Faculty Sponsor

Coleen Wilder

College

Arts and Sciences

Discipline(s)

Sports Analytics

Presentation Type

Poster Presentation

Symposium Date

Spring 4-28-2022

Abstract

Major League Baseball (MLB) is a 10 billion-dollar industry with billions of dollars going to players each year. The best players receive the most money. There is a preconceived notion that more money translates to more wins and therefore more championships. However, there have been an increasing number of individuals who believe that all 30 teams have a chance to win their respective games regardless of the amount of money spent on players. The objective of this research was to explore the relationship between team payroll and team wins. Independent t-test and regression analyses were conducted using data for the 1995-2019 time period. The results herein show that teams with the top 10 highest payrolls had a better chance of winning the world series than teams with the lowest payrolls. This finding supports the claim that payroll is a predictor of success but the causal factors are yet to be explored; a topic for future research. The focus of this research was professional baseball. Future research may also be extended to explore the implications of compensating college athletes.

Biographical Information about Author(s)

The team of authors is multidisciplinary; Jonathan Bledsoe is a Senior Finance major with a concentration in Finance, Alex Conlin is a Junior Finance major with a concentration in Economics, Grace Edwards is a Junior Data Science major, Madison Gawlinski is a Senior Actuarial Science major, and Mark Lorenz is a Senior Business Analytics major. We all chose this project, because we are interested in economics and baseball. Examining the effects of payroll and number of wins would be a practical project for all of us to learn the skills of working as a team and learning the process of a research project. We hope to find what are key successes in baseball along with any other findings that our data provides.

MLB_Poster_Group1.pptx.pdf (896 kB)
Poster Presentation

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