R-H-E - why E?

[Eric]

One thing that has puzzled me is that baseball announcers and the newspaper box scores tracks errors along with runs and hits? What's the significance of errors? Other than Buckner and Baartman, I don't recall errors having a major impact on a game. Is it a leftover from an error where people played on crappy fields with crappy mits and wound up incurring a lot of errors?

[disposableheros]

i only verified last year, but ive read before that 1 E = .66 runs (last year 1e=.58r). not what i would call a minor impact, you?

[Dagrims]

A quick glance at major league team pitching totals shows an average of 50 unearned runs given up by each team. That's 1500 runs that theoretically would not have scored had there been no errors. That seems like it could affect some game outcomes.

[disposableheros]

Originally Posted by Dagrims

A quick glance at major league team pitching totals shows an average of 50 unearned runs given up by each team. That's 1500 runs that theoretically would not have scored had there been no errors. That seems like it could affect some game outcomes.

i just did the same thing dagrims, but for the years 2000-2003 and it was actually ~1800 runs a year. like you said, that sure changes a lot of 1 run games.

[dougaiton]

I think it's a throwback to the days when people didn't consider walks to matter, and wanted to summarise how many baserunners there were. Could be wrong, though.

[JDOldSchool]

One idea is that it's a way to give a quick number to show how well the defense played. Obviously errors are not the only aspect of defense, but it's probably the most quantifable (of course, assists and put outs are, but you can tell the number of put outs based on the innings so that number doesn't need to be shown in a line score).

[Le Grande Orange]

I'd guess it's a holdover from the 19th century baseball days when errors were far more common. Ten or more errors by one team was not unusual if I recall correctly.

[Skipaway]

Originally Posted by disposableheros

i just did the same thing dagrims, but for the years 2000-2003 and it was actually ~1800 runs a year. like you said, that sure changes a lot of 1 run games.

Actually we shouldn't treat unearned runs that way. Most unearned runs aren't just caused by errors, they are often produced by errors AND the hits or walks in the same inning. If not for those hits and walks, there would be no unearned runs either. So we should only put part of the credit to the errors.

[ctorg]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

I'd guess it's a holdover from the 19th century baseball days when errors were far more common. Ten or more errors by one team was not unusual if I recall correctly.

That's kind of what I was thinking, too.

[KurtBevacqua]

If fielding is so insignificant then why was Boston willing to move Nomar and replace him with a much better fielding SS? Just in my OOTP experience I have noticed my teams losing pennant races because of too many errors. Are errors worthy of a box score entry along with runs and hits? Maybe, maybe not, but I would never say errors or fielding % have little impact on the game.

[Skipaway]

Originally Posted by KurtBevacqua

If fielding is so insignificant then why was Boston willing to move Nomar and replace him with a much better fielding SS? Just in my OOTP experience I have noticed my teams losing pennant races because of too many errors. Are errors worthy of a box score entry along with runs and hits? Maybe, maybe not, but I would never say errors or fielding % have little impact on the game.

Who are you arguing against? You got to admit there is no "major" impact either.

[MrWorkrate]

It gives the crappier teams a score to beat the better team at.

[Dan Theman]

Originally Posted by MrWorkrate

It gives the crappier teams a score to beat the better team at.

EXACTLY!!! As a long time Indians fan, I remember going to the games as a kid with my dad back in the 70's & 80's and comparing the totals at the end. Even though we'd lose in runs and hits, we still had a fighting chance to win at errors!

[Vezna31]

It's there because of tradition.

[Cardinal Rule]

I believe you may find the answer here.

[disposableheros]

Originally Posted by Skipaway

You got to admit there is no "major" impact either.

my first post in this thread

Originally Posted by disposableheros

i only verified last year, but ive read before that 1 E = .66 runs (last year 1e=.58r). not what i would call a minor impact, you?

and on the statement

Originally Posted by disposableheros

...for the years 2000-2003 and it was actually ~1800 runs a year. like you said, that sure changes a lot of 1 run games.

you think that 1800 runs scored did not effect 1 run games?

if the errors dont occur, then in a ton of cases those hits and walks after them do not either. the errors do have a significant effect on those runs scoring.

are we arguing just to argue?

[KurtBevacqua]

Originally Posted by Skipaway

Who are you arguing against? You got to admit there is no "major" impact either.

I'm arguing against the fact Eric says errors don't have a major impact on the game.

I did a quick study of the National League from 1953 through last season comparing the performance of the teams with the best league wide fielding % against the teams with the worst. During that stretch teams with the league's best fielding % overall won 56.3% of their games while teams with the league's worst % only won 43.5%.

Some other interesting facts, teams leading the league in fielding % won the pennant or division title 25/51 times and only finished had a losing record 5/51 seasons. None finished last in the league or division.

Meanwhile, teams with the league's worst fielding % finished last 20/51 times, only 7/51 even had a winning record. Curiously, twice teams with the worst % did manage to win a division (71 Giants and 85 Dodgers).

Clearly errors do impact the game when over 90% of the time the best fielding team in the league have a winning record, with very nearly 50% of them finishing first. Conversely a team with the league's worst fielding % stands an 86% chance of having a losing record and about a 40% chance of finishing dead last.

For context I took another look at the correlation betweem teams leading the league in batting % (hits) and teams last in batting over that same time frame. Lacking the time, I didn't compute overall win-loss%, but I did look at finishes and winning vs losing records.

Teams leading the National League in batting from 1953-2003 finished in first place 20/51 times (compared with 25/51 for top fielding teams). 5 teams leading the league in batting had losing records, exactly the same as teams leading the league in fielding.

Teams having the worst batting average in the league finished last 26/51 times, compared with 20/51 for worst fielding teams. Three of the worst batting teams managed to have winning records, compared with 7 of the worst fielding teams.

I think we basically have a draw here when comparing the correlation between hits (BA) and errors (Fld%) and the success or failures of teams. Therefore it could certainly be argued that errors deserve to be tracked in the final box score every bit as much as hits since the correlation of a team's success with regard to how well they hit or field is very nearly the same.

[Vezna31]

My total is that way back in the day, errors happened as commonly as hits because of bad equipment/field conditions. It had become a box score tradition because of its major role, and it still posesses a factor in scoring today, just not as much as it once did. If that were the case of why hasn't it been changed, you could argue why HRs hasn't become part of the R-H-E once the game began to transition to the long ball with Ruth on the scene instead of hitting for average and running the paths like a warrior like Cobb did.

[Eckstein 4 Prez]

May I recommend The Numbers Game? It has everything you'd ever want to know about the history of baseball statistics.