Thursday, April 24, 2014
Negative Losses
When I was still in Montreal, I created a won-loss system for hockey players. I was kind of proud of it. The way it works was this: you have 20 players, the average? team wins 40 games, and so, the average player would be worth 2 wins (and 2 losses). That would mean the average player would have 4 "games". So, the perfect player would be 4-0, as a team of such players would win 80 and lose 0. The problem I quickly came across was when I tried to do it with Wayne Gretzky. I'd have Gretzky as worth some 5 to 10 wins above average. But my system wouldn't allow any player to exist beyond being 2 wins above average.
Then I figured that since Gretzky played twice as often as the average forward, his "space" is not 4 games, but 8 games. That still though left me to cap him off at 4 wins above average (8-0 record). So, I abandoned the idea of a cap, and simply allowed him to be worth 12 W and -4 L.
I then thought maybe I could add 4W and 4L on his record, to make him 16-0. That took care of the negative losses, but now I made his "space" 16 games rather than 8. And I'd have to remove 4W and 4L from the rest of his team. I wasn't necessarily against the idea, but the whole thing started to lose its lustre for me.
Anyway, I sent someone a link to the Willie Mays page, so you can see the Gretzky issue in a baseball context and for a whole career. He noted that it's hard to wrap your head around negative losses, and I agree. I sell the idea on the basis that Mays and Gretzky were so good that they negated some of the losses of their teammates.
So, according to The Indis, Willie Mays has 210 W and -27 L (that's negative 27). In Bill James notation, that's a 210+27 record (rather than 210 - -27). But, if I add an equal number of W and L in those negative seasons, his career record is 244 W and 7 L (a 244-7 record).
Presentation-wise, understanding-wise, what makes more sense to you?
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