Player Creation/Maintenance
(Note: the following is a detailed description of how players’
ratings are generated for this league. It is not required reading;
it is here for reference.)
In this league we use some players who were career minor
leaguers and some who played in both the major and minor leagues,
as well as Negro League players who never played in either the
majors nor the minors. As a result, different methods are used to
create different players’ ratings.
(I should mention at this point that OOTP now comes with
databases that include Negro League and PCL players. Unfortunately
that was not yet the case when this league started, so I had to
create a majority of the players for this league myself. I still
do that, rather than use the new databases, because switching
would have been problematic for a number of reasons, not the least
of which is that I’ve studied OOTP’s Negro League and Minor League
databases a bit, and I’m not sold on them. They’ve adjusted the
players’ ratings to reflect the level of competition, which is the
right thing to do, but I don’t agree with the adjustments they’ve
made. My methods may not be any more accurate than theirs, but
mine follow a logic I can understand.
-
Negro League players and players who never played in the
majors are “created” using the “Create Fictional Player”
function. The statistical set used for a player’s ratings is
determined by where he was playing in real life during the
year we’re currently playing. Generally, if he was playing in
the majors that year, his ratings will be derived from his MLB
career; if he was playing in PCL, his ratings will be derived
from his career totals at the highest minor league level
(P.C.L./A.A./I.L.); and if he was playing in the Negro Leagues
that year, his ratings will be derived from his Negro League
career. We call these real-life stat-based ratings his “base”
ratings (as distinguished from what his ratings might be at
any given moment, since OOTP’s Player Development can and will
alter them). Since most players played in different levels
during their career, their base ratings can change from year
to year.
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Players’ ratings are derived from their career totals,
not from individual seasons. A player’s “current” and
“potential” ratings are initially set to be identical.
(Exception: if the player enters the league as a teenager I
downgrade his “Current” ratings a bit so he can’t dominate the
league when he’s 18. Unless he really did dominate the
league when he was 18.)
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Players who played in the majors are imported from the
database that comes with OOTP, and I reset their batting or
pitching ratings so that they are based on their MLB career
statistics.
-
OOTP’s Player Development (in all its randomness-embracing
glory) is enabled, but we rein it in when it gets too
squirrelly. We want to see PCL stars like Buzz Arlett, Frank
Shellenback, Jigger Statz, and Tony Freitas have long and
successful careers, just like they did in the real the PCL;
same holds true for great Negro League stars like Oscar
Charleston, Biz Mackey, Jud Wilson, and Willie Foster, all of
whom played well into their 40’s. To me it would be no fun at
all to see OOTP hit one of these guys with a career-ending
injury when he's still young, or to reduce him to journeyman
status while he should be in his prime. We also don’t
particularly want Joe Nobody who had 135 at-bats in his career
to turn into a superstar. So we only allow Player Development
to take the players’ ratings so far before we zap them back to
their base ratings. For details, go here.
-
I make the assumption that the overall quality of
competition in both the PCL and the Negro Leagues was slightly
inferior to that of the major leagues. As a result, when I
create the Negro League and PCL players, I use their real-life
stats, but downgrade them a bit.
Anyway, down to the specifics:
-
Missing data: We have no strikeout data for minor league
pitchers, or walks or strikeouts for minor league batters
before 1941. There are other less important stats (HBP, WP,
etc.) missing as well. For minor league players who had 100 or
more AB or 100 or more IP in the majors, I use their MLB
numbers to supplement the missing data. I have a book (The
Pacific Coast League: A Statistical History, 1903-1957—heretofore
referred to as the Green Book) that contains some of the
missing data for selected players as well. Basically, I use
the data that I have available to me. Where no data exists for
a statistic, I use the major league average for that
statistic.
-
The following “penalties” have been assessed for each PCL
player:
-
Hits, doubles, triples, home runs and walks for batters
decreased by 10%; strikeouts for batters increased by 10%.
-
Hits, walks, runs and earned runs for pitchers increased
by 5%; Strikeouts decreased by 5%.
-
I know it doesn’t make any logical sense to penalize
batters by a different percentage than pitchers. The 10%
seems to “work” well for batters; if you look at players
who went from the PCL to MLB in the 20’s and 30’s, it’s
striking how many of them there are whose PCL batting
stats are about 10% better than their MLB batting stats.
