February 7, 2008

Bill James Interview by The Hardball Times :

read story | posted by justgary to Baseball at 1:22 PM CDT (3 comments total)

Can someone please explain what a win-share is?

posted by erkno11 at 5:04 PM CDT on February 7

A win share is, technically, 1/3rd of a win.

The idea is that (using the formula) you can calculate how much a player/pitcher contributed to a team. If a player has 30 win shares, it's the equivalent of saying they were responsible for 10 of the team's wins.

The idea behind win shares is that it should equalize great players on both good teams and bad teams. So if Player A earns 25 win shares and Player B earns 25 win shares, it doesn't matter that Team A won 97 games while Team B won only 68 games.

It also takes into account all aspects of the game (batting, fielding, running, pitching), equalizes over the course of history (so batting during a low-offense era isn't penalized, as well as pitching during the same era isn't overly rewarded), and allows comparisons between every position.

As he said in the article, it's a work in progress that many people are fiddling with at this time.

posted by grum@work at 7:20 PM CDT on February 7

thanks, grum for the clear explanation. Even though i'm not mathematician these new stats are fascinating to me. I think it has really revolutionized the game. Looking at these new stats and factors that they now take into consideration I can understand why I was never a prospect and have a better understanding as to why I never really got a serious look in the big leagues. I always gave up more hits than innings pitched and never punched out more than a 100 batters in a year. My positives were I never walked a lot of guys and generally kept the ball in the ballpark

If any of you play around with these stats I think it would be cool if someone could break down my stats sabermetrically. If they spit out bad numbers it wouldn't hurt my feelings since I have just accepted a new position with a local insurance company and have kind of turned the page on my career (maybe). Regardless, i'm proud of my accomplishments. I just think it would be fun to break them down.

posted by erkno11 at 9:16 PM CDT on February 7

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