Abstract
Over the past 20 years, professional and collegiate baseball has undergone a transformation, with statistics and analytics increasingly factoring into most of the decisions being made on the field. One particular example of the increased role of analytics is in the positioning of outfielders, who are tasked with tracking down balls hit to the outfield to record outs and minimize potential offensive damage. This paper explores the potential of location analytics to enhance the strategic positioning of players, enabling improved response and performance. We implement a location optimization model to analyze collegiate ball-tracking data, seeking outfielder locations that simultaneously minimize the average distance to a batted ball and maximize the weighted importance of batted ball coverage within a response standard. Trade-off outfielder configurations are compared to observed fielder positioning, finding that location models and spatial optimization can lead to performance improvements ranging from 1 to 3%, offering a significant strategic advantage over the course of a season.
Highlights
Marketing and popular media often refer to baseball as America’s pastime, suggesting that it is the most popular sport in America
This paper explores the potential of location analytics to support enhanced response and performance through the strategic positioning of outfielders
Spatial optimization and location modeling are often used to understand the performance of a spatial configuration or to design an ideal spatial configuration of a service system
Summary
Marketing and popular media often refer to baseball as America’s pastime, suggesting that it is the most popular sport in America. Whether this is true is open for debate, but clearly it is a broadly popular sport with a huge following. Many may think of community recreation teams where all players participate. With extensive interest and participation at the youth level, through organizations like Little League Baseball and Softball (with different age divisions such as Tee Ball, Minor League, Major Division, Intermediate, Junior League and Senior League), up through high school sponsored programs, college/university teams and professional teams (which have an extensive Minor League or farm system that develops players).
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