</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by OldGiants:
<strong>Can there be negative win shares? If not, I'd have to question the validity of the analysis.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Team's can't win negative games, so no you can't.
Win shares, put simply, is the team's wins multiplied by 3 and then divided among the players on the team.
If a player rates negatively when it comes time to claim their win shares, they are dropped from the analysis because they are not contributing to the team's wins.
It should also be noted that the last full-time player to have negative offensive claim points in the win shares system was from around 1910, iirc. In order to get 0 win shares you baseically have to sit on the bench for 150 games, and even then it's likely you'll get some credit for the team's wins.
Pick up the book, it's very interesting and I feel strongly that most of the system is correct. I think that there should be more weight placed on the defense, or that the weight placed on the defense should be partially determined by runs/game of the league, but overall it is pretty much right on.
The beauty of win shares is that you can compare a player from 1920 with a player from 1980 and see who was better, even though the range/average statistics have changed greatly since then.
Jason
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