Every year, baseball fans across the country ask themselves the same question: What will it take for their team to make it to the playoffs, maybe even win it all?
A team can spend hundreds of millions of dollars grabbing the biggest stars in an attempt to buy glory—and still fall short (sorry, New York Mets). Another team with a much smaller payroll, like the Cleveland Guardians, might try to develop the hottest prospects to top the standings.
But how much does budget influence a team’s performance?
Boston University finance expert—and baseball fan—Mark Williams wanted to look at that question the way he would look at any business problem: by comparing pay versus return.
With two graduate students, Ethan Davis and Dan Shin, and BU alum Brandon Cohen, Williams created MLB Toolbox, a new data platform that compares team payrolls with on-field performance.
As part of the project, the team analyzed years of regular-season data, ranking teams by spending efficiency, wins, and wins above replacement (WAR), a metric commonly used to estimate a player’s overall value and how many additional victories they bring to a team. (Spoiler: the Red Sox aren’t topping the standings.)
The website also lets users compare teams and players, examine contract value, and build sample rosters under payroll limits. A Questrom School of Business master lecturer of finance, Williams says the goal is to make front-office decisions more transparent to fans.
Here, Williams digs into why he brought a finance lens to baseball, what the toolbox reveals about team spending, and what professional organizations can learn from the numbers:
The post Does more money affect a baseball team’s success? appeared first on Futurity.
from Futurity https://ift.tt/UHtmQwy
No comments:
Post a Comment