IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/jqsprt/v8y2012i4n4.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An Exploratory Study of Minor League Baseball Statistics

Author

Listed:
  • Chandler Gabriel

    (Pomona College)

  • Stevens Guy

    (Pomona College '13)

Abstract

We consider the problem of projecting future success of Minor League baseball players at each level of the farm system. Using tree based methods, in particular random forests, we consider which statistics are most correlated with Major League success, how Major League teams use these statistics differently in handling prospects, and how prior belief in a players ability, measured through draft position, is used throughout a players Minor League career. We show that roughly the 18th round prospect corresponds to being draft neutral for a team, whereas teams essentially make decisions based strictly on performance. We use for our data all position players drafted between 1999 and 2002.

Suggested Citation

  • Chandler Gabriel & Stevens Guy, 2012. "An Exploratory Study of Minor League Baseball Statistics," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 8(4), pages 1-28, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:jqsprt:v:8:y:2012:i:4:n:4
    DOI: 10.1515/1559-0410.1445
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/1559-0410.1445
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/1559-0410.1445?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dennis Coates & Babatunde Oguntimein, 2010. "The Length and Success of NBA Careers: Does College Production Predict Professional Outcomes?," International Journal of Sport Finance, Fitness Information Technology, vol. 5(1), pages 4-26, February.
    2. Mills Brian M. & Salaga Steven, 2011. "Using Tree Ensembles to Analyze National Baseball Hall of Fame Voting Patterns: An Application to Discrimination in BBWAA Voting," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 7(4), pages 1-32, October.
    3. Neil Longley & Glenn Wong, 2011. "The speed of human capital formation in the baseball industry: the information value of minor‐league performance in predicting major‐league performance," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(3), pages 193-204, April.
    4. Archer, Kellie J. & Kimes, Ryan V., 2008. "Empirical characterization of random forest variable importance measures," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 52(4), pages 2249-2260, January.
    5. Jason A. Winfree & Christopher J. Molitor, 2007. "The Value of College," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 8(4), pages 378-393, August.
    6. Stephen J. Spurr, 2000. "The Baseball Draft," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 1(1), pages 66-85, February.
    7. John D. Burger & Stephen J. K. Walters, 2009. "Uncertain Prospects," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 10(5), pages 485-501, October.
    8. Stephen J. Spurr & William Barber, 1994. "The Effect of Performance on a Worker's Career: Evidence from Minor League Baseball," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 47(4), pages 692-708, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lock Dennis & Nettleton Dan, 2014. "Using random forests to estimate win probability before each play of an NFL game," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 10(2), pages 1-9, June.
    2. Gerber Eric A. E. & Craig Bruce A., 2021. "A mixed effects multinomial logistic-normal model for forecasting baseball performance," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 17(3), pages 221-239, September.
    3. N. David Pifer & Christopher M. McLeod & William J. Travis & Colten R. Castleberry, 2020. "Who Should Sign a Professional Baseball Contract? Quantifying the Financial Opportunity Costs of Major League Draftees," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 21(7), pages 746-780, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. N. David Pifer & Christopher M. McLeod & William J. Travis & Colten R. Castleberry, 2020. "Who Should Sign a Professional Baseball Contract? Quantifying the Financial Opportunity Costs of Major League Draftees," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 21(7), pages 746-780, October.
    2. Justin Sims & Vittorio Addona, 2016. "Hurdle Models and Age Effects in the Major League Baseball Draft," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 17(7), pages 672-687, October.
    3. Christopher Garmon, 2013. "Major League Baseball’s First Year Player Draft," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 14(5), pages 451-478, October.
    4. Richard J. Paulsen, 2022. "Peer effects and human capital accumulation: Time spent in college and productivity in the National Basketball Association," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(8), pages 3611-3619, December.
    5. Heather Mitchell & Constantino Stavros & Mark F. Stewart, 2011. "Does the Australian Football League Draft Undervalue Indigenous Australian Footballers?," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 12(1), pages 36-54, February.
    6. Seth R. Gitter & Thomas A. Rhoads, 2011. "Top Prospects and Minor League Baseball Attendance," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 12(3), pages 341-351, June.
    7. Michael A. Roach, 2022. "Career concerns and personnel investment in the Major League Baseball player draft," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 60(1), pages 413-426, January.
    8. Mihailo Radoman & Marcel C. Voia, 2015. "Youth Training Programs and Their Impact on Career and Spell Duration of Professional Soccer Players," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 29(2), pages 163-193, June.
    9. De Bock, Koen W. & Coussement, Kristof & Van den Poel, Dirk, 2010. "Ensemble classification based on generalized additive models," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 54(6), pages 1535-1546, June.
    10. Binh Thai Pham & Chongchong Qi & Lanh Si Ho & Trung Nguyen-Thoi & Nadhir Al-Ansari & Manh Duc Nguyen & Huu Duy Nguyen & Hai-Bang Ly & Hiep Van Le & Indra Prakash, 2020. "A Novel Hybrid Soft Computing Model Using Random Forest and Particle Swarm Optimization for Estimation of Undrained Shear Strength of Soil," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(6), pages 1-16, March.
    11. Ha, Tran Vinh & Asada, Takumi & Arimura, Mikiharu, 2019. "Determination of the influence factors on household vehicle ownership patterns in Phnom Penh using statistical and machine learning methods," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 70-86.
    12. Geoffrey N Tuck & Athol R Whitten, 2013. "Lead Us Not into Tanktation: A Simulation Modelling Approach to Gain Insights into Incentives for Sporting Teams to Tank," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(11), pages 1-10, November.
    13. Martin B. Schmidt, 2021. "The Competitive Returns To The Global Search For Talent: Professional Sports Markets And Foreigners," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 59(1), pages 396-419, January.
    14. Lamperti, Francesco & Roventini, Andrea & Sani, Amir, 2018. "Agent-based model calibration using machine learning surrogates," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 366-389.
    15. Boulier, Bryan L. & Stekler, H.O. & Coburn, Jason & Rankins, Timothy, 2010. "Evaluating National Football League draft choices: The passing game," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 589-605, July.
    16. Jung-sik Hong & Hyeongyu Yeo & Nam-Wook Cho & Taeuk Ahn, 2018. "Identification of Core Suppliers Based on E-Invoice Data Using Supervised Machine Learning," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-13, October.
    17. Cecilia Aguilar-Vega & Eduardo Fernández-Carrión & Javier Lucientes & José Manuel Sánchez-Vizcaíno, 2020. "A model for the assessment of bluetongue virus serotype 1 persistence in Spain," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(4), pages 1-22, April.
    18. Mohamed Zine & Fouzi Harrou & Mohammed Terbeche & Mohammed Bellahcene & Abdelkader Dairi & Ying Sun, 2023. "E-Learning Readiness Assessment Using Machine Learning Methods," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(11), pages 1-22, June.
    19. Lamperti, Francesco & Roventini, Andrea & Sani, Amir, 2018. "Agent-based model calibration using machine learning surrogates," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 366-389.
    20. Fred A. Bellemore, 2001. "Racial and Ethnic Employment Discrimination," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 2(4), pages 356-368, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:jqsprt:v:8:y:2012:i:4:n:4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.