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Show SCIENTIFIC ME i BEST STATISTICS Clubs Using Sacrifice Hits and Stolen Bases Highest in Standing. By Tribune Special Sport Service. NEW YORK, July 20. Statistics covering cov-ering the first half of the 1IM6 season effectively ef-fectively shoot to pieces John MoGraw'e idea that "scientific baseball Is bunk." Jawn, ol' boy, has come right out in the open and spoofed the sacrifice hit and the hit-and-run game, yet the figures show that the teams that have used the sacrifice hit oftenest have been those that have been close Lo the top run of the ladder all season. Peculiarly enough, the very same plays which McGraw declares are ''foolishness" have been largely responsible for many of the defeats which the Giants have' suffered suf-fered this year. Almost immediately after John got through telling the populace that the sacrifice hit game wasn't worth a darn, the Brooklyn Dodgers came along and beat the Giants two .names by using the very same plays Jawn, ol" boy, rhad called "bum stuff." Fohl Advocates Jt. The Cleveland Indians are an excellent excel-lent example to prove the value of the sacrifice hit game. With a club regarded by most baseball persons as little more than mediocre, they have kept near the top in the American league heap for more than three months. And the sacrifice hitting hit-ting has been largely responsible. Lee Fohl, manager of the ciub, is one of the greatest exponents of the. sacrifice sacri-fice and the hit-and-run game. The Indians, In-dians, as a result, have made more sacrifice sacri-fice hits than any club In either big circuit. cir-cuit. And those same Indians, with a club admittedly weaker than the majority, ma-jority, have been in the fight all the way. The statistics which appear below were compiled by William Chase Temple, donor of the Temple club. ' They embrace all the games played by each club in both leagues up to and including July G. They show tiie number of hits each club required re-quired to score a runner, the total sacrifice sacri-fice hits and stolen bases by each club. Also, at the extreme right, is a column which shows where each club stood in the pennant fight on July 6. Here Are Figures. NATIONAL LEAGUE. ' Club. Hits per Standing rum S.H. S.B. July 6. New York 2.13 54 81 5th Chicago 2. If? 93 57 4th Boston 2.20 72 51 3rd Philadelphia 2.24 73 5-1 2nd St. Louis 2.30 59 7S 7th Brooklyn .... ..2.32 7S 73 1st Pittsburg ... ..2.34 76 71) 6th Cincinnati 2.42 72 74 - 8th Total, 1925 runs, 4365 hits, 577 sacrifice hits and 547 stolen bases, in 5.14 games; average hits required to score run, 2.26, AMERICAN LEAGUE. Club. Hits per Standing run, S.H. S.B. July 6. New York 1.87 74 911 1st Cleveland 1.90 121 titi 2nd Detroit 2.08 S2 SI 6th St. Louis 2.09 So 90 7th Washington .. ..2.12 70 2 5th Chicago 2. IS 9.1 71 4th Boston 2.21 82 6fi 3rd Philadelphia ....2.51 60 . 63 8th Total runs, 2101; hits. 4417 ; sacrifice hits, 673 ; stolen bases, 617; average hits required to score run., 2.09. Red Sox and Dodgers. Those who peruse the above tables will find that with one or two exceptions the ; clubs'- that showed poor sacrifice hitting j records, together with low base-stealing marks, were well down in the standing , of the clubs. Also they will note that teams which did not have good base runners run-ners or a multitude of sacrifice batsmen had to make more lilts per run than did the other clubs. The Boston Red Sox and Brooklyn Dodgers stand out as the exceptions. They rank near the bottom in base-running and in sacrifice hitting. It required 2.21 hits per game to score a run for the Red Sox and 2.32 hits per game for the Dodgers. Yet the Sox, at the time, were third in the league standing, while the Dodgers led In the Tener circuit. How, then, did both clubs rank so high in the standing of the clubs? The pitching pitch-ing staff of each is the answer. The Red Sox hurlers, as a whole, rank as the best in the American; the Dodgers are leaders in the National. Their pitchers don't need a lot of runs to win. Give them two or three and they'll breeze through to victory. That is why the Sox and Dodgers are so high in the race. If a club has great defensive power in the box, as have the Sox and Dodgers, it doesn't exactly need a superfluity of sacrifice hits and stolen bases. But how much higher would both those clubs be if thev played scientific baseball, as have the Indians? |