Scoring by Inning

Related to my post about lineups the other day I received a question as to the breakdown in scoring by inning. The thought was that higher scoring in the first inning might indicate that the lineup does make a difference contrary to my conclusion that messing with the lineup doesn't generally have much effect.

Since I wasn't able to find scoring by innings after a Google search, I ran quick query on the 1992 AL and NL retrosheet data and got the following:

1992 National League

           1    2     3     4     5     6     7    8     9   10   11+

Visitor 11.8% 9.7% 11.2% 11.0% 10.0% 11.5% 11.3% 9.2% 11.1% 1.3% 1.9%

Home    14.2% 9.1% 10.8% 11.4% 11.8% 12.3% 11.7% 11.6% 5.1% 0.7% 1.3%



          1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9 10 11+

Visitor 427 353 405 399 364 415 408 333 401 48 69

Home    557 356 422 445 464 480 460 453 201 27 52

1992 American League

	   1     2     3     4     5     6     7     8    9   10  11+

Visitor 12.1% 10.7% 11.9% 10.1% 12.2% 11.5% 10.2% 10.2% 9.0% 0.9% 1.2%

Home    12.6% 11.1% 12.2% 11.1% 12.6% 12.0% 11.7% 11.5% 3.8% 0.6% 0.8%



          1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9 10 11+

Visitor 586 518 579 493 592 561 497 494 438 45 58

Home    623 548 602 550 621 594 576 570 187 29 41

This certainly shows that the scoring varies more in the National League by inning because of the pitcher's spot (note the lower scoring in the second inning) and does show a slight increase in the first inning overall. This is what you would expect, however, when several of the top team's hitters are guaranteed to bat in the inning.

It also may be the case that scoring increases in the first inning because some pitchers don't have their good stuff and so get hit hard in the first inning. After righting themselves and because all the really bad starts will be selected out after the first inning, the scoring drops.

Scoring then picks up a bit in the 6th and 7th as the team's 3-5 hitters bat for the third time.

Note also that scoring in the bottom of the ninth decreases since the home team doesn't bat as often and therefore has fewer opportunities.