Fascinating look at early (1900's) stat heads.
Using his "how many runs scored on each hit" system, he figured out that:
A single is worth .46 of a run.
A double is worth .79 of a run.
A triple is worth 1.15 of a run
A home run is worth 1.55 of a run.
Pause once more to think about this. He only looked at 1,000 hits in 1916. He came up with a quirky system to figure out how many runs scored. Now, jump ahead 50 years. John Thorn and Pete Palmer wrote "The Hidden Game of Baseball," an all-time classic. In it, they introduced the Linear Weights system. For it, they used computer simulations and ALL the data available going back to 1901.
And this is what they determined.
A single is worth .46 of a run.
A double is worth .80 of a run
A triple is worth 1.02 of a run
A home run is worth 1.40 of a run
Numerous other people — Friend of Blog Tom Tango among them — have looked at Linear Weights, tweaked it, worked with it, and the numbers move a bit here and there. But the point here is that what F.C. Lane did through sheer will power, limited data and some rudimentary math skill was REMARKABLY accurate and at least a half century ahead of its time.
5 months ago
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Comments
did you come up with this revisionist history in your parents' basement
by obnoxious american on Jan 3, 2012 9:02 AM CST reply actions
and/or
they don’t play games on an abacus.
by obnoxious american on Jan 3, 2012 9:02 AM CST up reply actions
and/or
not getting laid will really open up your schedule for projects.
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