Putting A Dollar Sign On The Muscle: Valuing Players

Abstract

Valuing baseball players is something that professional baseball teams have been doing since their inception. Enterprising businessmen founded teams because they saw a profit opportunity: fans liked baseball and were willing to pay to see it. This caused owners to build fields, erect stands, and hire players to play games in order to attract paying customers. Owners soon learned that fans preferred winners to losers, which meant stocking rosters with better players to generate more revenue at the gate.