2 Million Runs: Baseball on the Verge of Mile

Regardless, it took a little less than 100 seasons for baseball to compile one million runs, but it will have taken just 46 seasons for the second million. The doubled pace is a result of many factors, but mostly expansion. There are 30 clubs now, all churning out multiple runs a game in a 162-game season. From 1916 to 1960, 16 teams played 154 games each.

Other factors, like a livelier ball, the introduction of the designated hitter rule in the American League, smaller ballparks and bigger players may have helped ramp up run production, but it did so marginally. The average runs scored per team per game — it was 4.39 through Sunday — has remained relatively constant since 1900, most often falling from 4.0 to 4.9 runs per team per game.

“The only thing that has changed significantly is how they score,” Thorn said.

Today’s teams rely heavily on home runs, but for years the focus was on getting hits and working your way around the bases. Rose was great at that. He says his huge tally is a credit to the sluggers batting behind him in the lineup. Rose was later barred from M.L.B. for betting on his own team as a manager, and now works with the gambling website UpickTrade. But on the field, he was best known for setting the career hits record, with 4,256.

Despite that record, Rose said the most important statistic in baseball is runs, where he sits sixth. Rickey Henderson is first, with 2,295.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/25/sports/baseball/2-million-runs.html