In 2003, Michael Lewis published the book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. The book describes how the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, Billy Beane, took advantage of analytic gauges of player performance, including but not limited to defensive runs saved, average balls in play, and Wins Above Replacements, instead of traditional statistics like runs batted in, batting average, and stolen bases, to assemble a roster that could be competitive against franchises that had a larger budget. Since then, teams have being searching for methods to better evaluate talent, and smaller market teams have looked to get the most bang for their buck when signing players.
In basketball, previous research has shown that Player Efficiency Rating is a great indicator for team wins. 5 However, the PER statistic has some flaws, such as certain positions, on average, receiving higher ratings than other positions. Not only could this new research benefit NBA teams, but also its methods might be applied to a wider category of decision problems, such as the design of successful hiring methods
for companies. Every organization has a budget and efficiency allocating funds is key to being successful. As implied by the definition of the word, maximizing value helps a particular entity (whether it is a business, team, or organization, etc.) to achieve maximum success.