Post-Season Scoring in the 64-team Era

June 12, 2015

It's pretty easy to spot the points in the 64-team era history where the equipment changes impacted average post-season scores, except for the CWS because the effect of the BBCOR bats was magnified by the move to Ameritrade Park. It'll be interesting to see how that empty column for 2015 is filled in when the new ball takes on the new park.

Post-Season Scoring History 1999-Present

	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015
Reg #Gms	104	103	104	102	101	101	100	100	101	102	102	104	101	101	100	103	101
Reg WS	10.05	8.87	9.23	8.33	9.03	8.16	8.56	8.56	8.10	9.52	9.61	9.72	7.46	7.53	6.83	6.23	6.68
Reg LS	4.62	3.71	4.53	3.69	3.82	3.16	3.38	3.82	3.78	4.04	4.08	4.20	2.57	2.96	2.78	2.33	2.52
Reg TR	14.66	12.58	13.76	12.02	12.85	11.32	11.94	12.38	11.88	13.56	13.69	13.92	10.03	10.50	9.61	8.56	9.21
Reg MoV	5.43	5.17	4.70	4.65	5.21	5.00	5.18	4.74	4.32	5.48	5.53	5.52	4.88	4.57	4.05	3.90	4.16

	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015
SR #Gms	20	20	19	21	19	17	21	19	18	21	18	21	20	19	18	20	19
SR WS	10.30	7.10	8.26	7.43	8.32	7.12	6.90	9.84	6.67	10.48	7.61	7.67	7.40	6.68	6.44	5.90	7.05
SR LS	3.90	2.70	3.63	3.10	3.84	3.53	3.38	4.32	2.56	5.43	3.44	3.90	2.45	2.79	3.28	2.85	2.79
SR TR	14.20	9.80	11.89	10.52	12.16	10.65	10.29	14.16	9.22	15.90	11.06	11.57	9.85	9.47	9.72	8.75	9.84
SR MoV	6.40	4.40	4.63	4.33	4.47	3.59	3.52	5.53	4.11	5.05	4.17	3.76	4.95	3.89	3.17	3.05	4.26

	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015
CWS #Gms	14	13	13	14	16	15	15	16	15	16	15	16	14	15	14	17	0
CWS WS	7.86	8.15	10.23	8.14	8.13	7.47	5.40	5.94	8.33	8.56	8.33	6.75	5.21	5.53	4.71	4.12
CWS LS	3.86	4.23	5.15	4.57	3.44	3.53	2.87	3.00	4.00	4.31	4.13	2.88	2.00	1.60	1.43	2.12
CWS TR	11.71	12.38	15.38	12.71	11.56	11.00	8.27	8.94	12.33	12.88	12.47	9.63	7.21	7.13	6.14	6.24
CWS MoV	4.00	3.92	5.08	3.57	4.69	3.93	2.53	2.94	4.33	4.25	4.20	3.88	3.21	3.93	3.29	2.00

	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015
All #Gms	138	136	136	137	136	133	136	135	134	139	135	141	135	135	132	140	120
All WS	9.86	8.54	9.19	8.18	8.82	7.95	7.96	8.43	7.93	9.55	9.20	9.08	7.21	7.19	6.55	5.93	6.74
All LS	4.43	3.61	4.46	3.69	3.78	3.25	3.32	3.79	3.64	4.28	4.00	4.01	2.50	2.79	2.70	2.38	2.57
All TR	14.30	12.15	13.65	11.86	12.60	11.20	11.28	12.22	11.57	13.83	13.20	13.09	9.71	9.98	9.26	8.31	9.31
All MoV	5.43	4.93	4.73	4.49	5.04	4.70	4.63	4.64	4.29	5.27	5.20	5.07	4.72	4.41	3.85	3.55	4.17

OK, it's easier to see when the highlighted lines are displayed in a graph.

Total runs doesn't tell the whole story - it is worth investigating how competitive the games have been. We can judge that by comparing the average winning and losing runs-scored and their difference (MoV) from year to year.

I think we can safely call 2008-2010 the "rolled bat" era, since there were no specification changes from the prior four seasons. Note that whenever the MoV curve falls between the winning-runs and losing-runs curves the winning team averaged scoring more than twice as many runs as the losing team averaged.

Conventional wisdom suggests that as the tournament progresses teams should be more nearly equal so MoV should be lower in the Super-Regionals than the Regionals, and lowest in the CWS.

It's no surprise this graph looks a lot like the previous one - 70 or so per cent of the post-season as measured in games played consists of the first round.

It should be noted that each year only includes 17-21 samples, so it only takes a few blowout wins to skew the averages, and those can happen even at this level of competition. Interesting coincidence(?) how much 2013-2014 looks like 2004-2005.

Now to the College World Series. Using the Super-Regional data as a kind of "control" that accounts for changes in bats and balls (conveniently ignoring park factors that surely played some role in the SR numbers) we can observe the "AmeriTrade effect."

Interesting that the least competitive AmeriTrade CWS by average margin of victory was 2012. That was almost identical to the average MoV for the last Rosenblatt CWS. And 2014's was the most tightly-contested CWS in the 64-team era, closer than the 2005 series.