Purpose The main purpose of this current study is two-fold. Firstly, it attempts to develop a model to determine the true market value of Korean professional baseball players (hitters only) solely based on their athletic performances on the field. Secondly, it is to provide the evidential data for the market value of baseball players in Korea. Methods The statistical data and performance information were obtained from baseball almanac from KBO from 1997 to 2016. Seven hundred and ninety three players were included for data analysis. Principal component factor analysis was utilized to eliminate multicollinearity among 12 sabermetrics indices (OPS, GPA, SECA, TA, RC, RC/27, XR, ISO, PSN, sOBA, %OW, BABIP) and increase power of explanation of the proposed model with KMO(=0.77), p<0.001. Results The proposed model was successfully developed with YSalary = Years of Experience*921.5 + FA (free agent)*53528.9 + PHI(Power Hitter Index)*7313 + CHI(Contact Hitter Index)*5893.6. Furthermore, the proposed model explained 64.5% of variances of the market value for the Korean professional baseball players and proved to be statistically valid. Conclusions The newly developed model in this study was very helpful for us to identify the variables that affect the true market value of baseball players. It is expected that this model could make an important contribution in determining true market value of the baseball players in Korea.
