MLB player salaries and performance

Abstract

Major League Baseball (MLB) is one of the four major sporting events in the U.S. today. The sport is well-known for its lengthy 162 game regular season and long game times. Unlike other professional sports, there are seemingly endless amounts of statistics to indicate a player's performance on the field. These wide range of statistics vary among the nine positions on the field from common terms such as earned run average (ERA) to terms many have never heard of including wins above replacement (WAR). Every year Major League Baseball teams sign their players to extraordinarily large contracts that leave fans scratching their heads. Many die-hard fans are left wondering what managers find so attractive in certain players to warrant large contracts. In this paper, I examine the 200 highest paid position players and pitchers from each season between 2013-2017 and compare them to popular baseball statistics in order to find a trend between each statistic and salary.