Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Home run rates and temperature

Home run rates are down a bit this season. Could it be the weather? J. C. Bradbury looks at April home runs over the past few seasons, and shows that they correlate pretty well with the temperature.

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6 Comments:

At Tuesday, May 20, 2008 2:02:00 PM, Blogger Don Coffin said...

Joe Sheehan did a post on this a week or so ago at Baseball Prospectus. The numbers he presented suggest that the entire decline has occurred in the AL, which would suggest we need some game temperature data by league.

 
At Tuesday, May 20, 2008 2:03:00 PM, Blogger Don Coffin said...

Here's the link to Sheehan's post:
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=7514

 
At Tuesday, May 20, 2008 2:09:00 PM, Blogger Phil Birnbaum said...

Very interesting ... thanks, Doc.

Joe does mention the balls ... do they still use different balls in the AL and NL? Are they made at different times, or different places?

 
At Tuesday, May 20, 2008 10:36:00 PM, Blogger Don Coffin said...

I think, but can't be completely certain, that the balls, like the umpires, have been consolidated...one ball for MLB as a whole. What's niggling at me is that there may be multiple suppliers, but I don't think they're league specific.

 
At Tuesday, May 20, 2008 10:38:00 PM, Blogger Don Coffin said...

Looks like Rawlings is THE supplier.

http://shop.mlb.com/sm-rawlings-official-mlb-baseballs-dozen--pi-1910664.html

 
At Wednesday, May 21, 2008 12:10:00 AM, Blogger Phil Birnbaum said...

Darn, there goes a beautiful theory! :)

 

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