The Big Inning

Want to see how important the “big inning” is in baseball?  Try this experiment.  Look at the box scores of all the games played on a particular day.  Could be MLB games, college games, and/or high school games.  Look at them all and do the following.  Count how many games the winning team scored an equal or greater amount of runs in one inning than the losing team scored the entire game.  I think you may be surprised at how many games fit this scenario.  The numbers are usually higher at the lower levels.  That's because there tends to be more walks and errors, the main ingredients to big innings, at the lower levels.  

This is one of the reasons why major league managers do not bunt as much as they used to.  They would rather go for the big inning that usually involves multi-rbi hits/homeruns than play for one run at a time.  Giving the defense an out on a bunt usually decreases their chances of having a big inning.  However, at the high school level, there is no guarantee that a bunt will be fielded cleanly and thrown accurately.  Going for a single run at that level many times leads to big innings because the defense just can't get the out that is being handed to them.  

Check out the box scores in your area.  Let me know what you find!