The Effect of 'Freebies' on Runs Allowed and Winning in NCAA Division I Baseball

• Activity Number: 439
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 11, 2015 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Sports
• Author(s): Daniel Mundfrom* and Michelle L. Smith
• Companies: Eastern Kentucky University and Eastern Kentucky University
• Keywords: Baseball ; Freebies ; NCAA ; Runs Allowed ; Winning

Abstract

Morgan Ensberg, a former Major League Baseball player and current minor league coach in the Houston Astros organization, developed a statistic to measure the impact of "freebies" on the outcome of a baseball game. The Morgan Ensberg Index (MEI) is a composite of walks, errors, stolen bases allowed, wild pitches, and hit batsmen. In 2012, Mundfrom and Smith extended the MEI to include balks, passed balls, and catcher's interference and investigated the relationship between "freebies" and runs allowed and games won for NCAA Division I baseball teams using data from the 2011 and 2012 seasons. The analyses presented here are an extension of those results using data from the 2013 and 2014 seasons. In addition, the use of a logistic regression model is explored to analyze individual game data from the 2014 season for selected teams in NCAA Division I baseball.