Baseball!

Postcard from Lily Niland, during the Linfield College Semester Abroad Program at Kanto Gakuin University in Yokohama, Japa

An Actuarial Analysis of the Production Function of Major League Baseball

The majority of major league baseball production function studies have utilized data (nonstandardized and standardized) from only one baseball season. This research study utilized data from the 1980-1984 baseball seasons. The results indicate that factors contributing to victories fluctuate. Consistent with prior research, this study found batting average, manager\u27s career win-loss record and the strike-out-to-walk ratio to be the most significant factors contributing to victories. Inconsistent with prior research, this study found that fielding average can also be significant

The Pythagorean Won-Loss Formula and Hockey: A Statistical Justification for Using the Classic Baseball Formula as an Evaluative Tool in Hockey

Originally devised for baseball, the Pythagorean Won-Loss formula estimates the percentage of games a team should have won at a particular point in a season. For decades, this formula had no mathematical justification. In 2006, Steven Miller provided a statistical derivation by making some heuristic assumptions about the distributions of runs scored and allowed by baseball teams. We make a similar set of assumptions about hockey teams and show that the formula is just as applicable to hockey as it is to baseball. We hope that this work spurs research in the use of the Pythagorean Won-Loss formula as an evaluative tool for sports outside baseball.Comment: 21 pages, 4 figures; Forthcoming in The Hockey Research Journal: A Publication of the Society for International Hockey Research, 2012/1

Competitive Boosterism: How Milwaukee Lost the Braves

By any measure, major-league baseball in North America surely qualifies as big business. The national pastime is a vital component of today\u27s urban political economy, and baseball teams resemble other high-prestige businesses in that cities must compete for the privilege of hosting them - whatever their true worth. A study analyzes the transfer of the Milwaukee Braves baseball franchise to Atlanta in 1965 as the outcome of competitive boosterism or the active participation of local elites in luring trade, industry, and investment from other cities for the purpose of economic development

Fair-Weather Fans: The Correlation Between Attendance and Winning Percentage

In Rob Neyer\u27s chapter on San Francisco in his Big Book of Baseball Lineups, he speculates that there aren\u27t really good baseball cities, and that attendance more closely correlates with winning percentage than with any other factor. He also suggests that a statistically minded person look at this. I took the challenge and have been playing with a lot of data

The Economic Impact on the Dominican Republic of Baseball Player Exports to the USA

This paper pulls together into one practical model two strands of economic theory to assess the impact of baseball player exports on the aggregate economic performance of the Dominican Republic. On one hand, foreign trade theory predicts a strong correlation between a country’s exports and economic performance measured as per capita income. On the other hand, microeconomic research finds a positive, but statistically insignificant, impact of sports activities on local economies. Analysis finds a strong correlation between baseball player exports and economic performance for the years 1962-2004, suggesting that both the USA and the Dominican Republic benefit from encouraging baseball player trade and repatriation of baseball export earnings.baseball player exports; sports exports; sports and economic performance; sports export-led growth

1998 Program

1998 Men\u27s Baseball Program, George Fox Universit

Getting the Swing of Surface Gravity

Sports are a popular and effective way to illustrate physics principles. Baseball in particular presents a number of opportunities to motivate student interest and teach concepts. Several articles have appeared in this journal on this topic, illustrating a wide variety of areas of physics. In addition, several websites and an entire book are available. In this paper we describe a student-designed project that illustrates the relative surface gravity on the Earth, Sun and other solar-system bodies using baseball. We describe the project and its results here as an example of a simple, fun, and student-driven use of baseball to illustrate an important physics principle

1993 Media Guide

1993 Men\u27s Baseball Media Guide, George Fox Universit