A Statistical Analysis of Professional Baseball Team Data: The Case of the Lotte Giants

Knowing what factors into a player’s ability to affect the outcome of a sports game is crucial. This knowledge helps determine the relative degree of contribution by each team member as well as sets appropriate annual salaries. This study uses statistical analysis to investigate how much the outcome of a professional baseball game is influenced by the records of individual players. We used the Lotte Giants ’ data on 252 games played between 2007 and 2008 that included environmental data(home or away games and opponents) as well as pitchers ’ and batters ’ data. Using a SAS Enterprise Miner, we performed a logistic regression analysis and decision tree analysis on the data. The results obtained through the two analytic methods are compared and discussed