Research Notes: The Designated Hitter, Moral Hazard, and Hit Batters

John Bradbury and Douglas Drinen
Additional contact information
Douglas Drinen: Sewanee: The University of the South

Journal of Sports Economics, 2006, vol. 7, issue 3, 319-329

Abstract: The rate of hit batters in the American League (AL) has exceeded the National League (NL) by an average rate of 15% per season since the introduction of the designated hitter (DH) to the AL. This difference may be the result of moral hazard by AL pitchers; however, past studies have been unable to differentiate between competing explanations. Using game-level statistics from the entire 31-year history of the DH, we find the DH to be positively correlated with hit batsmen while controlling for many factors. Results indicate that the difference in hit batsmen between leagues is real and that moral hazard explains about one half of the difference. Observations from interleague play further support the notion that the results are not an artifact of unidentified league-specific factors.

Keywords: moral hazard; baseball; hit batters (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1527002504273391 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jospec:v:7:y:2006:i:3:p:319-329

DOI: 10.1177/1527002504273391

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Sports Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().