Application of the Hungarian Algorithm in Baseball Team Selection and Assignment

Measuring and comparing the performance of athletes in all forms of team sports require more than a modest amount of data reflecting the athletes' abilities. When investigating the skill of baseball players in South Africa, however, one has to make do with a combination of personal opinion, gut feeling and a few descriptive statistics. This research is aimed at developing a system with which to assess the abilities of baseball players in all practical aspects of the sport and compose a team in which all the players are assigned to positions such that the collective team skill is maximised for a specific goal. The system itself is of such a nature that any group of baseball players can apply it, with some help from a statistician. The optimisation process that selects the team is carried out using the Hungarian algorithm, a mathematical method of optimally assigning a set of persons to a set of jobs.