A Quantile Regression Approach to All Runs Are Created Equal

Ryan Pinheiro ()
Additional contact information
Ryan Pinheiro: St. Bonaventure University

A chapter in Principles and Paradoxes of Sports Economics, 2024, pp 143-159 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract In 2003, the book Moneyball by Michael Lewis claimed that certain performance metrics (such as walks and on-base percentage) were being undervalued in the Major League Baseball (MLB) labor market in the years prior to the book’s publication. According to Moneyball, the Oakland Athletics were able to construct a competitive roster despite being a small market team due to the team’s recognition and exploitation of these statistics in the MLB labor market. Previous research on the topic has yielded mixed results on whether an inefficient market truly existed prior to the publication of Moneyball and whether a labor market correction took place in the post-Moneyball period. This paper extends previous research by utilizing a quantile regression approach to investigate these questions at the different levels of the free agent player salary distribution. Additionally, this paper uses the approach proposed by Lindsey (Oper Res 11(4): 477–501, 1963) and applied by Pinheiro and Szymanski (J Sports Econ 15270025221085712, 2022), to structurally measure player performance through the run value contribution of the player. Using the timeframe 1997–2016, we find that the MLB labor market for skills was largely efficient both before and after the book’s publication at the different levels of the salary distribution, refuting the central claim of Moneyball.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:spr:semchp:978-3-031-68479-1_13

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783031684791

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-68479-1_13

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Sports Economics, Management, and Policy from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().