The Research Problem

Research Process

Major league baseball is a game that many people enjoy to watch as a past time. Baseball is a game where there are many valuables that determine what team will win. The outcome of the game depends on a team's offensive maneuvers, defensive maneuvers, and a team's ability to control the game. Many people believe that player's batting averages will reflect the outcome of the game, while other people believe that it all depends on the field player's abilities to stop runs, and then there are many people who believe that a good balance of offense and defense will win the game.

The Research Problem

In this paper, Team A will determine if a team's batting average directly affects the number of wins a team has in Major League Baseball. A team's batting average is calculated by the number of hits the team has recorded divided by the number of at bats. In baseball, any average over .300 is considered excellent. That means the batter obtains a hit 30 out of every 100 times they come to the plate. According to Derek Shelton, hitting coach for the Tampa Bay Rays, "Batting average is not the statistic that's most important in the game anymore." (Kepner, 2010, p. 1). A team's batting average is not nearly as remarkable a measurement as it seems.

The Importance of the Research Problem

Numerous moments in baseball history, the team with the best batting average has not been the team with the most runs scored. For team hitting, batting average has the weakness of ignoring walks, while home runs are only one aspect of power hitting. Instead, when evaluating a team's ability to hit versus their ability to win games, a person should look at on base percentage (OBP) and slugging percentage (SLG), which correlate very closely to runs scored. A team that gets on base and hits the ball hard will score runs going forward and win games. Even though a team may have a large amount of hits, it does not mean they have a high batting average. A team that is lacking in batting may have more wins because they have better defensive players. Statistically teams with high batting averages do not necessarily have the greatest amount of wins (Weiss, 2011).

At bats can also be somewhat unclear in particular situations. Walks, getting hit by pitch and sacrifices are not considered as at bats for the purpose of computing batting averages. In certain situations determining a hit can be slightly misleading. For example, if a runner is tagged out at second or third base when a player hits the ball, this is not considered a hit even if the hitter is safe at first base and is referred to as a fielder's choice. If there were no runners on base the hitter would have been thrown out and therefore is not recognized with a hit. If a fielder performs an error on a ball that should have been played for an out, the hitter is not recognized for that hit either. Under these circumstances a player's batting average will be lowered (Weiss, 2011).

Problem Definition

Statistical loopholes such as these have an adverse affect on the actual batting average for a team. The question that needs to be addressed is, does the actual batting average of the team determine how many wins they will end their season with? Team A does not believe the batting average reported accurately reflects the amount of wins a team will have in a given season. There are multiple reasons that support this hypothesis, and in this report, Team A will research the information available to prove this theory. Batting averages do not reflect anything but hits. It does not take into account errors, defense, or any of the other examples mentioned earlier. Therefore, the teams with lower batting averages could have a better team defensively, which correlates to minimal scores against the team, resulting in lower scoring games. This gives the team an advantage, because there is a much smaller deficit to overcome to attain a win. The other side to this scenario is, the teams with higher batting averages are simply only hitting more. Hitting does not mean that runners will score, it does not mean that games will be won, it only means that the team with the higher batting average is getting more runners on base. Through out history, there are numerous examples of this very scenario taking place, and this theory remains true today. It is the belief of Team A, that while the chances of having a higher win percentage at the end of the season are greater with more runners getting