Expert: Tom Schott - 10/20/2008

Question
i am in a baseball pool and would like to now what which innings in baseball produced the most and least runs this past season...also could that be broken down to half innings...a friend is in the same pool and he drew the top of the ninth and feels he has little or no chance...he also feels he should have been awarded the bottom half of the inning as well...is this justified

thanks
steve

Answer
Steve:

Here is a breakout of the runs scored in each of the first nine innings in MLB in 2008. I'm sorry I cannot supply a half inning breakout, but you should be able to use the the average figures supplied to arrive at that. As you can see, it doesn't matter whether you let your friend have both halves of the 9th; he's still far from even being in the game. People who drew the first inning are winners.

Inning   #    0  Any    1    2    3    4   ≥5  Most Total  Avg Avg/9inn
+------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+
   1   4856 3336 1520  805  405  183   69   58   10 2770  0.57 5.13
   2   4856 3565 1291  722  354  114   60   41    9 2244  0.46 4.16
   3   4856 3486 1370  702  330  171   97   70    9 2661  0.55 4.93
   4   4856 3455 1401  729  374  163   72   63   10 2622  0.54 4.86
   5   4856 3498 1358  677  356  169   83   73   10 2650  0.55 4.91
   6   4856 3396 1460  790  368  162   72   68   11 2682  0.55 4.97
   7   4854 3508 1346  738  334  154   70   50   10 2448  0.50 4.54
   8   4852 3562 1290  684  316  139   90   61   10 2448  0.50 4.54
   9   3728 2770  958  549  239  101   37   32    8 1661  0.45 4.09