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Bill James devised Win Shares to reduce a player’s statistics to a single
number related to the number of wins he contributed to his team. It includes
offensive, pitching and defensive accomplishments. The quality of the team
does not affect an individual player’s Win Shares. A great player on a bad
team will rate as well as a great player on a good team.
A Win Share is one-third of a team’s win, credited to an individual player.
The Win Shares credited to the players on a team always total up to exactly
three times the team’s win total. If the team wins 100 games, the players on
the team will be credited with 300 Win Shares – 300 thirds of a win. If the
team wins 80 games, the players on the team will be credited with 240 Win
Shares, always and without exception.
The true genius of Win Shares is that it includes ALL of a player’s
contributions to his team and represents them in a single number. So that if
we want to know who had the best season, we can simply list those players
who had the most win shares for that particular season. As an example of the
beauty and simplicity of the system.
The CAWS Formula
Here is the CAWS formula.
CAWS = CV + .25(CWS – CV)
Where CAWS = Career Assessment/Win Shares
CV = Core Value = sum of win shares for a player’s ten best seasons
CWS = total career win shares
Why use the ten best seasons for the player’s core value? Often, we see the
concept called “peak value” defined to be a player’s five best seasons or seven
best seasons. But I am not talking about a player’s peak - since I use the
player’s ten best seasons whether they come at the beginning, in the middle or
at the end of his career - or a combination of these.
Since we are attempting to identify those players with the best careers, it
seems that ten seasons is the least we should use as a player’s core value. Add
to that the fact that the Hall of Fame requires that a player be active in the
major leagues for at least ten seasons in order to be eligible for induction.
Why 25%? This is more of an arbitrary choice based on a mathematician’s
feel for the game. I have been watching baseball games since the late 1940s.
During that time, I have seen so many of the greats and near-greats of the
game. I experimented with 10% and 50% as well and looked carefully at the
results. I concluded that 25% of the other career win shares added to the
player’s core value represented a better snapshot of a player’s career than any
other choice.
Defensive Adjustment
The CAWS Career Gauge employs a defensive adjustment in order to create
an appropriate benchmark to determine whether a player has obvious Hall of
Fame numbers. The benchmark for each position is as follows:
1. CAWS score of 280 for right fielders, left fielders, first basemen and
designated hitters;
2. 270 for center fielders and third basemen;
3. 260 for second basemen and
4. 250 for shortstops and catchers.
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