Academic literature on the topic 'Baseball games'

Abstract Millions of people attend Major League Baseball games every year, during a season that is played primarily outdoors at the peak of the U.S. lightning season. In recent years, social media photographs and baseball game television broadcasts have revealed lightning within proximity of several baseball games without the game being delayed. Lightning data from the U.S. National Lightning Detection Network within 12.8 km of 9717 Major League Baseball games between 2016 and 2019 were examined to find the extent to which lightning is a threat to games, players, staff, and fans: 717 games were found to have lightning within 12.8 km, with more than 175 000 in-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning discharges detected during those games. The distribution of games with lightning was not uniform and is related to the annual average lightning density of each ballpark. Despite the significant risk of a lightning-related incident at Major League Baseball games, existing work from other organizations like the National Collegiate Athletics Association and the National Athletics Trainers Association can be leveraged to improve lightning safety at professional baseball games. Significance Statement Nearly one of every 14 Major League Baseball games has lightning within what lightning safety experts would consider an unsafe distance. The potential for a lightning casualty incident is high because most games are played outdoors and millions of people are at baseball games every year. Although frameworks that can improve lightning safety at the thousands of professional baseball games that are played every year exist, it is unclear how frequently they are implemented.

Abstract Major League Baseball is played from the beginning of April through the end of October each year, encompassing three of the four meteorological seasons: spring, summer, and fall. The 30 teams play in cities across the United States and Canada in many types of weather. This work studies the impact of temperature on a Major League Baseball game by examining the association between temperature and several Major League Baseball game statistics, including runs scored, batting average, slugging percentage, on-base percentage, home runs, walks, strikeouts, hit-batsmen, stolen bases, and errors. Data from 22 215 games, spanning the 2000–11 regular seasons, were studied. Temperature was categorized as “cold,” “average,” and “warm.” Analyses were performed on the following populations: all Major League Baseball games, games played in the National League, games played in the American League, and games played in 23 different stadiums that are currently being used by Major League Baseball teams. Home and away teams' performances were analyzed separately for each population of games. The results of this study show that runs scored, batting average, slugging percentage, on-base percentage, and home runs significantly increase while walks significantly decrease in warm weather compared to cold weather.

Background: Single-sport athletes who specialize in baseball at a young age may have a greater predisposition to overuse injury, burnout, and decreased career longevity when compared with multiple-sport athletes. The effect of sport specialization has not been studied in professional baseball players. Hypothesis: Major League Baseball (MLB) players who played multiple sports in high school would experience fewer injuries, spend less time on the disabled list, play more games, and have a longer career than athletes who played only baseball in high school. Study Design: Descriptive epidemiology study. Methods: First- and second-round MLB draft picks from 2008 to 2016 who played in at least 1 professional game were included in this study. Athletes who participated in 1 or more sports in addition to baseball during high school were considered multisport athletes, and athletes who participated in only baseball were considered single-sport athletes. For each athlete, participation in high school sports, injuries sustained in MLB and Minor League Baseball, number of days on the disabled list for each injury, number of games played in both leagues, and whether the athlete was still active were collected from publicly available records. Results: A total of 746 athletes were included in this study: 240 (32%) multisport and 506 (68%) single sport. Multisport athletes played in significantly more mean total games (362.8 vs 300.8; P < .01) as well as more mean MLB games (95.9 vs 71.6; P = .04) than single-sport athletes. There was no difference in the mean number of seasons played in the major leagues (1.8 vs 1.6; P = .15) or minor league (5.25 vs 5.20; P = .23) between multisport and single-sport athletes. Single-sport athletes had a significantly higher prevalence of upper extremity injuries compared with multisport athletes (136 [63%] vs 55 [50%]; P = .009). Single-sport pitchers also had a higher prevalence of shoulder and elbow injuries (86 vs 27; P = .008) and were more likely to have recurrent elbow injuries (33% vs 17% recurrence; P = .002) compared with multisport pitchers. Conclusion: Professional baseball players who participated in multiple sports in high school played in more major league games and experienced lower rates of upper and lower extremity injuries than players who played only baseball in high school.

