Here is a histogram of the run-scoring per game so far in 2010, broken down by league.

A few things to note:

• As you can see, so far the American League has scored 3 or 4 runs in a higher fraction of its games. By comparison, the National League has scored 0, 1, 2, or 5 runs more frequently.
• The American League has a strange step-plot, which I'm sure is coincidental. So far they have scored 3 and 4 runs almost identically, as well as 5 and 6 runs, and 7 and 8 runs, and 9 and 10 runs.
• The National League has played nearly 100 more games so far this season (since they have more teams.) This alone may explain why their distribution is a little bit broader. I would assume that these two distributions would get closer to each other as the season progresses.

While I was putting together this plot I decided to graph the Red Sox's team scoring. Here it is, against just the AL plot:

If you recall, a little while ago I noted how the Red Sox tended to score a bunch of runs or very fun runs. This graph really shows that with the huge dip at 4 and 5 runs. They are outpacing the rest of the AL in 6-, 7-, 8, and 9-run games, but also in 2- and 3-run games.

Here's the same plot for the Rays:

Interesting, huh? They have excelled at scoring 4 runs, but also 8-12 runs. They are way under the league average in 0-3 runs and 5-7 runs. With great pitching like theirs, 4 runs is going to be enough to win most of the time.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 24th, 2010 at 12:44 pm 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.