Hits & Runs / Runs & Hits

[Frayed Knot]

So I was looking at our early season stats during last night's game:

- In games one and eight the Mets scored a combined  21 runs on 26 hits

- Games two thru seven: 14 runs on a total of 40 hits 

Not that anything about those numbers should come as a surprise to anyone who even partially watched the games since not only did they barely hit during those middle games but they barely scored even when they did actually manage to scrape up and handful of bingles. But I was struck by the contrast between games 1 & 8 where they scored nearly a run for each hit compared to the shit sandwich that was that middle stretch where it took nearly three hits just to score once. And that all got me to thinking (rarely a good thing) about what a 'typical' ratio was, something I don't think I even thought about before.  

So after some exhaustive research (aka: looking at league-wide totals for the most recent completed seasons) it turns out that the ratio for the seasons 2022 thru 2025 has hovered between 1.8 to 1.9 hits per each run scored.  In the end I'm not sure that this 'discovery' is all that interesting and probably even less useful, except to maybe emphasize that not only do the number of hits matter but so does the power and grouping of those hits. But it does answer a question that I never thought to ask prior to last night.