Instant Replay Minutia

[SurhoffRules]

As we approach the end of the season I was taking a look at some random league numbers (average times of games, attendance, etc) and I noticed a few new columns on Baseball Reference.

Through yesterday there have been 1,014 challenges by MLB managers. The AL has a narrow lead in challenges at 514 to 500.

AL managers were marginally more successful, winning their challenges 53.3% of the time to the NL's 52.8%.

Garardi was by the far the most effective manager, winning 80% of his challenges. However, he was also far under the median number of attempts, challenging only 26 calls to the league 33.

Toronto fared the worst, winning only 33% of their 45 challenges.

Rick Renteria of the Cubs was the most eager to toss the flag, challenging 57 times (winning 43% of them). He was 9 chances ahead of the next most, Joe Maddon of Tampa at 48 chances. Renteria also held the title for the most successful challenges with 25 (to a median of 18.5).

The median time of a game increased from 3 hours and 5 minutes to 3 hours and 7.5 minutes. The average number of runs per games dropped from 4.17 to 4.07.

This is all back of the napkin math based on the team totals so there may be small inconsistencies if someone else were to gather the same metrics using each individual game as the source data.

What this means, if anything, I've no clue.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/2014-misc.shtml