Here are a few comments for Wednesday.
A quick summary…. Stacey Brook is going to be on the radio, a column from Ed Glaeser indicates that we don’t know how to blog, and I posted a few more comments on the Milwaukee Bucks.
Stacey Brook on the radio!
This is the big news for today. Stacey Brook will be a guest on The Current with Anna Maria Tremonti tomorrow morning (Thursday, November 1) to discuss the influence money has on professional sports. The Current is broadcast on CBC at 8:30am (EST).
Apparently I don’t know how to blog
Ed Glaeser, a professor of economics at Harvard University (and editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics), is now writing columns for the New York Sun. Last Friday he responded to a comment made by Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution.
“Why is Ed Glaeser writing for the New York Sun? Essentially he’s blogging. Without blogs I can’t imagine it would make sense for Ed Glaeser to do that.”
Here is part of Glaeser’s response to Cowen:
Blogs and columns are quite different, and The Marginal Revolution illustrates what can make blogs exciting. Mr. Cowen and his collaborators post to the website with astonishing regularity. Their blog posts are often brief introductions to some external source of information. The best bloggers use an informal style that make the readers feel as if they are old friends. If you read the Freakonomics blog, you will be let into the private life of one of this age’s great economists. The chatty conversational style of blogs works well with the discussions that they facilitate among readers who react to an initial blog post and then to each other.
By contrast, an op-ed column is a somewhat formal 750 word art form that usually contains some sort of clear policy punch line. I am thinking of imitating Cato’s constant repetition of Delenda Est Carthago by ending each column with the mantra “Manhattan needs more construction and rent control must end.” Good columns are self-contained, since they should be accessible to readers who have never previously heard of the author.
While I am flattered by Mr. Cowen’s describing me as a blogger, I am much more of an old school columnist. My nineteenth century soul limits my ability to use the easy conversational style of the great blogs. I have no inclination to write on a daily basis. I cherish the hate mail that I receive, but I don’t need feel the need to encourage it further by featuring reader feedback on my own website. Since I can’t blog, I am grateful to bloggers like Mr. Cowen for citing my work, because they reach a set of readers hungry for their talents that I could never get on my own.
When I read Glaeser’s thoughts I realized that after 18 months of blogging, we don’t know how to blog at The Wages of Wins Journal. Almost everything we post in this forum is more consistent with what Glaeser sees as an op-ed column. We tend to post 750 words (okay, often more than 1,000) that are often a self-contained story. We almost never make a brief comment that links to some external source. In sum, we are writing columns here, not blog entries. And this is true when I write, or something is written by Stacey, Marty (or our guests like Stephen Walters and JC Bradbury). I guess we think of ourselves as freelance columnists. And since I think freelance is another way of saying “unemployed”, I guess we are just unemployed columnists.
A Note to Milwaukee Fans
Recent columns have presented my take on the upcoming season. In looking at the Eastern Conference I noted that there are two great teams (Boston, Chicago), two good teams (Cleveland, Detroit), ten teams that could win between 35 and 45 games, and then the Milwaukee Bucks. Additionally, in September I wrote a column that argued the Milwaukee Bucks were “the least interesting team in the NBA.” Apparently, all this negative stuff about the Bucks has led a few fans of this team to become somewhat vexed with me.
Let me see if I can explain why I think the Bucks are going to have problems this year. Last year the Bucks were led by in Wins Produced by Ruben Patterson (see The Milwaukee Bucks in 2006-07 and 2005-06). Patterson posted a WP48 [Wins Produced per 48 minutes] of 0.166 and he produced 8.7 wins. Of all the players employed by this team in 2006-07, Patterson was the only player to eclipse the 0.150 mark in WP48.
This past off-season Patterson signed with the LA Clippers. The Bucks then went out and signed Desmond Mason. Mason was nearly an average player early in his career, but his Wins Produced has been in the negative range (and that is really way below average) each of the past three seasons.
If Milwaukee gives Patterson’s minutes to Mason, and Mason does for Milwaukee what he did last year for the Hornets (-0.044 WP48 and -2.3 Wins Produced), the Bucks will be about 11 wins worse in 2007-08. That is the impact of just this one move. This team only won 28 games in 2006-07, and they made a move that reduces wins by nearly 11.
