Game Theory, Machine Learning, And Production In Sports: The Fair-credit Baseball Statistics

In this groundbreaking book, economist and game theorist Michael McBride presents an innovative answer to this question for the sport of baseball: "How is individual performance fairly measured when success depends on teamwork?" The answer is — the Fair-Credit Baseball statistics. Drawing on the Nobel Prize-winning Shapley Value from coalitional game theory, McBride creates two revolutionary measures of offensive performance: Shapley Run Credits (SRC) and Offensive Shapley Win Credits (OSWC). Unlike traditional baseball statistics, these new measures satisfy mathematical fairness axioms, making them the fairest measures of individual credit in the sport. McBride combines this theoretical foundation with cutting-edge machine learning to analyse over a century of Major League Baseball data, producing the most accurate measures of offensive performance in baseball history. The result is a sophisticated yet intuitive statistical framework that finally gives players the credit they truly deserve for actual results — not projected or average performance. Written for academic researchers, sports analysts, and baseball enthusiasts alike, this book successfully bridges complex mathematical theory with practical application. It offers technical rigor for professionals while remaining engaging and accessible for anyone passionate about understanding what really happens on the baseball diamond.

Michael McBride is Professor of Economics, Religious Studies, and Logic and Philosophy of Science (courtesy) at the University of California, Irvine. He received his PhD in Economics from Yale University in 2002. His research uses game theory and experimental methods to study collective action, conflict, and religion, and has appeared in the Journal of Economic Theory, the Journal of Public Economics, the American Journal of Sociology, the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Evolution and Human Behavior, and the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. He currently serves as Associate Editor for the Journal of Experimental and Behavioral Economics and as Director of the Experimental Social Science Laboratory.