The Wages of Wins: Taking Measure of the Many Myths in Modern Sport

by David J. Berri, Martin B. Schmidt, Stacey L. Brook

**Named of one of Princeton University's Noteworthy Books in Industrial Relations for 2006**

Arguing about sports is as old as the games people play. Over the years sports debates have become muddled by many myths that do not match the numbers generated by those playing the games. In The Wages of Wins , the authors use layman's language and easy to follow examples based on their own academic research to debunk many of the most commonly held beliefs about sports.

In this updated version of their book, these authors explain why Allen Iverson leaving Philadelphia made the 76ers a better team, why the Yankees find it so hard to repeat their success from the late 1990s, and why even great quarterbacks like Brett Favre are consistently inconsistent. The book names names, and makes it abundantly clear that much of the decision making of coaches and general managers does not hold up to an analysis of the numbers. Whether you are a fantasy league fanatic or a casual weekend fan, much of what you believe about sports will change after reading this book.

Genres: Sports, Nonfiction, Business

304 pages, Hardcover

First published May 9, 2006

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

About all anyone needs to know on the readability of this one is that the day I signed up for GoodReads, I was reading this....took me three different stages to get through it over a 9 month period. The book take statistical and economic theories and applies it to some popular notions in sport. The target audience is pretty miniscule just by that general description, and the relatively few examples they actually take a look at, coupled with the fact half of them weren't really widely held beliefs, makes the target even smaller. This isn't a fantasy sports type analysis so much as just a very heavy statistical analysis of a handful of "does X cause Y" type items, usually related to salaries/money. My biggest problem with it overall was that in a number of cases, they took a tact that really wasn't a full answer of the question - the most telling was when they tried to show that the higher spending teams in baseball don't have a real competitive advantage by showing how a few of the non-highest spenders won world series. While they had some nifty statistics, they left out the fact that the Yankees, Red Sox and Braves (three of the top 6 spenders most years) took three of the 8 playoff spots for about 9 straight years. Yes, other teams may have beat them in the playoffs occasionally, but there was definitely a correlation of getting to the playoffs and spending. Just seemed pretty sloppy to miss things like that when droning on about coefficeints and deviants. Gave it two stars instead of one cause some of it was pretty interesting for a person who loves sports and works with financial/economic models a lot - so the three of us in the country may have found it interesting.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

About half of the book was about their new way of computing the efficiency of an NBA player. Once they developed this method, they applied it to several different classic NBA questions about what players and teams are best, and what skills are overvalued. While I believe that their metric is better than the official NBA efficiency measure they often compared it against, I'm still not convinced that it's the best measure out there. It's still too difficult to make a direct comparison between players on different teams and with different teammates.

I'm even less convinced by their QB score metric, though I do think it's better than the NFL's passer rating formula. Thus, I don't really trust their results about the unpredictability of NFL QBs. Maybe their inability to find trends is due to a poor metric.

One of the other major topics was about competitive balance in different sports, and I thought these sections were really interesting.

I'm definitely interested in reading about the studies they have done in more detail. They did a lot of hand waving when they got to the math, and would generally stop at "X was statistically significant". Being aware of the many issues associated with statistical hypothesis testing, I would need to read more about each study to really gain confidence in their conclusions.

It was an interesting and fast read, and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in sports economics. But I'm still not sure what to make of many of their conclusions.

[Tony Cohen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I find the idea fascinating, because I love using numbers to show people who 'just know' that their limited frame of reference is hindering them from 'seeing the truth'.

That having been said, I prefer the web site, which admittedly, I visited first, because I am really just concerned with basketball (The book covers lots of sports) and the web site seems to focus more on individual posts that I can sink my teeth into.

However, perhaps the greatest analysis in the book is the basketball section where the author demonstrates the strong correlation between a person's scoring, and their relative over-valuation based on that sole attribute. I also loved how he talked about 'chemistry' and that a lot of time it felt that this nebulous term was really masking the fact that people had overvalued a player based on his ability to solely score, and when that individual had been replaced, suddenly his replacement (who usually scores less but is a better player) is part of the chemistry resurgence, associated with better results. In fact. 'chemistry' wasn't the problem, but management and the general attitude of the league which overvalues a scorer who brings nothing else to the table. Yes Ben Gordon I AM looking at you.

