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Full-Text Articles in Labor Relations
Do Hitters Boost Their Performance During Their Contract Years?, Heather M. O'Neill
Do Hitters Boost Their Performance During Their Contract Years?, Heather M. O'Neill
Business and Economics Faculty Publications
Each season, baseball fans and journalists alike identify which players are in the final years of their contracts because a lot rides on how the players produce in their “contract year.” Will a player boost his effort and performance in an effort to improve his value and bargaining power? Or will he crumble under the pressure? Or are players’ performances uncorrelated with where they stand in their contract cycles?
Do Major League Baseball Hitters Engage In Opportunistic Behavior?, Heather M. O'Neill
Do Major League Baseball Hitters Engage In Opportunistic Behavior?, Heather M. O'Neill
Business and Economics Faculty Publications
This study focuses on 256 Major League Baseball free agent hitters playing under the 2006–2011 collective bargaining agreement to determine whether players engage in opportunistic behavior in their contract year, i.e., the last year of their current guaranteed contracts. Past studies of professional baseball yield conflicting results depending on the econometric technique applied and choice of performance measure. When testing whether players’ offensive performances increase during their contract year, the omitted variable bias associated with OLS and pooled OLS estimation leads to contrary results compared to fixed effects modeling. Fixed effects regression results suggest players increase their offensive performance subject …