Bradley Lanier
Journal Article
The Effect of Temperature on Baseball
My article focused on the effect that temperature has on the sport of baseball. The researchers examined how game statistics like batting average, homeruns, walks, strikeouts, and runs scored are affected by the environment in which a game is played. They collected data from 22,215 games from the 2000-11 regular seasons. The researchers attended the games and recorded the temperature of each day game at approximately one o’clock and each night game at approximately seven o’clock. They got the stats of the players by using an online source that displayed the box score for each game that they were monitoring. They rated the temperature on a scale of “cold”, “average”, and “warm”. Cold was determined to be temperatures less than 60 degrees F, average was between 60-80 degrees F, and warm was greater than 83 degrees F. They attended both American and National League games but excluded games that were played in a stadium with a retractable roof which had the ability to set the temperature of the stadium. At the end of the study data showed that homeruns, batting average, and runs scored both increased. Homeruns increased from 1.79/game in cold conditions to 2.35/game in warm conditions. The reason for the increase in offensive productivity is due to an increase in reaction times by the hitters in warm conditions rather than cold. It is safe to conclude that weather conditions affect the sport of baseball and a team will have a greater offensive performance in warmer weather than in cold.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/WCAS-D-13-00002.1
EnviPhys 