Rating Offensive Production in Baseball: A Summer with the Martha's Vineyard Sharks

• Activity Number: 199
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 1, 2016 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Sports
• Author(s): Jesse McNulty and Tyler Schanzenbach*
• Companies: William Penn High School Sports Analytics Club and William Penn High School Sports Analytics Club
• Keywords: Sports ; Baseball

Abstract

In the summer of 2014, the William Penn High School Sports Analytics Club was tasked to analyze play by play data, along with team and league offensive metrics for the Martha's Vineyard Sharks, a summer collegiate baseball team of the Futures Collegiate Baseball League (FCBL).  The team would analyze team game sheets and provide data visualization on a variety of team-specific metrics.  Using SAS JMP Pro 12 software package, we evaluated the offensive production of the Shark's batters.  To evaluate batter quality of contact, we focused on metrics such as offensive production index (OPI), hard hit percentage (HH%), and quality plate appearances (QPA) to determine batter quality of contact and offensive contribution to the team's success.