Project collaborators: Matthew Sterkel, Mitch Borgert, and William Zamora.

Overseen by: Dr. Robin Donatello

This site is an exploratory data analysis of baseball data.

Data used in this analysis can be found at Lahman’s Baseball Database

On this project site we investigate the following question:

During the steroid era of baseball (roughly 1988-2003), we want to see if hitters did not actually gain an advantage by being on steroids because the pitchers were also on steroids. We will do this by comparing the on-base plus sluging (OPS) of the hitters with the earned run averge (ERA) of the pitchers. The OPS is the sum of a statistic of how often a hitter reaches base and a statistic that measures the batting productivity of a hitter. The ERA is the mean of the earned runs given up by a pitcher. By looking at these statistics for players before and after the steroid era, we can see whether hitters did not actually gain an advantage.

It is important to note that:

The lower the ERA, the better the pitcher is considered.

The higher the OPS, the better the batter is considered.