sciencenewsf o rkids.o rghttp://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/2013/01/baseball-players-hitting-streak-may-boost-teammates-batting-averages/

The se b ase b all all-s tars p laye d in 1937. Fo urth fro m the le ft is Jo e DiMag g io , who we nt o n a 56-g ame hitting stre ak in1941. That re co rd has no t b e e n b ro ke n. Cre d it: Harris & Ewing

Hitting streaks spread success

By Stephen Ornes / January 11, 2013

For baseball players who want to increase their batting success, a new studyof f ers this t ip: Get on a team with a slugger. When one player experiences ahitt ing streak, his teammates do better as well, according to the new analysisof baseball stats. (In baseball, as in lif e, some people are improved by thecompany they keep!)

The scientists didn’t identif y the reason f or this link. However, the pattern isreal, they reported this past December in the scientif ic journal PLOS ONE.

“Wedon’tprovethathitt ing is

contagious,” Joel Bock told Science News. “But the data show there is something there.” Bock, whoworked on the new study, is an engineer at Scalaton. It ’s a sof tware engineering f irm in La Mesa, Calif .

In the study, a streak was def ined as when a player hit the ball and reached base in 30 games in a row.Since 1945, major leaguers have racked up 28 hitt ing streaks. (In 1945, Boston Braves player TommyHolmes went on a 37-game streak. The most recent streak occurred in 2011. That’s when Dan Uggla, ofthe Atlanta Braves, hit saf ely in 33 straight games.)

Bock and his collaborators then studied the records of the sluggers’ teammates. Those players’ battingaverages went up, too — but only during the streak.

A batting average measures how well a player is hitt ing. For example: Say a player goes to bat 10 times. If

he hits a ball and reaches base saf ely three times and makes an out the other seven, then his battingaverage over those 10 at-bats is .300.

Bock and his collaborators looked at the records of players who played regularly while someone on theirteam was on a hitt ing streak. The researchers f ound that on average, batting averages of the sluggers’teammates’ went up by about 11 points — but only during a streak. That means if a player normally washitt ing .250, he hit .261 during the streak.

Jeremy Arkes, who did not work on the study, f inds its results “plausible.” This economist at the NavalPostgraduate School in Monterey, Calif ., says many f actors may explain why hitt ing seems to becontagious. A batter on a hot streak may reach a base a lot and distract a pitcher, f or example. Thatmight cause the pitcher to make mistakes and throw more hittable balls to later batters. Or teammatesmay be enthusiastic about a slugger ’s streak. That enthusiasm could provide “extra excitement and extrapurpose to playing,” Arkes says. And that could boost the teammates’ perf ormance.

Future studies may help explain why hitt ing streaks seem to be contagious — and Bock welcomes thosestudies. “There is some sort of mechanism going on, but I’m not sure I know what it is,” he says.

Power Words

streak A continuous period of specif ied success or luck.

batting average The average perf ormance of a batter, expressed as a ratio of a batter ’s saf e hits perof f icial t imes at bat.

contagious Spread f rom one person or organism to another by direct or indirect contact.

economics The branch of knowledge concerned with the production, consumption and transf er ofwealth.