The Designated Hitter Rule and Team Defensive Strategy in Japan’s Professional Baseball Leagues

Akihiko Kawaura and Sumner La Croix

No 200607, Working Papers from University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics

Abstract: Economists have debated whether and why the designated hitter (DH) rule in North American major league baseball led to an increase in hit-batsmen. We use data from Japan's professional baseball leagues, the Pacific League (DH rule) and the Central League (no DH rule), to re-examine this question. Initial empirical findings reveal increases in hit-batsmen in the Pacific League after we control for the DH’s effect on team batting performance. After controlling for interactions between pitcher quality and the DH rule, we find that the DH rule induced changes in team defensive strategies and, consequently, an increase in hit-batsmen. Subsequent rule changes reduced the effectiveness of these strategies.

JEL-codes: D81 J28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2006-04-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-spo
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.economics.hawaii.edu/research/workingpapers/WP_06-7.pdf First version, 2006 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Designated Hitter Rule and Team Defensive Strategy in Japan's Professional Baseball Leagues (2007)
Working Paper: The Designated Hitter Rule and Team Defensive Strategy in Japan's Professional Baseball Leagues (2005)
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:hai:wpaper:200607

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.economics ... esearch/working.html

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Web Technician ().