Fun Stats

In Spring 2017, Coed leagues instituted two rule changes:

1. An outfield line, which outfielders must stand behind when a female is batting
2. Use of the same ball for both genders, whereas a smaller ball was previously used when a female was batting

Below is the impact on Comp Coed leagues, a decrease in almost 5 runs per game in Summer 2017:

Games scheduled for 9pm are still the highest scoring.

For men’s leagues, there is no significant difference between comp and rec scoring. But coed comp teams score about 3 more runs per game combined than rec teams.

Many people suspect that the play-in game winner has an advantage going into the championship. The play-in game is basically a warm up and chance to calm your nerves. Of course, you need to actually win the play-in game as well.

Most leagues have an even number of teams, so there’s no play-in game. In those cases, the home team (1st place team going into the playoffs) has won 57% of the time.

But for leagues with an odd number of teams, the numbers flipped in favor of the 2nd/3rd place play-in game winner. In those cases, the 1st place team only won 47% of the time.

Of course, this sample size isn’t huge. Had only one more play-in game winner lost the championship, the home win percentage numbers would be about the same.

Only about 3% of games are forfeits, with only slight variances by level of play. Leagues marked "Neither" are fastpitch, women’s, etc. that don’t distinguish. So about once every three seasons, one of your games will be a forfeit. Once per year for teams that play all three seasons.

Results do not vary greatly across seasons either, although there is a slight uptick in the summer.

League parity is something the NFL talks about. Parity is when your best teams aren’t significantly better than the worst. Of course, disparity is the opposite.

Parity matters in Boulder softball because equality of skill makes games competitive and fun. Disparity does the opposite and can be dangerous at times.

Our approach

Take the best and worst teams from each league and get their games above .500 number. Then calculate the distance between.

Results

About half the leagues in Boulder struggle with parity. Neither gender nor level (coed/rec) play a major role in parity. I suspect summer has the most disparity as new teams enter leagues, sometimes picking the wrong level.

Games above .500 for each league’s best and worst teams
Left to right, most parity to least

Same data as above, but stacked

Win or lose in Game 1, 65% of teams repeat their performance in Game 2:

• Win Game 1 = 63% win Game 2
• Lose Game 1 = 70% lose Game 2

While 70% of teams walk away from a doubleheader with at least one win — the combination of the blue and green boxes — Game 1 is your money game.

35% of the time, teams won both games of a doubleheader

In our previous analysis of scoring by game time, we stumbled across an interesting stat. For 6, 7, and 8pm games the likelihood of the home team winning is about 50%. But in 9pm games, the home team wins almost 60% of the time.

I think this supports our hypothesis that increased scoring at 9pm games is more about poor defense than good offense. In this case, the home team bats last with a very tired away team playing defense, probably making lots of errors that cause them to lose in dramatic fashion.

It’s no surprise that a good run differential correlates to high winning percentage.

The misery spot of this graph is the lower left quadrant's bottom row. Those teams are getting pounded almost every week. Fortunately, some can shift down from Comp to Rec in future seasons.

Likewise, almost all of the undefeated teams play in Rec and should move up to Comp next season.

With a lot of rainouts and rescheduled games this summer, we wondered if any particular day was better or worse for a reschedule. The worst case scenario is a forfeit, because nobody gets to play the game they paid for.

Saturdays are the worst, with about 34% of games resulting in forfeit.

Ever wondered how game time affects scoring?

Looking only at 6, 7, 8, and 9pm games in Summer 2015, we found that scoring increases as the night goes on. But the largest jump happens between 8pm and 9pm.

I suspect this isn’t about more offense, it’s about worse defense. With 9pm games usually starting about 9:20pm, people are tired. They make defensive mistakes like overthrowing the ball or bobbling routine groundballs.

Across +1,000 regular season games in Boulder softball this summer, the home team won 52% of games.

That’s slightly less than the 55/45 home field advantage in Major League Baseball.