Lizzie, Callan, and Mary:

  Very good job on both the final project presentation and this paper.  The paper
  is generally very well-written and interesting.  The only big criticism I have is 
  that around the middle you seem to have stopped consistently citing sources for 
  some of the facts you were presenting.  Be more consistent about that sort of giving 
  credit where credit is due to others.  

  I was hoping that all of the projects would involve doing some actual analysis of 
  data, and so it's good that you actually dug into the baseball stats and tried 
  to understand the effects of the pitching mound and strike zone changes after the
  1968 season.  I sense that you might be a bit disappointed that the results weren't 
  more clear-cut -- that more of the tests didn't turn out to give significant results,
  for example.   But "that's life" in a way(!)  As we discussed after your talk, if you 
  wanted to pursue this question to try to understand it better (and perphaps find more 
  significant differences; significant in statistical terms, of course), I think it might be 
  interesting to take just the 1968 and 1969 seasons, identify the players who were active 
  both years (say for the whole year both years, to rule out effects of major injuries, 
  etc.), and compare performances for those players the year before the rules change 
  and the year after the rule change.  I think this might give a more detailed picture
  of the effects of the rule changes than the 5-year averages you were looking at.  I 
  think going out to 5 years after the change probably includes too much adaptation 
  to the new rules and the effects of new players entering the league.  I know you tried
  to control for that by not including even more later years, but from your results, you 
  can almost see that things had "settled down" in a lot of the offensive and defensive 
  categories after the first year or two.   

  Specific comments:

  Page 1: "Pitchers were controlling the game and throwing multiple perfect games in a row 
  where no batter would hit a single ball."  That's a big overstatement.  Actual perfect
  games (where no opposing batter reaches base) are extremely rare (only 21 in the modern 
  era), even in the era of dominant pitching you are studying.  There was one perfect game in 
  MLB in 1968 (thrown by Catfish Hunter of the Oakland A's against the Minnesota Twins).  
  The closest previous perfect game was in 1965 (thrown by Sandy Koufax of the LA Dodgers 
  against the Chicago Cubs).  The next one after Catfish Hunter's perfect game didn't happen
  until 1981 (Len Barker of the Cleveland Indians against the Toronto Blue Jays).  There
  were three of them in the 2012 season, though, which is a huge statistical anomaly.
  See the comment on page 11 below.

  Page 4:  "A low standard deviation is desired when doing research like this because that 
  means that all of the data is a part of a trend so the results mean more than if there 
  was a higher standard deviation, which could indicate that the results were random."
  Maybe yes, but it's not considered "good form" to put statements like this into a 
  research article(!)  Readers don't really care whether the results worked out the
  way you wanted them to(!)

  Page 7:  "Likewise, the more tightly defined strike zone could have attributed to 
  pitches that were formerly deemed strikes to be called balls."  Wrong word here -- 
  I think you meant "contributed" rather than "attributed."

  Page 9:  "This also affects the amount of innings a pitcher managers and coaches allow
  him to play. Today, pitchers pitch an average of 5.8 innings. In 1969, however, pitchers 
  pitched an average of 6.8 innings."  The first sentence is awkward.  Don't use
  "amount" for things you can count in discrete units (like innings).  Say "number" instead.
  Better:  "This also affects the number of innings managers and coaches allow a pitcher
  to play."  Also where does your data come from?  This should be cited.  And finally, 
  I think there is another indication that teams are being careful with their pitchers: 
  Most teams today use some version of a 5-man pitching rotation and have multiple 
  role-specialized relief pitchers.  Both of those trends were definitely
  less common in the past.  So in addition to pitching more innings per game, a lot of
  pitchers had more starts in a season as well.   There weren't a lot of 6th or 7th
  inning specialist relievers to come into games when the starter started to tire.  

  Page 11:  "With the use of performance-enhancing drugs, new training methods, and 
  strategies, many executives today believe that baseball is becoming unbalanced again 
  and needs to be changed."  What's your evidence for saying this?  Could it be due
  to an uptick in very strong pitching performances like the 3 perfect games in 
  the 2012 season mentioned above?

  Final Project: 

  Annotated Bibliography -- 10/10
   
  Presentation -- 35/35

  Paper -- 50/55

  Total -- 95/100   (letter: A)