Walks
1949's Specialty
What one thing stands out the most about 1949? In other words, if I asked you to show me one facet of the game of baseball in 1949 that was radically different from today’s game, what would you say?
I suppose you could say a number of things. There were no batting helmets in those days, for example. You’ll find sources that talk about two Dodger players using them in 1941, but they really didn’t receive frequent use until the Pirates in 1952 – and even then they were scorned by most other players.
We could talk about players leaving their gloves in the field, a practice that was extremely common until it was banned in 1954. That’s one of those things that was once so common that people didn’t really notice it – and yet now would seem so out of place that you wouldn’t be able to keep your eyes off it if you saw it.
There are other differences – expansion, playoffs, designated hitters, starters destined for 5 innings, openers, closers, you name it. But the game of baseball was largely the same game of baseball that we love today.
Well, for the most part, that is.
Walks
The defining characteristic of 1949 – the one thing that makes it stand out among all other seasons in baseball history – is the huge number of walks.
We’re talking about the highest rate of walks per nine innings in the history of baseball.
To put this into perspective, here is a very simple graph of the walks per 9 innings rate for every season in American League history:
See that spike on the left hand side? That’s 1949, when the American League saw an unheard-of 4.6 walks per nine innings – a record that we’ve never been close to.
The National League wasn’t quite record-setting, but it was almost as bad:
1949 is part of that large peak on the center-left. National League pitchers gave up 3.6 walks per 9 innings in 1949; the NL record since 1901 belongs to 2000 (bet you didn’t know that!) with 3.8.
Perspective
Let’s slow down and put this into perspective. We talk a lot these days about “three true outcome” baseball, right? These are the awful times of unwatchable baseball, where home runs, strikeouts, and walks dominate every at bat.
When we compare per nine inning average between 1949 and 2022, however, we see that things might not have changed all that much.
First, the National League:
Runs per game are similar – in fact, there were more runs per game in 1949 than in 2022. Hits per game? Also similar – there’s a difference there, but certainly not anything that would strike you as massively significant. Home runs? Just about the same.
The big difference here, aside from the death of the complete game, is in the extreme growth in strikeouts that we’ve seen. 8.6 per game is absolutely bonkers from a historical sense.
Even with that, though – even with an environment in which all scouts look for power hitters with holes in their swings, even when our beloved advanced statistics assure us that focusing on those “three true outcomes” maximizes efficiency – even then we don’t see as many walks per game as in 1949.
In the American league – well, it’s not even close:
The American League saw so many walks per nine innings in 1949 that it’s simply unfathomable. We’ve never seen anything like it. There were almost more walks per nine innings in the American League than there were runs scored.
Bad Teams
Is it just because there were bad teams? Is it because the Senators and Browns had awful pitchers who couldn’t find the plate?
Nope – it’s not that simple.
Without looking it up – do you know what team led the American League in walks in 1949?
The answer? The New York Yankees. The pennant winning New York Yankees gave up more walks than any other American League team in 1949.
It wasn’t particularly close, either, as Baseball Reference shows us:
Despite giving batters 5.3 free passes per nine innings, the Yankees somehow managed to allow fewer runs than any other team – aside from the defending World Champion Cleveland Indians. Isn’t that remarkable?
Oh – and it wasn’t because of intentional walks, either. As you can see, the Yankees gave up only 16 intentional walks all year, easily the lowest in the American League. Their 796 unintentional walks were still far more than any other American League team.
The amazing thing is that the baseball press thought that the Yankees had the best pitching staff in the American League by far. Dan Daniel of the long-defunct New York World Telegram sure thought so, in this Sporting News season preview capsule:
And here’s the National League, for the sake of comparison:
Brooklyn allowed the second lowest total of runs in the league, and yet still finished second in the free pass department. Still, their 582 walks paled in comparison to the 812 that the Yankees gave up.
Why?
So why did this happen?
Were umpires extra stingy? Were there simply lousy pitchers in the American League? Was 1949 just a huge outlier season?
I don’t know. I’m not aware of any studies on the subject; if you know of one, please contact me and let me know.
I’m still going through contemporary newspapers to see if anybody noticed what was going on.
I suspect that they didn’t, actually. The American League was apparently known for walks in those years. There were 3.9 walks per nine innings in 1947, 4.3 in 1948, 4.6 (the record) in 1949, then 4.4 in 1950, 4.0 in 1951, and then down to 3.7 in 1952.
I’d love to know why this happened – and I’ll update you on my quest as I go along.
Forum Roundup
Mark Ruckhaus had “one of those” games – a 11-10 1949 game that ended with a 4 run 9th inning rally that just fell short.