Analysis of the Impact of Temperature on Nippon Professional Baseball

Nippon Professional Baseball is played annually by 12 teams from March to October at various baseball fields from Hokkaido to Okinawa at temperatures ranging from under 0 °C to over 30 °C. In this study, we aim to analyze the relationship between temperature and batting evaluation metrics, including Batting Average, Slugging percentage, Isolated power, Batting Average on Balls In Play, weighted On-Base Average, Homerun percentage, On-Base Percentage, Strikeout percentage, Walk percentage, and Error play percentage. We used baseball data from 2,574 matches spanning from 2016 to 2018 official seasons. Temperature data was observed by the Himawari 8 geostationary meteorological satellite and was classified as “Warm,” “Average-High,” “Average-Low,” and “Cold.” We tested the metrics in each classification, and the result shows that some metrics were significantly different. Finally, this study discussed how to use the analysis results.