| By: |
Bryson, Alex;
Gomez, Rafael;
Papps, Kerry L. |
| Abstract: |
A detailed longitudinal dataset is assembled containing annual performance and
biographical data for every player over the entire history of professional
major league baseball. The data are then aggregated to the team level for the
period 1920-2009 in order to test whether teams built on a more intermediate
distribution of observed talent perform better than those teams with either
too high or too low a mixture of highly able and less able players. The key
dependent variable used in the regressions is the percentage of games a team
wins each season. Our finding is that conditioning on average player ability,
dispersion in team pitching and hitting talent prior to the start of a season
is related in a non-linear way to subsequent team performance. This suggests
that there is an optimum heterogeneity of ability at the team level that
maximises joint output. This result is robust to the inclusion of team fixed
effects as well as year dummies and after controlling for the potential
endogeneity of skill dispersion. These findings have potentially important
applications both inside and outside of the sporting world. |
| Keywords: |
Baseball, Inequality, Team-based Performance |
| JEL: |
J24 J21 |
| Date: |
2011–03–29 |
| URL: |
https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ubc:clssrn:clsrn_admin-2011-6 |