Win Shares in the Infield

In the winter of 2002 Bill James released a book named "Win Shares". In this book James put forth the idea that all baseball players could be assigned one number that would quantify their overall value. For instance, in 1982 Cesar Cedeno hit .289ba/.346obp/.413slg/.759ops/+110 OPS+ in 138 games and around 550 plate appearances. James's intricate Win Shares formula (it took 119 pages to explain) assigned a value of 13 to Cedeno that year. So a very ordinary year by a regular would garner value of around 13. As James ran Win Shares on all major league players ever to play the game it was realized that the 30 win share per year threshhold could be considered MVP caliber. On the flip side part-timers and bit players were scattered throughout the neighborhood of single digit Win Share values.

But it was James's theory that his Win Shares system leveled the playing field between all players that gained it currency with the public. The system cut through differences between players in positions, eras, ballparks and a whole host of other intricacies within the game. In other words, Houston Astro great Jimmy Wynn's career .250 batting average and 291 homeruns were recognized by Win Shares as having been deflated by a) the era Wynn played in and b) the home ballpark he played in. Likewise Albert Belle's punishing offensive statistics of the mid to late 1990-'s were to be deflated in the Win Shares system. Belle's devestating 1994 season when he hit .357ba/.438obp/.714slg earned him 30 win shares. But Wynn's 1968 season when he hit .269/.376/.474 generated 32 win shares. Win Shares at its very heart is a contextual system and Jimmy Wynn in the context of 1968 was one of the great hitters during that season. Wynn's numbers in the context of the 1994 season, though, would've been much less impressive.

So there's a brief synopsis of Win Shares. I went to the Hardball Times website today and pulled up their Win Shares statistics for 2005. They say on their site "that THT's (The Hardball Times) Win Shares calculations are slightly modified from Bill James's original formula". We can assume that these Win Shares figures from THT's are very close to what James's original system would've wrought.

I wanted to evaluate the four infield positions in baseball and see where the positional balance of power resided this past season. In this study I pulled from both leagues and pulled the top twenty Win Share earners for each of the four infield positions. I wanted to get a true feeling for the talent depth at each position without reaching too far down into the world of part-time players.

First, I simply added up each position's top twenty and arrived at the following results:

First Basemen ---------- 476 win shares
Shortstops -------------- 398 win shares ---- 84% of first basemen total
Second Baseman ------- 381 win shares ---- 80%
Third Baseman --------- 368 win shares --- 77%

First baseman come out on top by a large margin. What if we were to look only at the offensive outputs at each position? Since Win Shares compiles seperate "shares" for batting, fielding and pitching this is possible.

First Basemen ---------- 446 offensive win shares
Third Basemen --------- 296 offensive win shares -- 66% of first baseman total
Second Basemen ------- 287 offensive win shares -- 64%
Shortstops -------------- 282 offensive win shares -- 63%

As one would expect first basemen generate much of their value in their offensive output and leave the other positions in the dust. Now we can turn to defensive figures. Those of you who can do the quick math from the two charts above will not be surprised to see the other three infield positions surpass first basemen in defensive value -- by a large margin.

Shortstop --------------- 116 defensive win shares
Second Basemen ------ 96 defensive win shares --- 83% of shortstops total
Third Basemen -------- 74 defensive win shares --- 64%
First Basemen --------- 34 defensive win shares --- 29%

First Basemen offered very little defensively in relation to their infield counterparts. The middle infield positions were where most of the defensive value was.