No such correlation exists for pitchers, however. As a
group, the PCL pitchers’ hits allowed and walks allowed
rates are already so high that penalizing them even 5%
seems severe. We’ll see how it goes; I may adjust the
penalty lower or higher at some point.
-
The following “penalties” have been assessed for each Negro
League player:
-
Hits, doubles, triples, home runs and walks and hit by
pitch for batters decreased by 7.5%.
-
Hits, walks, runs, earned runs, home runs, wild pitches
and hit by pitches for pitchers increased by 7.5%;
strikeouts decreased by 7.5%.
-
I am using the stats from baseball-reference.com for minor
leaguers, plus the stolen base and pitchers’ strikeout data
from the Green Book (for the players it includes; it’s not
comprehensive).
-
I am using the stats from seamheads.com for the Negro
Leaguers, rather than using baseball-reference.com. There are
advantages to this, but drawbacks as well:
-
On the plus side, the stats from seamheads appear to be
far more extensive and accurate. Seamheads includes some
statistics that bb-r does not, such as earned runs. As far
as I can tell, seamheads does not contain obvious errors in
the walk data (bb-r clearly does).
-
The drawback to using seamheads is that it is incomplete.
The Negro League database at seamheads is an ongoing
project; it is far from finished. They have, however, been
running at a pretty good clip; they do a league/season at a
time, and since they started in 2011 they have completed
most of the work through the early ‘30’s (they don’t always
do seasons in chronological order). I’ll update the data I’m
using whenever seamheads posts a new season. Keep in mind
that when you draft a Negro League player, his stats/ratings
are subject to change. As a general rule, the older the
player, the more likely seamheads has done all or most of
his career; hence, the data for the older players is less
likely to change.
-
I’m using only the stats from the Negro Leagues. Seamheads
also has stats from Latin American leagues, in which many
African-American players played, but I’m not using those.
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OOTP has made it fairly easy to create batters by inputting
statistics, but its exact process for rating pitchers is
incomprehensible. I won’t go into detail; you really have to
try it yourself to understand how cryptic it is. Over the
years I’ve been able to figure out how they arrive at some
of the ratings. I’ve developed charts for Stuff and Control
ratings, and I use a combination of those ratings and ERA to
determine Movement ratings (which are supposed to be based on
home runs allowed, a stat we don’t even have for 95% of the
players). For most of the other ratings (individual pitch
ratings, GB%, velocity) I refer to the OOTP version of the
pitcher, and use the same ratings they gave him when
applicable, and alter them when not (remember “my” version of
a Negro League or PCL pitcher may be radically different than
OOTP’s).
-
Pitchers’ stamina ratings: Prior to each draft I make the
following adjustments:
-
Pitchers with 300+ IP that year in the real-life PCL:
Stamina rating of 20
-
Pitchers with 250-299 innings that year in the real-life
PCL: Stamina rating of 18
-
Pitchers with 200-249 innings that year in the real-life
PCL: Stamina rating of 16
-
Pitchers with 150-199 innings that year in the real-life
PCL: Stamina rating of 14
-
Pitchers with 100-149 innings that year in the real-life
PCL: Stamina rating of 12
-
Pitchers who pitched in the real-life PCL that year with
< 100 IP: Stamina rating of 8
-
Star Negro League pitchers get a Stamina rating of 20.
Negro League pitchers brought in as “Buddies” get a Stamina
rating of 12.
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Commissioner override: Sometimes a player meets the
real-life minimum requirement (100 IP or 100 AB) for
eligibility in the league, but has a limited statistical
record that, in the Commissioner’s opinion, would produce
unrealistically good ratings for the player if he was rated
purely based on his statistics. The Commissioner may choose to
“dumb-down” this player’s ratings. This is to discourage GMs
from using marginal players as if they were stars.
The Commissioner might also, in rare cases, choose to
“enhance” a player’s ratings to encourage his use.
Typically this would be a player who was a long-time regular
in the PCL but whose real-life stats are less impressive
(perhaps misleadingly, due to park effects or other factors).
Players affected by this Commissioner override will be
marked with a (CO) next to their names on the Excel sheets.
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Fielding and baserunning ratings: There are some fielding
statistics available online for both Negro League and PCL
players, but it’s limited. I’m not sure how OOTP arrives at
all of its fielding and baserunning ratings for MLB players; I
assume they’re all stat-based, but I don’t know how the stats
are applied to create some of the ratings. In general, I rate
all the Negro League and PCL players as “average” for
baserunning and fielding except in the following cases:
-
Sufficient statistical data exists to suggest a different
rating; e.g., the guy stole a lot of bases, or had a huge
number of assists, etc.
