Date of Award
December 2014
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science
Department
Computer Science
First Advisor
Mukul Goyal
Committee Members
Ethan Munson, Hossein Hosseini
Keywords
Baseball, Markov
Abstract
In this work we confirm a Markov chain model of baseball for 2013 Major League Baseball batting data. We describe the transition matrices for individual player data and their use in generating single and nine-inning run distributions for a given lineup. The run distribution is used to calculate the expected number of runs produced by a lineup over nine innings. We discuss batting order optimization heuristics to avoid computation of distributions for the 9! = 362, 880 distinct lineups for 9 players. Finally, we describe an implementation of the algorithms and review their performance against actual game data.
Recommended Citation
Ursin, Daniel Joseph, "A Markov Model for Baseball with Applications" (2014). Theses and Dissertations. 964.
https://dc.uwm.edu/etd/964