Applying grey relational analysis to the fight evaluation of MLB teams: An extension to Chen et al. (2006, 2010)

Abstract

In two earlier studies, Chen and colleagues (2006, 2010) explored the fight evaluation, or playoff capability, of professional sports teams within the National Basketball Association (NBA) and National Football League (NFL). Using grey relational, cluster, and discriminant analyses, these authors correctly classified a majority of playoff contenders using a series of team statistics as evaluation indices. In extension of such work, the current follow-up study explores the playoff capabilities of teams within Major League Baseball (MLB) during the 2016 season. Utilizing similar techniques as in Chen et al. (2006, 2010), the present work provides a successful application of grey relational analysis to the MLB. Our results indicate that our evaluation matrix correctly classified 4 of the 5 playoff teams in the American League (AL) and 3 of the 5 teams in the National League (NL). Although the discriminant analysis correctly categorized each of the playoff teams for both leagues, the cluster analysis misclassified 2 supplementary non-playoff teams as playoff contenders in the AL. Overall, this research demonstrates the utility of statistical analyses via grey relational analysis and comparable techniques in predicting and evaluating the performance of major organizations, such as playoff-contending, professional sports teams.