19th Century Defense
By I spent a bit of time last night looking up statistics on late 19th century baseball players. I was struck by the sheer number of unearned runs allowed. Here’s Old Hoss Radbourn’s career stat-line on runs and earned runs.
Year R ER
1881 162 88
1882 213 109
1883 275 144
1884 216 104
1885 209 109
1886 300 170
1887 305 215
1888 110 66
1889 151 113
1890 183 126
1891 149 103
Now, I’m sure there are a few of you out there who know more about 19th century baseball than I do. But my take from these numbers is that nobody had any idea how to play defense in the 19th century. It certainly seems to help explain some batting milestones that haven’t been reached in more than a half-century. Given the shocking number of errors that must have led to 40% of a pitcher’s runs being unearned over a decade-long career, how many other runs were given up because no one knew where to stand on a baseball diamond? And much more impressive is Ichiro’s 262 hits in 2004?