Improvement by Spreading the Wealth

Abstract

This study focuses on individual home run hitting in Major League Baseball. It is observed that the distribution of the rate of home run hitting is highly right skewed, but it is becoming discernibly less so over time. Frequencies of the lowest rates have been decreasing, whereas the frequencies of the higher rates are increasing. As a result, the mean rate as well as the standard deviation have both been increasing. On the other hand, relative variability as measured by the coefficient of variation has been decreasing over time. These observations lend support to an improvement in home run hitting in the sense that (a) more players are hitting a higher number of home runs, and (b) there is a more even distribution of home run hitting rates among players.