2004 Mlb Wins Regression

On Wednesday, October 27th 2004, the Curse of the Bambino was finally lifted off the City of Boston and its long-suffering baseball fans (see Appendix A for more on the Curse). For the first time in 86 years, the Boston Red Sox were the world champions of baseball.

There is no arguing that the 2004 Red Sox were a good team that played excellent baseball throughout the season. The team was led not by talent cultivated through the Red Sox' farm system but by high-priced, free-agent acquisitions such as Pedro Martinez, Manny Ramirez, Keith Foulke, Curt Shilling and David Ortiz. The average age for a Red Sox team member was 31.1 years, the oldest team average in the league. Additionally, the cumulative payroll for the 2004 Red Sox was the second highest in Major League Baseball at $125,208,542 or $4,173,618 per player. The previous two statistics describe some of the off-field demographic makeup of the 2004 Red Sox. In additional to being a veteran and well-paid ball club, the Red Sox performed well on the field as well. The team batting average (number of hits divided by number of official at-bats) of the Red Sox was tied for the highest of the 30 Major Leagues teams at 0.282. In terms of pitching statistics, the