Now Milwaukee fans believe that Charlie Villanueva – who has been below average each of his first two seasons – will suddenly improve. A similar story is told for Andrew Bogut, who has been somewhat above average his first two season. But even if these two players do improve (which could happen but is not easy to forecast), Mason is going to have to suddenly play better than he has in any of the past three seasons for the Bucks to contend for the playoffs.
Of course it’s possible that Villanueva, Bogut, and Mason all improve (although Mason’s Win Score in the preseason was in the negative range). But in looking at the future we have to consider what seems most likely to happen. And none of these proposed improvements – I think – fall under the category of “most likely.”
And yes, I did it again. This post has gone over 1,000 words. Once again I am writing a column not a blog post. Hopefully someday I will figure this medium out.
– DJ
For a discussion of other teams see NBA Team Reviews: 2006-07
Our research on the NBA was summarized HERE.
The Technical Notes at wagesofwins.com provides more information on the published research behind Wins Produced and Win Score
Wins Produced and Win Score are also discussed in the following posts:
Simple Models of Player Performance
What Wins Produced Says and What It Does Not Say
Wages of Wins Journal 
Josh Coleman
October 31, 2007
Dave, does this mean that Chip and I (long-winded as we are) have to take “Blogologist” off our business cards? Yes, I said Blogologist, because Blogger cannot even begin to encompass what we do. ;^)
dberri
October 31, 2007
Josh,
According to Glaeser, we are all doing this wrong. Why not say on your business card “freelance columnist”?
Oren
November 1, 2007
I’m not a Bucks fan, but I couldn’t help noticing that you seemingly ignored the probably beneficial impact that Michael Redd and Mo Williams will have on the roster.
Michael Redd was injured for most of last year, and consequently he played 1000 less minutes then he would have had he stayed healthy.
Mo Williams showed a lot of improvement last year from two years ago. As he’s young, it seems reasonable to assume that he’ll improve. And he also was injured and would have played another 400 minutes if he was healthy.
These two players will likely take playing time away from Charlie Bell. Your statistics indicate that Williams and Redd are more likely to be productive then Bell. This should help the team.
While the team has stayed the same at center, and gotten weaker at the forward positions, I would think that it is much stronger at guard(presuming those guys stay healthy).
Admittingly, this probably doesn’t make Milwaukee a playoff team, but it makes the picture look less bleak then the one that you painted.
Oren
November 1, 2007
I’d just like to apologize for the fact that my comment came out sounding as arrogant as it did. I meant to ask a question and not write a statement.
dberri
November 1, 2007
Oren,
No apologies needed. But I will note that there is a huge deficit moving from Patterson to Mason. Redd and Williams would have to become amazingly good to overcome that deficit and get the Bucks back to what they were last year. And last year they were not that good.
Rasta
November 1, 2007
Dave,
Good point about Mason, whose win score against Orlando last night was -1.5. He’s off to a very poor start.
Thanks for posting your Technical Notes. I found this very helpful. Could you clarify a theoretical question for me?
Once you reach “Adj P48”, you compare the player against the league average Adj P48 for the players’ position. I understand what you’re doing and why. However, instead of comparing to the “average” player, what are your thoughts about comparing the player against the cumulative stats achieved by his man (using the 82games opponent data)?
For example, say we’re comparing two centers with WP48 of 0.20 When we look closer we see that Player A’s opponent has a WP48 of 0.12, while Player B’s opponent has a WP48 of 0.07.
Both players are twice as effective as the average center. However Player B is more effective versus his actual opponent.
Shouldn’t the respective “Wins Produced” of these two players reflect this difference?
dberri
November 1, 2007
Rasta,
What you are suggesting is a way to incorporate defense more effectively into the player evaluations. This is something that I think can be done with plus-minus data and maybe what you suggest is the way to go. Certainly something to think about.
Brian
November 1, 2007
Conversational tone is a matter of taste, but you are doing much better than providing links to external content with a snippet of commentary. You are the content.
There’s a place for the “link & commentary” type of blog, but somebody needs to create content, otherwise the web would be nothing more than circular references to each other’s references.