Introduction – Task – Process – Evaluation - Conclusion

Introduction

· Would you like to be the commissioner of baseball? If you accept this challenge, your job would be to make a baseball game more affordable for everyone to go to. Baseball players make an outrageous amount of money to hit a curveball. Remember the days when you were young and you and your friends would get together and play baseball for fun. Do you remember hearing baseball players say; “I would play baseball for free.” Those days are long gone. Baseball is a business and most players only care how much money they make. Today a family of 4 has a difficult time going to a game because of the cost.

Task

· Major League Baseball is in the need for major changes. It is your job as the new commissioner to change the salary structure of baseball for the good of the game. You will need to come up with a mathematical structure based on statistics that will reward each player their upcoming yearly salary. Players will be paid for how well they play. If you play the best, you will make the most money. Your group will create a pay scale that will be used for all players. For this assignment, we will only deal with hitters. Students will use a spreadsheet for their statistical data and give an oral report explaining their spreadsheet.

Process

· Students will work in groups of 3.

· The groups will decide what statistical categories should be used.

· The groups will need to decide the importance of each statistic and give it an appropriate weight. Rare your categories from most important to least important. An example would be: if you felt OBP (on base percentage) was the most important statistic, you would rate it number 1 and weight it 5. If you felt RBI (runs batted in) was the second most important statistic, you could give it a weight of 4. You might have some statistical categories weighted the same.

· Next your group will use a spreadsheet to record your data.

· Your group has to rate only one major league team.

· Each group can use any resource listed below:

1. http://mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mlb/stats/index.jsp

2. http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/statistics

3. http://cbs.sportsline.com/mlb/stats

4. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/baseball/mlb/stats

Evaluation

· Students will be evaluated on their finished spreadsheet and oral report.

20 points- Participation

30 points- Oral Presentation

50 points- Spreadsheet Structure

Conclusion

· Players should be rewarded on their production. Paying a player for what you hope they accomplish is very hard to deal with. Having guaranteed contracts does not give the player the incentive to perform. When they do not perform, the fans get cheated. When the player is making more money then they are worth, the fans are not able to go to the games because underperforming players cost too much.