DO YOU NEED WINNERS TO WIN? AN ANALYSIS OF THE EXPECTANCY THAT A WORLD SERIES-EXPERIENCED PLAYER IS NEEDED FOR FUTURE SUCCESS IN MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE TEXAS WOMAN’S UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF KINESIOLOGY COLLEGE OF HEALTH SCIENCES BY JAMES ALLEN TENNISON, B.B.A., M.ED. DENTON, TEXAS DECEMBER 2015 Copyright© James Allen Tennison. 2015 all rights reserved. iii DEDICATION To my wife, daughters, and Dad, This would not have been possible without you and the sacrifices that each of you made along the way. Dear, I still will not be watching all the cooking shows with you, but you will have to share the TV a little bit more now. How about we watch a show that we both will like? Girls, Daddy doesn’t have any homework to do now. I can finally just sit and play with you! How about some dancing, dress-up, playing board games, and sports! To my Dad, who was so proud to learn that I was going to begin this journey in the summer of 2010. Sadly, he passed two weeks into me starting this degree but I could still hear him cheering me on throughout. I know that if I told him I was finished today, he would say, “How about that, sports fans? Pretty salty, Jimbob!” iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank the Lord for Dr. Leslie Graham! Thank you for your direction, keen eye, and for constantly correcting me for leaving out the “Oxford Comma” (the last comma used in a series before the word “and”) as it truly does change the meaning. You actually made the editing part fun with your input and insightful baseball-themed comments such as: 1) “You’re killing me, Smalls!” 2) “Don’t leave a runner stranded on base” (a reference citation that bled over to another page), 3) “Gussy up”, 4)…I’ll add more, I’m sure. Dr. David Nichols (statistics) and Dr. David Rylander (marketing), thank you for being baseball fans who were willing to help me! I appreciate your time and devotion to my process both in the classroom and on my committee. Dr. Kimberly Miloch, a huge thank you for accepting me into your program and letting me begin this process. Your influence as a professor and researcher has made a definite improvement in who I am today. Thanks for kicking me in the tail when I needed it and motivating me to be someone that is useful in sports research. I know you are not a hugger, but this is my hug to you. Thank you! Dr. Lindsay Pursglove, Dr. Sandy Shawver, Soon-To-Be Dr. Kristen Perry, and all the other Sport Management doctoral students at TWU, thank you for answering the phone v every time I called. Thank you for your guidance and going before me to pave the way and tell me what the road looked like ahead. Taft Rose, thank you for helping look up stats, listening, and thinking about this paper more than you should have had to. The data collection days were fun with you and Josh Duke. It was fun talking about all the names we were digging up. “I haven’t said that name in a while!” We have more time to play ping-pong now! Dr. Justin Gandy for listening and showing me how to format page numbers as i, ii, iii and then change to 1, 2, 3 within the paper. This may seem trivial, but I include this because it’s no small feat. Sandee Smith, thank you for all your help in formatting. I cannot end this section without extending my deepest personal thanks to my dear friend, and father-like figure, Jeff Brown. When my dad passed, I wasn’t expecting you to step in like you did. You have looked out for me and my family, throughout this process, and even this dissertation, as you too made sacrifices to help me get here. “I’m going to stay with you until you finish, Big Boy,” you stated often and you never backed down from your word, no matter what you faced. Thank you, my friend, and now we can enjoy life without this little book report always on my mind. Next week, the enchiladas are on me! vi ABSTRACT JAMES ALLEN TENNISON DO YOU NEED WINNERS TO WIN? AN ANALYSIS OF THE EXPECTANCY THAT A WORLD SERIES-EXPERIENCED PLAYER IS NEEDED FOR FUTURE SUCCESS IN MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL DECEMBER 2015 In professional sports, winning is paramount to owners, general managers, and coaches, and teams will look to any source possible as they seek to gain an advantage over their competitors. A Major League Baseball (MLB) general manager (GM) questioned the strategy of whether teams should seek to acquire personnel that are already experienced at winning, or at least participating in, the World Series to help their team excel, or if building and training a set of players that has not attained that goal is preferable. As teams seek to add players with World Series experience, they are employing the concept of experiential learning, or direct experience learning. Owners and general managers then hold to the Expectancy Theory that their efforts will lead to greater success than previously could be attained. This research seeks to answer the question, using the sport of Major League Baseball as a backdrop, in order to aid teams as they create a strategy for winning that will one day lead to a World Series Championship. The purpose of this study was to test the effects of a team’s strategy of acquiring players through a mid-season acquisition with previous World Series experience on their winning percentage (WP%) and post-season success in an MLB season. Utilizing a One- vii Way Repeated Measures ANOVA, no significance was found in a team’s WP% after acquiring the new player. An independent t-Test found no significance in the number of World Series-experienced players (WSEP) on winning and losing teams. A Chi-Square Goodness-of-Fit found no significance between the success of playoff teams from 1995- 2014. MLB teams that employ the strategy of acquiring WSEPs are attempting to bolster their team for better in-season performance as well as better post-season performance but the data shows that this is not the case. The New York Yankees seem to do this with frequency and success, and it encourages other teams to follow suit believing that it displays commitment to fans. The results of this study encourage MLB teams to seek to develop leadership, experience, and development. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page COPYRIGHT .............................................................................................................. iii DEDICATION ............................................................................................................ iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................................................... v ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................... vii LIST OF TABLES ..................................................................................................... xii Chapter I. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 1 Experiential Learning in Baseball ................................................................... 3 Expectancy Theory in Baseball ....................................................................... 7 Purpose ............................................................................................................. 8 Significance...................................................................................................... 8 Research Questions .......................................................................................... 9 Assumptions ................................................................................................... 10 Limitations ..................................................................................................... 12 Terms ............................................................................................................. 12 Summary ........................................................................................................ 13 II. REVIEW OF LITERATURE................................................................................ 15 Experiential Learning in Baseball .................................................................. 15 Expectancy Theory in Baseball ..................................................................... 18 Baseball is the Perfect Game to Study ........................................................... 20 Description of MLB Player Movement ......................................................... 25 A Potential Link Between Experience and Leadership in Baseball .............. 29 Summary ........................................................................................................ 32 ix III. METHOD ........................................................................................................... 33 Research Design............................................................................................. 33 Quantitative Analysis .............................................................................. 33 Independent Variable: the WSEP ................................................................ 34 Inclusion and Exclusion Factors for the Independent Variable .............. 34 Dependent Variable: MLB Team’s Winning Percentage ............................. 36 Inclusion and Exclusion Factors for the Dependent Variable ................ 37 Participants .................................................................................................... 38 Statistical Analysis .......................................................................................