A multi-criteria approach for evaluating major league baseball batting performance

Abstract

The evaluation of player performance typically involves a number of criteria representing various aspects of performance that are of interest. Pareto optimality and weighted aggregation are useful tools to simultaneously evaluate players with respect to the multiple criteria. In particular, the Pareto approach allows trade-offs among the criteria to be compared, does not require specifications of weighting schemes, and is not sensitive to the scaling of the criteria. The Pareto optimal players can be scored according to their ranks or according to their distance from the global optimum for informative comparisons of performance or for evaluating trade-offs among the criteria. These multi-criteria approaches are defined and illustrated for evaluating batting performance of Major League Baseball players.