Beyond Moneyball

Joshua Congdon-Hohman and Jonathan A. Lanning

Journal of Sports Economics, 2018, vol. 19, issue 7, 1046-1061

Abstract: This study examines the changes in player compensation in Major League Baseball during the last three decades. Specifically, we examine the extent to which recently documented changes in players’ compensation structure based on certain types of productivity fits in with the longer term trends in compensation and identify the value of specific output activities in different time periods. We examine free-agent contracts in 3-year periods across three decades and find significant changes to how players’ past performances are rewarded in free agency beyond the change in those to on-base percentage seen in the mid-2000s. We find evidence that the compensation strategies of baseball teams increased the rewards to “power†statistics beyond home runs in the 1990s from a model that focused on successfully reaching base with a batted ball without a significant regard for the number of bases reached. Similarly, we confirm and expand upon the increased financial return to bases on balls in the late 2000s as found in previous research.

Keywords: compensation; incentives; labor markets; baseball (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1527002517704019 (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: Beyond Moneyball: Changing Compensation in MLB (2017)
Working Paper: Workers' Responses to Incentives: The Case of Pending MLB Free Agents (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jospec:v:19:y:2018:i:7:p:1046-1061

DOI: 10.1177/1527002517704019

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