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Title: Win Shares by Bill James, Jim Henzler ISBN: 1-931584-03-6 Publisher: STATS Inc. Pub. Date: March, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.44 (16 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: interesting but flawed
Comment: The concept of win shares is wonderful and represents a fascinating step forward in sabermetric analysis. Any book that provides a single number to measure the value of each player for each season in baseball history is thought-provoking and worthwhile. Bill James's work on analyzing fielding statistics is incredibly useful and important.
I have a major criticism with the win shares system, however, and I hope I'll be able to express it adequately in writing. My problem is this. Win shares are based on the idea that a player contributes offensively to the runs that the team scores and defensively to limiting the runs the team allows. What James does, however, is start with the total number of wins for a team -- e.g., 97 for the 1977 Baltimore Orioles -- and then he takes as a fundamental premise that the Orioles as a team created 291 win shares. He then allocates those win shares to the offense, the defense, and the pitching, and then calculates each player's "share" of the team offense, the team defense, and the team pitching -- adding the total together for each player. For instance, Ken Singleton gets 36 win shares for the 1977 Orioles.
Here's the problem. Based on the total number of runs the Birds scored that year and the total runs they allowed, and using the "Pythagorean" formula popularized by James himself, Baltimore should have only gone 88-73 in 1977. So there should have been only 264 win shares to go around, not 291. That's a difference of 9%; accordingly, I would submit, Singleton should only get 33 win shares, not 36.
By contrast, take the 1972 Orioles, who actually went 80-74, but whose Pythagorean won-lost mark is 90-64. James's system allocates 240 total win shares to the team that year, instead of 270 -- a 12% percent difference. And therefore, Jim Palmer, who James gives 24 win shares for that year, should get 27. This makes a big difference; the James win share system gives Singleton's 1977 season a 12-win share advantage over Palmer's, but the Pythagorean system would peg the difference at only 6.
What's wrong, you ask, with assigning win shares based on actual wins instead of Pythagorean wins? Because in reality, the difference is simply a matter of luck. Over a five-year period, a team's actual and Pythagorean won-lost records will almost always be the same. The fluctuations come in one or two-year samples. Certain teams -- the 1977 Orioles, the 1975 Red Sox -- just get a lot of breaks. The ball bounces their way. And the win shares system should recognize that.
In fact, however, James not only doesn't recognize it, he compensates in the other direction. He gives Singleton (and all the 1977 Birds) extra credit for the fact that the team exceeded its Pythagorean projection. He briefly discusses this in the Snider/Mays essay in his book. I think this is a serious mistake.
The whole idea of tying the system to actual wins is a fiction, of course. Bill James doesn't know what Ken Singleton's statistics in 1977 were in the Orioles' 97 wins, as opposed to their 64 losses. It's theoretically possible that all of Singleton's production came in losses and was thus effectively useless to the team. We simply have to assume that every player's production is roughly proportionally distributed across the team's wins and losses; that assumption is built in to all analytical systems. That's why player evaluation is based on offensive runs created and defensive/pitching runs prevented. The Pythagorean system converts team runs scored and allowed into a won-lost record, and it is that record that should be the basis of the win shares system.
Rating: 5
Summary: Saber-Masterpiece
Comment: Bill James' Win Shares is the quintessence of baseball sabermetrics. Although he doesn't call the Win Shares method an end-all way to rate players, I disagree. This method is by far the best way to look and players over the years and see how they match up. What I like most about Win Shares is that it takes basic mathematics and uses it for logical formulas that are easy to hands. If you love baseball, especially baseball statistics, you gotta grab this one.
Rating: 5
Summary: Some critics not seeing the forest for the trees
Comment: Another great Bill James effort. His "New Historical Abstract" had introduced us to the "Win Shares" approach, and here, he fleshes it out. A real treat is that we even get ratings for middle-of-the-pack players; there aren't too many places where you can find meaningful ratings for guys like Omar Moreno, or Horace Clarke (who actually rates surprisingly well). Also the "letter grade" evaluations of players' defense are a fascinating treasure trove, and apparently the most correct defensive ratings yet, albeit with aberrations -- e.g., is Derek Jeter really a D+?
One negative: the author is too scathing toward his colleagues. It's not that he isn't RIGHT about the flaws in their methods, but his forcefulness is off-putting, especially since (presumably) he's talking about his friends. (Hey, Bill, you don't want to turn into Howard Cosell!)
There are indeed flaws in the Win Shares method, but the author acknowledges them, and he emphasizes that his method, like all others so far, is a work in progress; in fact he seems unique among his colleagues in how prominently he acknowledges this. The Win Shares method seems a HUGE advance over everything else. Perhaps the largest and most important breakthrough is very simple, and I don't think the author highlights this enough: The method inherently places a premium on WINNING; if your team wins a lot of games, you tend to rate higher by this method than by others.
This book's ratings seem like the best of any so far anywhere, and the methodology is by far the most satisfying.
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Title: The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract by Bill James ISBN: 0743227220 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 13 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Lineups : A Complete Guide to the Best, Worst, and Most Memorable Players to Ever Grace the Major Leagues by Rob Neyer ISBN: 0743241746 Publisher: Fireside Pub. Date: 02 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis ISBN: 0393057658 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 10 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HALL OF FAME by Bill James ISBN: 0684800888 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 06 April, 1995 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Baseball Prospectus 2003 by Gary Huckabay, Chris Kahrl ISBN: 1574885618 Publisher: Brasseys, Inc. Pub. Date: 01 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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