The Traveling Tournament Problem (TTP) is a well-known NP-complete problem in sports scheduling that was inspired by the application of optimizing schedules for Major League Baseball to reduce total team travel. The techniques and heuristics from the n-team TTP can be extended to optimize the scheduling of other sports leagues, such as the Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) league in Japan. In this paper, we describe the additional scheduling constraints required by the NPB league, such as the requirement that each team play the same number of weekend home games, weekday home games, weekend road games, and weekday road games. We fully solve this TTP-variant for the case n = 6, and conclude the paper by presenting the official 2013 NPB Central League Schedule, where we helped this Japanese baseball league reduce total team travel by over six thousand kilometres.

Abstract Although it is often suggested that direct sunlight may affect a player’s vision, no published studies have analyzed this interaction. In this research, a variety of statistical tests were utilized to study how baseball variables respond to different cloud cover conditions. Data from more than 35 000 Major League Baseball games, spanning the seasons from 1987 through 2002, were studied. Eleven baseball variables covering batting, pitching, and fielding performance were included. Overall responses were analyzed, as well as individual responses at 21 different stadiums. Home and away team performances were evaluated separately. This study then synthesized the synergistic differences in offensive production, pitching performance, and fielding performance into changes in the “home field advantage.” Offensive production generally declines during clearer-sky daytime games compared to cloudy-sky daytime games, while pitching performance increases as conditions become clearer. Strikeouts show the strongest response in the study, increasing from 5.95 per game during cloudy-sky conditions to 6.40 per game during clear-sky conditions. The number of errors per game increases during clear-sky daytime games compared to cloudy-sky daytime games, while fly outs increase and ground outs decrease between daytime and nighttime games, regardless of the amount of cloud cover. Results at individual stadiums vary, with some stadiums displaying a very strong association between baseball performance and changes in cloud cover, while others display a weak association. All of these impacts affect the home field advantage, with the home team winning 56% of the games played under clear skies compared to 52.3% of the games played under cloudy skies.

Pitched-baseball trajectories were measured in three dimensions during competitions at the 1996 Summer Olympic games using two high-speed video cameras and standard DLT techniques. A dynamic model of baseball flight including aerodynamic drag and Magnus lift forces was used to simulate trajectories. This simulation together with the measured trajectory position data constituted the components of an estimation scheme to determine 8 of the 9 release conditions (3 components each of velocity, position, and angular velocity) as well as the mean drag coefficient CD and terminal conditions at home plate. The average pitch loses 5% of its initial velocity during flight. The dependence of estimated drag coefficient on Reynolds number hints at the possibility of the drag crisis occurring in pitched baseballs. Such data may be used to quantify a pitcher’s performance (including fastball speed and amount of curve-ball break) and its improvement or degradation over time. It may also be used to understand the effects of release parameters on baseball trajectories.

In this article, a performance evaluation of the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) was conducted from a human resources (HR) perspective. Two important aspects were included: (1) a comprehensive evaluation of the competition performance of the professional baseball teams in international games and regular season games; and (2) the data envelopment analysis (DEA) and “two-stage” methodologies, which were employed to process truncated data to resolve the factors that affect the efficiency of the decision-making unit (DMU). By applying DEA and truncated regression analysis with bootstrapping, the performances of CPBL teams in games of different intensities were investigated. The number of foreign coaches and native players both were the key factors to affect the competitive efficiency of CPBL teams, and the Uni President 7-ELEVEN Lions had the best performance efficiency team. This interdisciplinary investigation provided the most appropriate references and recommendations for professional baseball teams on HR management so that baseball fans' expectations are met.

Baseball was introduced to Korea in 1905 by Philip Gillette, a YMCA-affiliated American missionary. The sport spread to schools through games played against the YMCA team. However, baseball games were banned until the end of World War II due to the Baseball Control Proposal, enacted in 1932, and the war mobilization effort due to the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937. Immediately following the end of World War II, baseball was restored in Korea along with the desire of the Korean people to establish an independent country. The US Military Government tried to propagate the idea that their governing system was based on “liberty,” unlike the empire of Japan, by hosting cultural projects such as the “Jomi Baseball Game”. From this perspective, cultural forms, such as a baseball, were inseparably linked to the political strategy of the US Military Government during the outset of the Cold War, which led to the establishment of a liberal democratic independent country.