- Sunday Baseball
- Posts
- MLB Avg's Now vs 50/100/150 Years Ago
Latest MLB Headlines
Here we are on a Thursday.
Aaron Judge was just named unanimous AL MVP and Shohei was named unanimous NL MVP.
Here is what amazes me.
This year the MLB batting avg across the league was .243 the lowest since 1972.
Seemingly nobody can hit today’s pitching.
Yet - you have a handful of guys that are producing huge numbers - almost peek steroid era numbers (minus Bonds and prime Sosa that is).
Judge/Ohtani/Witt/Soto
Its insane to me how good these guys are at hitting, considering the rest of the league is struggling so badly to hit.
Speaking of numbers - I had a ton of fun putting this together
Let’s look at some key numbers regarding MLB averages now vs 50 years ago, 100 years ago and the first season ever, 1876.
Numbers are per team/game
1876 | 1924 | 1974 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
AVG - .265 | AVG - .283 | AVG - .257 | AVG - .243 |
RUNS/GAME - 5.9 | RUNS/GAME - 4.91 | RUNS/GAME - 4.12 | RUNS/GAME - 4.39 |
HR/GAME - 0.08 | HR/GAME - 0.36 | HR/GAME - 0.68 | HR/GAME - 1.12 |
SO/GAME - 1.13 | SO/GAME - 1.94 | SO/GAME - 5.01 | SO/GAME - 8.48 |
ERA - 2.31 | ERA - 4.10 | ERA - 3.62 | ERA - 4.07 |
Simply looking at runs - it’s amazing how little the game has changed over the last 100 years.
But wait a second….2.31ERA in 1876 yet 5.9 runs/game?
Yep, you guessed it - LOTS of errors. 6 a game in fact - per team!
Honestly can’t believe it wasn’t more with the gloves they were using.
And maybe the best stat of all time here
In that inaugural season of 1876 Jim Devlin of the Louisville Grays pitched 66 complete games.
The entire season was 66 games - he threw every pitch of the regular season that year, LOL!
Iron Arm Jim Devlin
Maybe he was unapproachable - I mean if I was the Skipper, I wouldn’t want to take a mound visit to pull that guy out either.
If you can believe it, Jim only lasted 3 years - throwing 622 innings in that 1876 season.
Ending on This
The best thing I saw today on the world wide web was this photo of Hank Aaron in what appears to be late in his career at Wrigley Field. Awesome photo.
And thanks as always to our sponsor: RunDot - I noticed a ton of people clicked on this advertisement a couple weeks ago. If you gave it a shot, let me know how it’s going.
Participate in running research with The RunDot Project.
This annual research initiative includes 2 free months of run training for qualified participants and gives you an opportunity to reach your true athletic potential with optimized training protocols.
As always - rooting for every one of you ballplayers out there.
DJ
