Winning 1-0
Posted by Steve Lombardi on June 2, 2008
The other day, the Brewers beat the Braves, 1-0.
This got me wondering as to how many times, these days, in a baseball season, does a team win 1-0?
Thanks to Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Team Batting Game Finder, it's not hard to find out. Here are the number of times teams have won 1-0, since 2004:
Year Games Link to Individual Games +----+-----+-------------------------+ 2005 40 Ind. Games 2006 39 Ind. Games 2004 35 Ind. Games 2007 34 Ind. Games 2008 14 Ind. Games Games found: 162.
As you can see, since 2004, there are only about 35-40 games in a season where someone wins 1-0. What does that make it - about 2% of the time that someone wins a game 1-0? Pretty rare these days, huh?
Back in 1968, in that season alone, a team won a game, by a score of 1-0, 82 times. That was the year of the pitcher...indeed.
June 3rd, 2008 at 6:26 pm
It's not that hard to use the Situational Records thingie here at br.com to find the number of 1-0 games in any particular season since 1901. In 1908, for example, there were 80 1-0 games. I think that's more impressive than the 82 in 1968, since there were 16 teams playing 154 games in 1908, 20 playing 162 in 1968. The Pirates won 10 such games in 1908, the Tigers, 9. The since-1901 record is 94, in 1914. There were only 15 in 1930 - no surprise that that year saw the lowest total.
June 3rd, 2008 at 6:29 pm
By the way, 30 of those 1-0 games in 1914 were in the Federal League, so 1908 is still better on a
per-game basis.