Well, I finally did the legwork in figuring out how the Sox spread out their runs by inning to see if my theory that the Sox scored an unusual amount of runs either early or late in ballgames held any water. Here are the results in raw run totals, and the percent of regulation runs (non-extra-inning) scored in the given inning.
| Inning | 1 | 2
| 3
| 4
| 5
| 6
| 7
| 8
| 9
|
| Total | 79
| 53
| 85
| 59
| 46
| 54
| 49
| 55
| 33
|
| Percent | 15
| 10
| 17
| 12
| 9
| 11
| 10
| 11
| 6
|
Turns out they score about 54 percent of their runs before the game becomes an official one, but I don't know if this is particularly unusual, or only mildly unusual since the later innings are usually reserved for matchup specialist. Having a below-average bullpen for a large portion of the year also might have skewed any perceptions as well.
The eighth and ninth inning scoring is particularly impressive, because those runs are often coming against the best two guys in the bullpen -- not to mention that since the Sox have been playing so well at home, they often don't get to bat in the ninth inning.
For whatever reason, the fifth inning is a dead spot. At one point, the Sox scored in the fifth inning only twice in 29 games. The sixth inning is currently arid, with the Sox scoring only one run in the last 16 games.
At any rate, these numbers may only interest me, but there's really no use in keeping them to myself.