Statistics and Baseball

In today's class, we looked at the great pitchers who have attended BGSU. I think the best pitcher was Orel Hersheiser (remember his great streak of pitching 59 consecutive innings?), but the choice of 2nd best pitcher is less clear. We look at Grant Jackson from Fostoria, Ohio and Roger McDowell. Here's a summary of what we found out:

• One measure of the quality of a pitcher is the rate that he strikes out batters. We computing the SOrate = SO/BFP x 100 for all seasons for both pitchers.
• We compared Jackson's and McDowell's strikeout rates by use of five-number summaries and parallel boxplots.
• Jackson was the better strikout pitcher -- he tended to strike out 3% more batters than McDowell.
• Actually, looking closer at Jackson's rates, it seems that his strikeout ability was best during the early part of his season.

In the computer lab, we looked at the cost of attending a baseball game (prices of tickets, beer, hot dogs, programs, etc). There were some interesting findings"

• Boston has unusually expensive tickets -- I think it is due to the high payroll and the small ballpark.
• There is a relationship between cost and payroll. If you break the teams into the rich and poor teams by payroll, then generally you will pay more when you attend a home game of a rich club.
• It is interesting that the only item that doesn't seem to vary in cost between rich and poor clubs is a baseball cap.