D-backs fans rank eighth in MLB for grammar
Jul 11, 2016, 9:00 PM | Updated: 9:03 pm
D-backs mascot Baxter signs autographs for young fans. Photo by Stephen DeLorenzo
Even though the Arizona Diamondbacks haven’t been able to get anything going on the field this season, their fan base has made some noise off the field in a recent power ranking.
Grammarly created a power ranking system that doesn’t focus on wins or loses, but counts grammatical errors that fans made when writing about their favorite baseball team. Last year Arizona fans ranked 14th, but this year they made the right corrections to take over the eighth spot.
We gathered 3,000 fan comments (of fifteen words or more) posted to each MLB team’s SB Nation blog between June 1 and June 14, 2016. We then used the Grammarly editor to detect grammar, spelling, sentence structure, and punctuation errors in each comment and used the sums to calculate the average number of errors per 100 words. Updates to Grammarly’s algorithms and an increase in our study sample size changed the numbers game this year. Our 2015 study analyzed 4,500 fan comments from MLB.com. The 2016 study sample size was twenty times that (90,000 total comments.) The larger sample, coupled with our software’s more objective grammar checks, meant that writing scores improved across the board.
The D-backs were the only team in the NL West that made it in the top-10 for grammar with 1.68 errors per 100 words.
The San Francisco Giants ranked 14th with 1.78 errors per 100 words and the Los Angeles Dodgers were 18th with 1.82 errors per 100 words. The Colorado Rockies ranked 24th with 1.91 errors per 100 words, and the San Diego Padres had 1.94 errors per 100 words, good for 26th overall.
The Miami Marlins topped the list with 1.39 errors per 100 words and the St. Louis Cardinals finished last for the second year in a row with 2.20 errors per 100 words. The National League beat out the American League with 1.79 errors per 100 words, while the American League had 1.82.