-
Sufficient written accounts exist that suggest the player
was outstanding or outstandingly awful in some category
-
Common sense suggests something, e.g. the guy was an
ordinary or subpar offensive player but held down a starting
job for a significant period (this would suggest he was
probably an above-average fielder)
-
I do use real-life fielding percentages for Error ratings,
making allowances for the fact that fielding percentages in
the Negro Leagues are, for reasons I don’t understand,
generally a lot worse than fielding percentages in the
majors or minors. As a result I made different Error Ratings
charts for Negro-League and non-Negro League players.
I use the following chart as a basis for defensive ratings:
AVERAGE DEFENSIVE RATINGS
|
IF Rng |
IF E |
IF Arm |
IF DP |
OF Rng |
OF E |
OF Arm |
C Arm |
C Abil |
P (avg. rating: 11) |
5 |
4 |
5 |
4 |
— |
— |
— |
— |
— |
C (avg. rating: 11) |
— |
— |
— |
— |
— |
— |
— |
11
|
13
|
1B (avg. rating: 9) |
6 |
4 |
7 |
7 |
— |
— |
— |
— |
— |
2B (avg. rating: 11) |
11 |
11 |
10 |
12 |
— |
— |
— |
— |
— |
3B (avg. rating: 10) |
11 |
10 |
13 |
10 |
— |
— |
— |
— |
— |
SS (avg. rating: 10) |
14 |
11 |
13 |
13 |
— |
— |
— |
— |
— |
LF (avg. rating: 10) |
— |
— |
— |
— |
10 |
9 |
9 |
— |
— |
CF (avg. rating: 10) |
— |
— |
— |
— |
14 |
12 |
10 |
— |
— |
RF (avg. rating: 10) |
— |
— |
— |
— |
10 |
9 |
11 |
— |
— |
The chart is subject to change. I will continue to refer to
OOTP’s MLB player ratings—however they may evolve—to form the
basis of my ratings for PCL and Negro League players.
-
Injury/durability ratings: I base these ratings on how much
career the player has ahead of him; if he’s at the beginning
of a very long career I give him a very low rating; if he had
a short career or is near the end of a longer one I give him a
higher one. This doesn’t guarantee anything; some players are
going to get injured more often than they should no matter
what rating you give them, while others will be inexplicably
impervious to injury.
-
I monitor players to make sure Player Development doesn’t
transform them into something that barely resembles what they
were in real life. I don’t think it’s necessary or desirable
to reset all of the players’ ratings each year; some will
improve and some will decline; I like that their career arcs
won’t be completely predictable. But when the change is severe
I step in and reset them back to their original settings. For
the gory details of what exactly has to happen for me to reset
a player, go here.
-
Career-ending injuries/early retirement: Recent versions of
OOTP seem to have curbed the frequency of CEI’s (career-ending
injuries) considerably, but just in case, I stand at the ready
to un-do CEI’s in some cases. I allow the game to assert its
bloodthirsty will on “ordinary” players, but I make players
who had substantial (10+ years) careers immune, up until two
years prior to the real-life end of their careers.
-
OOTP also decides when players retire. Some retire earlier
than they did in real life, others later. I exercise a
manual override here, too, and prevent the game from making
players with substantial careers retire until two years
prior to their real-life retirement.
-
Missing years/late retirement: If we play long enough to get
to the WWII years, players who missed years due to military
service will miss the same years in our league. Aside from
that, players who missed seasons in real-life will be eligible
to play those seasons in our league, if only because we can’t
know for sure that they really did miss those seasons (neither
bb-r nor seamheads are infallible).
-
Since OOTP doesn’t always make players stop playing at the
same time they did in real life, some will be able to extend
their careers beyond their real-life retirement, and in some
cases, beyond their real-life lives (OOTP loves to hurt
players, but it never kills them). I am okay with
this; it’s an alternative history, so the circumstances that
caused players’ deaths in real-life have been altered. We
may assume that our players have access to better medical
care and are perhaps a little more careful about the company
they keep. That being said, we don’t let them go on
indefinitely; we forcibly retire any player once he has
played two years past his final real-life season.
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