[Mikey · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wages of Wins is mostly an attempt at coming up with a solid metric to assess basketball performance. Unfortunately, Berri's metric, "wins produced," is full of holes. To begin with, Berri makes the fatally flawed assumption that individual contributions should always be assessed at the team level; an economist should know better. For instance: yes, it's true that offensive and defensive rebounds produce the same result (a possession), but since two of the three nearest rebounders are going to be defensive players, the marginal value of an offensive rebound is higher. This and a lot of other flaws are lost on Berri, and he seems absolutely convinced that his method is completely right, which is bothersome. Furthermore, Berri's "team adjustment" is a massive fudge factor. Any metric could correlate as well with winning as his does with such a factor. There is some solid work on how winning and marquee players affect attendance, and on the value of NFL quarterbacks, but that's about all that I can recommend about Wages of Wins.

[Sandra Strange · Rating 3 out of 5]

In order to like this book, you must be interested in two categories, sports and economics. Though the authors do not include the esoteric mathematical computations and formulae they use to come up with their conclusions, they DO talk of the economics of sports to show how much of the accepted beliefs about economics and sports doesn't hold true, and which of those beliefs do. I found their breezy, informal style lots of fun to read, and though I have no training in economics, I understood their clear accounts of their reasoning. I learned a lot about how owners, managers and coaches make their player decisions, sometimes without basing those decisions on the economic truths they think they understand. but really do not. One problem: the book's most recent figures and examples come from the 2004 sports seasons, so as years go by, the book will become dated. Too bad. It's readable and informative.

[Max · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't get through the whole thing. Some of the chapters I just didn't find that interesting. The chapters on basketball statistics were good, but I disagreed with some of their conclusions. The problem with their statistical model is that I think it confuses causation with correlation. For instance, I think being a good defensive rebounder is often correlated with being a good defender, but one does not always follow the other. David Lee, for instance, is a terrific rebounder, but, by most accounts, a poor defender. I think this model gives him to much credit and too little credit to a player like Kirk Hinrich, who defends well, but doesn't rebound a lot. Also, a few parts of this book already felt outdated.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read. I am somewhat skeptical of some of the claims made without seeing the actual math. The authors rely on regression modeling and without seeing the diagnosis of the regressions I cannot say their system is valid - for example: are the variables orthogonal or auto-correlated?

Still it is a fascinating look at a number of the myths in professional sports, like lack of competitive balance.

[Garth · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book looks at sports in a very statistical way and tries to look at what is really important to winning games from a statistical view. This book gets really into the number side of things and I think that they view the metrics that they created as if they are the end-all-be-all of statistical measures, but an interesting viewpoint nonetheless. However the claim that Allen Iverson was the 90th best player in the league during the year that he won the MVP is patently ridiculous.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

A trio of economists try to recreate the feel of Freakonomics in the world of sports by collecting articles previously published in scientific journals and adding a few jokes. As someone who has spent way to much time reading about these sorts of ideas online, this book wasn't really for me. If you're interested in sports and are just digging into statistical analysis then this might be a good jump-start, but I felt I was being talked down to just a little.

[Garrett Burnett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Warning: Not for everyone. The Wages of Wins takes place at the odd intersection of sports, statistics, and economics. The authors work hard to determine effective methods for measuring the value of individual players on a team. It doesn't have a storyline like Michael Lewis's Moneyball; it's more of an academic appraisal. I liked it, but I also liked microeconomics, so take that how you will.

[Andres · Rating 4 out of 5]

With the exception of the chapter where the author explains the algorithm this book is chocked full of fascinating insights. I've never seen sports deconstructed so well and I'm glad my local library had a copy.

[Alexis · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to love this book, but ultimately found it too dry to hold my interest. The best part of the book was the last two pages that summarized the findings from each chapter. This book is best suited to economists, or professional athletes looking to defend their salaries.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is like Freakonomics for Sports. Really interesting and it makes you think about the world of sports in a different light.

[Louis Marvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highlights the ineptitude of most professional talent evaluators (and hacks like Bob Costas and George Will) and hints at a great technique for figuring out which NBA teams will beat the spread.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really well done book applying analysis techniques from economics to sports, with a definite focus on NBA basketball. If you are a sports fan, this book is a must read, in my opinion.