Power Pros Forum

To anyone who makes rosters from past seasons, how do you determine what ratings players should have? Do you go by that single year or three years of data? What does anyone use for determining infield arm strength? I know I've seen people saying they have all these formulas and a base they go off of but I attempted to go back through the actual game and see what stats they used to determine who get a 215 power and who got a 207 power (hypothetically) and it seems inconclusive. Any helpful hints, tips, any ideas?

For MLBPP 1980's, I used the 12 seasons of data between the strikes (1982-1993), and those last three years were only to capture the potential of the young players who made their debut in the late 80's. I originally tried the best 3 seasons approach, but practically everybody came out looking like an All-Star and it was a lot more work. Data came mostly from fangraphs, baseball-reference, baseball prospectus, and seamheads/baseballgauge.

Once you pool your data, boil everything down to rate stats (H/AB, BB/PA, K/PA, HR/AB, etc.) and regress to the mean (replacement level) to tone down those players with insufficient data. Once you have that, you translate stats to abilities based on whatever criteria you see fit (personal taste vs. realism vs. default ratio).

For the tricky data (arm strength, pitch descriptions, etc.) Google was my friend, although I made a habit of checking the following resources for just about every player:

> The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers -- scouting reports for pitchers throughout history, including mph, pitch types, style, and all sorts of rankings lists like "best splitters of the 80's," and "best fastballs of all time." Great book to own, but check your local library.

> SI Vault (sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/) -- Sports Illustrated was king during the 1980's and they covered a lot of baseball - Peter Gammons is a treasure trove of insight. Just type a player's name in the search bar and you will get every article the player appeared in.

> Baseball Digest -- I don't have a working link, but like SI you can (or used to be able to) search the entire historical catalog of Baseball Digest articles. Extremely valuable, especially for skill rankings (i.e. annual managers ranking of 2B arm strength, etc).

> Checkoutmycards.com -- Player appearance, batting stances, arm angles, and pitch repertoires thanks to many zoomed-in shots that show pitch grips (provided you can tell a CCHG from a CHG or KNCB from a CB, etc).

> baseballlibrary.com/homepage/ -- Capsules for just about every player, some include surprisingly detailed scouting nuggets.

> baseball-reference -- Each player's career batting/pitching splits will help you figure out all sorts of special abilities you can't pinpoint using regular data (example for hitters: Vs Lefty, Firstball HTR, Bases Clearer, Rally HTR, Day/Night, Pull/Push/Spray).