In-Class Assignment 9

Suppose you are the General Manager of a baseball team, and you are selecting two players for your team. You have a budget of $10,500,000, and you have the choice between the following players: Player Name OBP SLG Salary Yandy Diaz 0.403 0.511 $8,000,000 Joey Meneses 0.320 0.366 $723,600 Jose Abreu 0.292 0.358 $19,500,000 Ryan Noda 0.384 0.400 $720,000 Nate Lowe 0.365 0.426 $4,050,000

Given your budget and the player statistics, which two players would you select?

If I had to choose two players, I would choose Yandy Diaz and Ryan Noda. I used the following rules below to make my choice:

OBP - above 330 is good. Above 360 is outstanding. SLG - below 400 is bad.

The reason why we are using these stats is because we are analyzing by the moneyball analytics. The moneyball analytics states that the most important stats in baseball are OBP and SLG. OBP (On Base Percentage) is how many times you score runs - and to score runs, you have to be on base. SLG (Slugging) compares how much progress a player makes per base everytime they hit the ball. Both of these players had outstanding OBP and while Ryan Noda has an SLG stat that is at 400, his outstanding OBP and salary makes him the clear choice.