On more Pbp oddity

[TheDROCK]

This happens too often for me.

With a runner on second and two out, the runner seldom scores on a single. In the real world, 90 percent of the time (if not higher) any runner will score from second on a two-out hit because he would be off on contact.

[DrArbiter]

Originally Posted by TheDROCK

This happens too often for me.

With a runner on second and two out, the runner seldom scores on a single. In the real world, 90 percent of the time (if not higher) any runner will score from second on a two-out hit because he would be off on contact.

Complaints like this probably don't carry much weight usually because they're data-free. (It is surprising how many things you think you know about how often things happen in baseball turn out to be just plain wrong!)

So I did the heavy lifting. I happened to have 2001 Retrosheet data handy; I don't expect the results to vary much year to year. In 2001, there were 1809 singles with two out, with a runner on second, where the ball was fielded by an outfielder. Of these, 1577 times the runner on second scored (87.2%); 101 times, he was thrown out (5.6%).

So, an 85-90% scoring rate on these plays would be about right. I'm guessing that some will be surprised that the throwout rate is that high, though.

I've done my best not to contribute to the general grousing, but one thing I was hopeful of was that the actual baseball would be improved in this version, especially with Markus talking about using Retrosheet data. I'm not convinced he's done a great job of that. Maybe for 2007, SI need hire a consultant to help datamine the Retrosheet data. (Perhaps one who has a codebase to do just this. )

[battists]

I apologize for the long delay in responding to this thread.

This is a very tough problem to test, but I've logged it as TT # 2035 to see if Markus can look at the frequency. DrArbiter, thanks for that data.