To: Dr. Babb
From: Richard Follett

Table of Contents
Summary of Analysis of stats from Major League Baseball’s 1997 season…………………………………………… 1
Figures…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..3

Summary The 1997 season of Major League Baseball ended in an epic fashion. The Florida Marlins, the National League wild card that year, ended up going on to win the World Series in movie worthy fashion over the Cleveland Indians. The Marlins finished the regular season nine games behind the season favorite Atlanta Braves who they ended up beating to go to the big game. The Marlins then ended beating the Cleveland Indians in extra innings of game 7 to capture their first championship after only their fourth year in the league. In this study, we will look at many different aspects of each team’s stats from that 1997 year and how they had effect on each other. We will look at number of wins for each team. We will take a look as to which teams made the playoffs that year. We will look at the batting average of each team as well as the earned run average, number of stolen bases, the number of homeruns, and the number of errors each team made during that 1997 season. Player’s average salaries during the 1995 season, average salaries during the 1997 season, as well as a team’s total payroll during the 1997 will be looked at during the study. We will also want to see the total attendance of each team during that season. Finally, we will look at which teams use turf and which teams use grass as well as the division that each team plays. When it comes to baseball, it all starts with the pitcher. The better the pitcher, the better that person can control the game. Figure 1 shows the frequency distribution of the earned run averages of the 1997. Here we see that one team had an earned run average between 3-3.5 runs for 3.6%, eight teams had an earned run average between 3.5-4 runs for 28.6%, six teams had an earned run average between 4-4.5 runs for 21.4%, eleven teams had an earned run average between 4.5-5 runs for 39.3%, and two teams had an earned run average between 5-5.5 runs for 7.1%. After the pitcher, the next stat that people love is homeruns. Figure 2 shows us the descriptive statistics for the number of homeruns hit by teams of the 1997 season. In this sample size of 28 teams, we see a minimum of 94 homeruns and a maximum of 208 homeruns. The mean is 145.75 homeruns; the median is 142 homeruns; and the mode is 140 homeruns. The range was 113 homeruns with a standard deviation of 29.37 homeruns. The first quartile, or the bottom 25% of the teams, was 121 homeruns while the third quartile, or top 25% of teams, was 168.5 homeruns. The season of baseball is a very long season. The teams play 162 regular season games during that season. Since it is such a long season, teams are constantly moving players in and out of the lineup. Sometimes this can make it hard for players to get into a groove at the plate. With that being said, one would still think that a team’s batting average would be more than .250, or getting a hit at least once out of every four at bats. This is tested in Figure 3. Figure 3 shows that we would reject the null hypothesis that teams get a hit at least once every four at bats through an upper-tailed test in this one sample hypothesis test for the mean. Another aspect of baseball that people look at is a player’s average salary. In Figure 4, we look at a player’s average salary in 1995 compared to a player’s average salary in 1997. We test to see if there is no difference in the mean of a player’s average salary in 1995 compared to 1997. Based on the results of a two-tailed test, we get a