Baseball Evaluation Using DEA Benchmark Approach :An Application to Japanese Pacific League-1999

This research uses a new analytical approach for baseball evaluation, referred to as "A Bench Mark Approach," [1] by combining DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) with OERA (Offensive Earned-Run Average). An important feature of the approach is that it can select a best performer among many baseball players and evaluate their ranking scores. The DEA is an evaluation technique of various entities in public and private sectors, whose production activities are characterized by multiple inputs and outputs. The evaluation technique has a shortcoming in examining baseball performance because it produces many efficient baseball players. To overcome such a shortcoming of DEA baseball evaluation, a Slack-Adjusted DEA (SA-DEA) is combined with OERA in [1]. As its real application, the benchmark approach is applied to the evaluation of their offensive records of Japanese baseball players in Pacific League(1999).