Empirical study on relationship between sports analytics and success in regular season and postseason in Major League Baseball

In this paper, we study the relationship between sports analytics and success in regular season and postseason in Major League Baseball via the empirical data of 2014-2017. The categories of analytics belief, the number of analytics staff, and the total number of research staff employed by MLB teams are examined. Conditional probabilities, correlations, and various regression models are used to analyze the data. It is shown that the use of sports analytics might have some positive impact on the success of teams in the regular season, but not in the postseason. After taking into account the team payroll, we apply partial correlations and partial F tests to analyze the data again. It is found that the use of sports analytics, with team payroll already in the regression model, might still be a good indicator of success in the regular season, but not in the postseason. Moreover, it is shown that both the team payroll and the use of sports analytics are not good indicators of success in the postseason. The predictive modeling of decision trees is also developed, under different kinds of input and target variables, to classify MLB teams into no playoffs or playoffs. It is interesting to note that 87 wins (or 0.537 winning percentage) in a regular season may well be the threshold of advancing into the postseason.