Using Mathematics and Statistics to Analyze who are the Great Sluggers in Baseball

In this presentation, we share the results of statistical work that we have done over several years, in order to determine who are the best sluggers in the game of baseball in the US? Using z scores ( z = [ score – mean ] / standard deviation ), we examined yearly home run and slugging average figures, so as to analyze which batters were the most SD’s above the mean. We used cutoffs of 200 at bats or 250 plate appearances before expansion, and increased this by about 5 %, to account for the increased # of games played after the expansion in the early 1960’s. Since real data are involved, we feel that this would be a very good application for students in a basic statistics class, and we will present various charts in the following discussion, and summarize our findings. This is a shortened version of what we have presented at numerous conferences in the US.