Quote:
Originally Posted by Ceej
file updated with 1893 and 1907 - I'm done now, I swear 
Here's a line graph depicting the ITPHR percentages over time according to the data for the seasons I did. The big spike was in 1901 when the American League arrived, and the big temporary drop in 1915 was due to the Federal League having a low rate. The rate declined sharply for good at the beginning of the lively ball era and probably dropped to a little under 1% in the mid-1950s or so. Today in MLB there are usually about 15 inside-the-parkers hit per season, for an even lower rate of 0.3 or 0.4 percent, one would think due to smaller parks and the disappearance of Astroturf. More to come. |
The obvious question here is "what drove the massive spike in ISTP homers in the late 1890s?" The 1920 collapse is pretty easily explained by teams scrambling to move fences in as Babe Ruth's style of play became popularized, along with clean balls and possibly juiced balls. But I don't know of anything that screams out Lots More Inside the Parkers in the 1895-1900 timeframe. I don't think there was massive ballpark turnover in this era, there weren't any huge rules changes between the mound in '93 and the foul-strike rule after the turn of the century. Runs scored were on a gradual downward plane between '94 and 1900, falling off more quickly thereafter.
I really don't know.
Maybe it's related to the drastic, 75% reduction in per-game homers in the 1895-1902 era. Something was causing over-the-fence homers to disappear, and the percentage (if not the total) of ISTPers to shoot up. At first glance it sounds like a bunch of big parks sprung up.