Here are the five most common ways to make an out in baseball

There are always more outs in a game of baseball than there are anything else. On both sides of the diamond, there are 51-54 outs total in a single game. If you had data on every out made in baseball games for the last 50+ years, what do you think it would tell you?

Chris Ford of All My Sports Teams Suck took it upon himself to answer that question. Ford took play-by-play data from Retrosheet, loaded it into a database, and was able to see info — including scoring data — on every out made in a game since 1952. That’s more than 125,000 outs per season over nearly 64 seasons.

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That scoring info is vital, since it was able to tell him which fielding positions make the most outs, which fielding combinations get the most outs, and even triple play combos. Ford also discovered this staggering fact:

Also interesting to note is that 98% of out plays come from 28 different scoring combinations. The other 2%? Over 1,200 combinations, including some beauties like the old 4-3-6-3-2-5-8-3 double play, and the 9-8 putout (which has happened three times!).

If just 28 different scoring combos are responsible for 98% of all outs, which ones are the most common? Let’s go to the data!

Strikeout – 22.8% frequency. Strikeout is by far the most common way to get an out. It’s the only out you can get that doesn’t involve fielders, because the ball isn’t put into play. These numbers don’t tell us the kind of strikeout it was — swinging, called, foul tip, etc — but it does include any strikeouts that included a 2-3 (catcher to first base) putout, which amounted to 1.5% of all strikeouts.
Center fielder (unassisted) – 10.2% frequency. This was really surprising, and it surprised Ford as well. The second most common out is a popout/flyout to center field instead an out on the infield. Of course, we’re looking at the individual frequency of plays and not how often a specific fielder is involved in making an out. For example, a first baseman is involved in more outs than a center fielder, but since there are so many more ways to get an out in the infield, those outs are going to be spread among those many infield combinations.
Second baseman to first baseman – 8% frequency. The ground ball hit to second base is frustratingly common. The ball comes off the bat, and you think it might have a chance to sneak through, but it’s snagged by the second baseman and tossed to first. It happens so often that if you you got angry every time you saw it in a game, you’d have a red-faced heart episode by the fourth inning.
Shortstop to first baseman – 7.9% frequency. Another classic infield play combo that happens just slightly less often than the second-to-first iteration. And it’s the second one that the first baseman is involved with. The first baseman is in the mix a lot, though more attention is typically given to the second baseman or the shortstop.
Right fielder (unassisted) – 7.8% frequency. Outfield flyouts are maybe the most painful kind of out to watch. If it’s hit hard enough or far enough, it could conceivably be a home run. But it’s not, and you can feel yourself deflate as the ball lands in the glove. A flyout to right field is just slighty more common than a flyout to left field. The left field flyout is in sixth place at 7.7%

Those top five outs are all single-out combos. In fact, the top fifteen out combinations are all for single outs. The most common double play combo, 16th on the list, is the old 6-4-3, short to second to first.

Ford included a bunch of other fun facts in his write-up, along with a table of data that you can (and should!) play around with. As sabermetrics and baseball statistics get more and more complicated, it’s amazing that data about one of baseball’s simplest (and most common) occurrences can tell us so much.

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