Stumbling On Wins: Two Economists Expose the Pitfalls on the Road to Victory in Professional Sports

by David J. Berri, Martin B. Schmidt

Overview

The next quantum leap beyond Moneyball , this book offers powerful new insights into all human decision-making, because if sports teams are getting it wrong this badly, how do you know you're not? Sometimes the decisions that teams make are simply inexplicable. Consider: sports teams have an immense amount of detailed, quantifiable information to draw upon, more than in virtually any other industry. They have powerful incentives for making good decisions. Everyone sees the results of their choices, and the consequences for failure are severe. And yet... they keep making the same mistakes over and over again... systematic mistakes you'd think they'd learn how to avoid. Now, two leading sports economists reveal those mistakes in basketball, baseball, football, and hockey, and explain why sports decision-makers never seem to learn their lessons. You'll learn which statistics are connected to wins, and which aren't, and which statistics can and can't predict the future. Along the way, David Berri and Martin Schmidt show why a quarterback's place in the draft tells you nothing about how he'll perform in the NFL... why basketball decision-makers don't focus on the factors that really correlate with NBA success... why famous coaches don't deliver better results... and much more.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780132357784
Publisher:	FT Press
Publication date:	03/22/2010
Pages:	237
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

David J. Berri is associate professor of economics at Southern Utah University. He has written extensively on sports economics for academic journals, newspapers, and magazines, including The New York Times.

Martin B. Schmidt, professor of economics at the College of William and Mary, specializes in sports economics and macroeconomics. His writing has appeared in the field’s leading academic and general interest journals, including The New York Times.

Berri and Schmidt coauthored The Wages of Wins and maintain a popular blog, The Wages of Wins Journal, which discusses the economics of sports decision-making (dberri.wordpress.com).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments . . . xi

About the Authors . . . xiii

Preface . . . xv

Chapter 1: Maybe the Fans Are Right . . . 1

Sporting Rationality. . . 3

Crunchers, “Experts,” and the Wrath of Randomness . . . 5

A Century of Mistakes in Baseball . . . 7

Chapter 2: Defending Isiah . . . 13

Isiah Thomas Illustrates How Money Can’t Buy You Love . . . 14

Getting Paid in the NBA. . . 20

Coaching Contradictions. . . 23

Isiah’s Defense. . . 28

Chapter 3: The Search for Useful Stats . . . 33

Identifying the Most “Useful” Numbers . . . 33

The Most Important Position in Team Sports? . . . 39

Assigning Wins and Losses . . . 47

Chapter 4: Football in Black and White . . . 49

A Brief History of the Black Quarterback . . . 50

Performance in Black and White . . . 55

Quarterback Pay in Black and White . . . 63

Chapter 5: Finding the Face of the Franchise . . . 67

Birth of the Draft . . . 68

The Problem with Picking First . . . 69

How to Get Picked First? . . . 78

Back to Kostka. . . . 80

Chapter 6: The Pareto Principle and Drafting Mistakes . . . 83

The Pareto Principle and Losing to Win . . . 83

The NBA Draft and NBA Performance. . . 93

Catching a Baseball Draft . . . 100

Chapter 7: Inefficient on the Field . . . 103

Just Go For It! . . . 106

Evaluating the Little Man in Football . . . 113

The Hot Hand and Coaching Contradictions . . . 115

Chapter 8: Is It the Teacher or the Students? . . . 119

The Wealth of Coaching . . . 120

“Take Your’n and Beat His’n” . . . 122

Deck Chairs? . . . 125

Growing Older and Diminishing Returns . . . 126

Putting the Picture Together . . . 132

Chapter 9: Painting a Bigger Picture . . . 135

Appendix A: Measuring Wins Produced in the NBA . . . 141

A Very Brief Introduction to Regression Analysis . . . 141

Modeling Wins in the NBA . . . 143

Calculating Wins Produced in the NBA. . . 148

Win Score and PAWS48 . . . 154

A Comment on Alternatives . . . 156

Three Objections to Wins Produced for the NBA . . . 158

Appendix B: Measuring Wins Produced in the NFL . . . 161

Endnotes . . . 173

Chapter 1 . . . 173

Chapter 2 . . . 176

Chapter 3 . . . 181

Chapter 4 . . . 186

Chapter 5 . . . 189

Chapter 6 . . . 194

Chapter 7 . . . 198

Chapter 8 . . . 202

Chapter 9 . . . 207

References . . . 209

Books and Articles . . . 209

Web Sites . . . 222

Index . . . 225

Editorial Reviews

As seen on The New York Times' Freakonomics blog, ESPN.com's True Hoop, and Slate.com.

"In Stumbling on Wins, sports economists Berri (Southern Utah Univ.) and Schmidt (College of William and Mary) follow up their The Wages of Wins (with Stacey Brook, CH, Jan'07, 44-2764) with more modeling and number-crunching applications. The holy grail remains the same: understanding and improving decision making on the court, field, and ice and in the front offices of North American professional team sports. Summing Up: Recommended. Sports and sports economics collections at all levels. Reprinted with permission from CHOICE, copyright by the American Library Association.

From the Publisher