It's some fascinating data. Who has a theory?
Related posts:
This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 1:10 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
April 4th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Mitts are always getting better. Physical training is always getting better. Players are getting bigger, and having more range because of it.
Also, I think a major cause is that official scorers are getting nicer and nicer. I see a number of errors called hits each year.
April 4th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
I agree, but I think slightly nicer fields has something to do with it too. I haven't been watching baseball for that long, but sometimes I hear announcers talk about better mowed fields and fewer 'bad hops' in the newer ballparks. Also, I wonder if that 'spike' right around the strike ('94-'95) means anything...
April 4th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
I believe the main reason is the reduction in range over time. Today's players are bulkier, slower, and lack the same effort of players of old. As a result, when players are fielding balls that are, on average, closer to them, there are fewer errors.
April 5th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Have batting averages increased over that time? If that were true, it would seem that players would get more hits, but different home run totals would also skew those results... there are probably too many factors to measure that.
April 5th, 2008 at 9:10 pm
Yeah, duckshirt, I think that would be pretty tough to tell. League-wide batting averages bounce around a fair amount, and certainly don't form a really even sloped line like with the errors. One could attempt to look at the total number of singles each year to see if more singles arise at a similar rate to the decrease in errors, but it's confounded by changes in style of play, i.e. more players swinging for the fences, or swinging away instead of trying to get on by a bunt single, etc. In fact, it's sort of surprising to me that the errors graph could be so linear, since I would assume that the total number of batted ground balls varies from year to year.
April 7th, 2008 at 12:10 am
I doubt very much that players are slower or put forth any less effort than players of old. There have been times in history when there was an emphasis on quicker defenders, so we had all those nimble, poor-hitting shortstops on the artificial turf in the '70s. But overall I am sure that players are better athletes than they used to be. I'd say it's a combination of improving fields, improving equipment, increasing strikeouts, improving skill. I'd like to say it has something to do with official scoring decisions as well, but (Placido Polanco aside) I don't know if it's really true that they are any more lenient, overall, than they used to be.
April 8th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Another interesting piece....
My feelings are more closer to "Johnny Twisto's" comments of better gloves and fields have had an impact.
How about throwing out salary increases? How the home run ball and swinging for the fences relates to increase in salary.
"Chicks dig the long ball."