from Amazon
Thursday, May 20, 2010
What does the change in run scoring mean?
A BJOL reader:
Over the past few years pitching has become more dominant.
The reader is really saying “fewer runs are being scored”, which is not the same thing. You can change the boundaries of the strike zone, you can change the composition of the balls or bats, you can change the configuration of a park. You can do anything whereby you have the same participants do the same thing, and run scoring changes. That result, the change in run scoring, does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that pitcher or hitting or fielding is any better or worse.
It drives me nuts when people look at that single outcome, like runs scored, and then come to some conclusion, almost always unsupportable. Even worse is when people look at seasonal data (runs scored in April), compared it to full-season data (runs scored in 2009) and make a conclusion. Worse still, they will ignore data in 2008, 2007, and 2006, too.
You know who you are that does this. Stop it.