Here's a look at how likely a team is to win when getting no extra-base hits in a game.

(These searches were all done using Team Batting Game Finder, setting extra-base hits to zero, and then restricting the search to wins or losses.)

1954-1959: 280 wins, 1,148 losses  (19.6% W-L)

1960-1969: 789 wins, 2,862 losses  (21.6% W-L)

1970-1979: 979 wins, 3,429 losses  (22.2% W-L)

1980-1989: 795 wins, 3,052 losses  (20.7% W-L)

1990-1999: 592 wins, 2,459 losses  (19.4% W-L)

2000-2009: 407 wins, 2,161 losses  (15.8% W-L)

A couple conclusions:

• These games with no extra-base hits are getting rarer and rarer, especially when you recall that the numbers above haven't been corrected for total number of games being played (with longer season and expanded leagues.)
• The likelihood of winning seems to track pretty nicely with the overall level of offense, as would be expected. In the 1960s and early 1970s, when pitching was dominant, it was easier to win with just singles. Nowaways, it's significantly harder to do so.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 19th, 2009 at 8:26 am and is filed under Game Finders. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.