Assessing the Role of Fatigue and Task Switching on Worker Performance. Evidence from MLB Pitchers

Alex Farnell, Dave Berri, Brian Mills, Vincent O’Sullivan and Robert Simmons
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Dave Berri: Southern Utah University
Vincent O’Sullivan: Lancaster University
Robert Simmons: Lancaster University

Economics Department Working Paper Series from Department of Economics, National University of Ireland - Maynooth

Abstract: Opportunities to study how workers respond to the demands of task switching outside of a laboratory setting are rare. In this paper, we use three seasons of (pre Covid) Major League Baseball (MLB) data to see how pitchers are affected by the additional demands of having to bat and run bases. MLB is an ideal setting because of its two-league structure in which the American League has a Designated Hitter rule, allowing teams to nominate a player to bat in place of the pitcher. The National League does not (or did not, pre Covid). We assess changes to a host of performance metrics, and results suggest that task switching in the form of batting is associated with gains across most of our performance measures, but that pitchers should avoid getting on base at all costs. This finding is robust to within game and across league selection of pitchers, and to a placebo test. Classification-J24, M54, Z21, Z22

Keywords: Labour Productivity; Task Switching; Baseball (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-spo
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:may:mayecw:n312-21.pdf

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