Scholarship & Research
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Item Estimating economic impacts of Tommy John surgery on Major League Baseball pitchers(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Agriculture, 2018) McMichael, Finn Ottey; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Randal R. RuckerTommy John Surgery is a common elbow surgery among baseball pitchers that has become more prevalent over the last two decades. In this thesis, I estimate the impact of Tommy John Surgery on Major League Baseball pitcher productivity and value to the team, measured through Marginal Revenue Product. Tommy John Surgery requires a rehabilitation period of over a year on average, and it is important for the team to be able to predict the pitcher's post-surgery performance. The estimated productivity impact of Tommy John Surgery is a decrease in pitchers' performance for at least two seasons following their return to play. The combined magnitude of this decrease in performance translates to about one team win and over an $800,000 decrease in Marginal Revenue Product for the team. I estimate the entire cost to a team resulting from lost productivity related to Tommy John Surgery to be about $2 million. With an average of 25 Tommy John Surgeries a season in Major League Baseball over the last five seasons, these costs total approximately $50 million league wide every year. Other components of this thesis include analyses of Wins Above Replacement as a productivity statistic in baseball and the impact of Tommy John Surgery on pitcher performance, measured through both Wins Above Replacement and standard pitching statistics, such as innings pitched and earned run average.Item Redshirting and academic performance : evidence from NCAA student-athletes(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Agriculture, 2014) Wilkes, Ethan Charles; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Randall R. RuckerRedshirting is common in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) athletics. Many student-athletes forgo playing time as true freshmen and extend their eligibility in order to develop physically before they suit up for their first game the following year. Although redshirting is widely used for athletic reasons, the academic effects of redshirting are unknown. Academic achievement is an area of interest for the NCAA. Student-Athletes in the 2007 cohort achieved a federal graduation rate (FGR) of 66 percent compared to the general student body's rate of 65 percent. Although student-athletes have a higher FGR than the general student body, athletes in the major revenue producing sports lag behind. Football players that attended Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) schools reached a FGR of 62 percent and athletes that played men's basketball at NCAA Division I schools earned an FGR of 47 percent. This paper uses individual-level data from SuperPrep Magazine and Montana State University (MSU) to examine the relationship between redshirting and academic performance. To address potential endogeneity, this thesis considers a propensity score matching (PSM) approach when using data from SuperPrep Magazine. PSM results indicate that selection bias is present in ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates, but that there are still substantial positive impacts of redshirting on graduation. OLS estimates using MSU data indicate there may be lagged benefits of redshirting on academic performance, although these results are not robust when a fixed-effects analysis is applied.