Baseball: A Tool for Middle and High School Math

Baseball, perhaps more than any other major sport, is a game of numbers.  The sheer number of games (162 in the major league schedule) leads to a large amount of statistical information. Students who understand baseball better than math may understand many mathematical concepts without realizing it. For these students, harnessing the connection between baseball math and classroom math topics can prove to be an effective teaching strategy.

While the applications among younger grades are straightforward (batting averages equate with fractions, etc.), it is in high school that the real interesting connections can be made. The field of sabermetrics involves advanced statistical interpretations of baseball. As a result of sabermetrics, new baseball statistics have been created, statistics that are far more complex than earned run average (ERA) or batting average. This includes statistics such as WAR (wins above replacement), WHIP (walks and hits per innings pitched) and the Pythagorean Expectation Statistic (used to predict a team’s performance over a season). The generation of these formulas is an engaging way to teach algebra. The use of sabermetrics in baseball is the foundation behind the best-selling book Moneyball by Michael Lewis, which was also made into a movie starring Brad Pitt.

Baseball can be used to teach statistics. One of the primary applications of sabermetric data is the comparison between players between different eras.  Was Barry Bonds a better homerun hitter than Babe Ruth? The answer is that it depends on how you consider the question. Barry Bonds had the most home runs in his career as well as the most home runs in a single season ever. However, his achievement is less than Babe Ruth in terms of his t-score ranking. In other words, the Babe Ruth was more standard deviations above the median home run totals for the era he played in than was Barry Bonds.

There are games online that emulate baseball based on mathematical algorithms.  Whatifsports.com is a “historic fantasy sports website” that allows competitive play based on baseball player’s performance history, with statistics “normalized” to average performance. Sabermetrics are utilized extensively in fantasy baseball. In an advanced baseball math lesson, students would be expected to justify their drafting and roster moves in statistical terms. Since this is a fun activity and baseball is primarily a summer game, this is a great method to keep students thinking about math while on break, and could help fight academic summer slide.

An earlier Math Hub blog looked at the connection between math and baseball as focused on elementary education. Could we extend the use of baseball to middle and high school algebra and statistics lessons? Share your thoughts here.