The Baseball Economist: The Real Game Exposed Read Online Free PDF Page A

batters. 9
    Here are some interesting things we found.
    • Pitchers were more likely to hit good batters. Also, pitchers were much less likely to be hit themselves than other players. This is consistent with the change-in-demand theory that pitchers are more willing to risk hitting good batters than bad batters.
    • Good pitchers were less likely to hit batters than bad pitchers. This suggests that pitchers with good control are less likely to hit batters accidentally compared to those with poor control.
    • Teams who were losing were more likely to plunk the other team. And the larger the run deficit, the greater the likelihood that the pitcher would hit a batter. As the chance of winning a game falls, the price of plunking, in terms of contributing to the loss, also falls.
    • Pitchers who hit batters in the previous inning are more likely to be hit than those who did not hit batters. This provides evidence of retaliation against offending pitchers.
    Most importantly, we found that after controlling for these many factors—especially the quality of the batter, which should capture the unequal factor that generates the change-in-demand theory—having a DH increased the likelihood of a batter being hit by 11–17 percent. Even after we accounted for the fact that pitchers were much less likely to be hit than other batters, the existence of the designated hitter is associated with a greater incidence of hit batsmen. Therefore, it is very likely that the law-of-demand hypothesis is a partial reason for the difference in hit batter rates across the leagues, explaining between 60 and 80 percent of the league differences over these two data samples.
    Unfortunately, at the time of our initial study, play-by-play data for games after the 1992 season were not freely available to the public. This would be a good sample of data to examine because the nature of the hit batter difference changed quite dramatically in the 1990s. Luckily, game-by-game data does exist from 1973 to 2003, the entire DH era. Although we could not control for play-specific factors influencing hit batters in this sample, we could look at the game-specific factors, such as score and the average offensive and defensive abilities in scoring and preventing runs.
    The beginning of interleague play in 1997 provided a unique opportunity to see how the use of the DH by National League teams, and lack of it by American League teams, affected the hit batter rates. Because of the DH rule difference, Major League Baseball adopted the policy of having a DH based on the league rule of the home team. This allowed us to determine whether or not the identified impact of the DH on hit batters in our play-by-play study was due to a price response or if it was just a difference in the American League style of baseball that we had yet to identify.
    The results from the game data were consistent with the play-by-play data. Having a designated hitter was associated with about an 8 percent higher rate of hit batters than without. And interestingly, when we looked at interleague games we found that the DH was associated with an 11 percent increase in the incidence of hit batters. This is strong support for the law-of-demand hypothesis. In regards to hitting batters, National League teams acted more like American League teams with the DH and American League teams behaved more like National League teams when they lacked the DH. We also found that for each batter the batting team plunked when pitching, the incidence of hit batters by the pitching team increased by 10–15 percent. This provides further evidence that teams do retaliate for pitchers hitting batters.

Incentives Everywhere
    Economist Steven Landsburg wrote, “Most of economics can be summarized in four words: ‘People respond to incentives.’ The rest is commentary.” 10 Indeed, this chapter provides a clear example of how even small changes in incentives in a trivial sporting contest can affect human behavior.