Determinants of Baseball Success: An Econometric Approach

Abstract

While much has been investigated into the relationship between several baseball statistics and success, the literature is more heavily focused on individual level characteristics and the salary of individual baseball players. This paper investigates, at a more macro level, the importance of key baseball statistics on the level of wins a team can expect on average using the Lahman Baseball Database for all teams from 1985 to 2015. After several robustness tests, the most important variables an average team should focus on is the total number of runs a team gives up and getting on base as often as possible (by walks as well as base hits). The paper finds that while team salary is statistically significant, it takes an unreasonably large change in salary to be meaningful in terms of number of wins recorded. Therefore, previous research on the effect of salary on team success may be overblown.