103: Brian Mills on the Labor Market in Baseball, the Umpire Strikes Back and R

Brian Mills is an Assistant Professor at the University of Florida within the Department of Tourism, Recreation, and Sport Management specializing in Managerial Sports Economics.

Professor Mills is also Associate Research Faculty within the Eric Friedheim Tourism Institute (EFTI).

Brian’s research interests encompass topics such as the sports labor market, industrial organization and sports league policy, public policy and economic development related to sport, and advanced analytics in the sports business. He is especially interested in applying economic lessons and quantitative analysis to problems that sport managers face in their everyday decision making.

Dr. Mills has also worked on consulting projects for professional sports teams and municipalities both in the U.S. and Canada.

Before arriving at Florida, Brian received his PhD and MA in Sport Management from the University of Michigan.  During that time, he also completed MA degrees in Statistics and in Applied Economics.  Brian earned his BA in Psychology in 2006 from St. Mary’s College of Maryland where he played NCAA Division III baseball.

Brian’s work and research interests can be found at brianmmills.com and at princeofslides.blogspot

Brian is now offering a new course called Exploring Pitch Data with R over at www.datacamp.com.

Check it out. You’ll have lots of fun learning basic data manipulation, summarization, and visualization in R using Statcast data.

Economics:

In this episode, Brian discusses and mentions: sports economics, labor market, externalities, incentives, wages, allocation of time, R, population, GDP and incomes.

Economists:

In this episode, Brian discusses and mentions: Rodney Fort, Stefan Szymanski, Lawrence Kahn and Bill Gerrard.

Links:

• 090: Stefan Szymanski on Soccernomics and How Sabermetrics, Inequality and Finance Rules the Sport
• 096: Cameron Murray on the Robinson Crusoe Economy and Blogging toward your PhD
• 099: Rodney Fort on Sport Economics, Big Data in Baseball and the Value of Hosting an Olympic Games
• Freakonomics
• Fastball Movie
• Trackman Baseball
• Trackman Golf

Brian Mills’ Writing Tips:

1. Always be reading and writing.
2. Give or receive feedback and re-write.
3. Develop a habit of note-taking.
4. Turn your idea into a good story.

Resources:

• Sabermetrics, Scouting, and the Science of Baseball
• Data Camp
• Exploring Pitch Data with R
• A Guide to Sabermetric Research: How to Find Raw Data by the Society for American Baseball Research
• Number Munchers game

Artilces:

Scoring in Baseball Is Down. Blame the Umpires: A Study Found That Umpires Have Expanded Their Strike Zone in Recent Years in The Wall Street Journal

Books:

• Pay Dirt by Rodeny Fort

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