So far we've seen the Range Ratings Preview for the Strat cards.

Of coarse they do not include the ARM ratings. These are of minor significance for the outfielders, but they

have quite a lot of significance for catchers. In fact the Range Ratings aren't as important as the ARM

ratings when it comes to catchers.

We will have to wait until the complete ratings come out in January to get the Arm ratings.

Among the other fun things to see when the complete ratings arrive, are the ratings for Errrors for defense,

base running ratings, and for pitchers, the S/R/C ratings which can be very important.

And there's also some things that you don't really think about that much until the full ratings come out.  

The players Ballpark HR Ratings, as well as the Ballpark Ratings themselves.

And of coarse you'll get to see how the players' platoon stats actually come out in the game.

You might look at your player with the .950-L/.600-R OPS splits and assume that the Strat card will reflect this, but that's not necessarily the case. Depending on how often they faced LHP (which is shown on the 

card rating "VsL") they may or may not get the card you were expecting. And Strat's "BAL" rating can

be useful for us as well when planning lineups. Usually the cards will be what we expected based on the stats, but sometimes they do throw a surprise in there for us. And that idiotic CLUTCH rating that should

never have entered their minds can also throw a curve in the card numbers.

The Beacon will re-visit the ratings once they arrive.

The STRAT Range Ratings are always an interesting part of the game for us. I believe the reason is that while we can get a lot of stats for the players which will for the most part accurately reflect their card, the range ratings do not follow any particular format. I'm sure Strat has some system for awarding their range

ratings, but we don't know what that is. I read in a "STRAT FAN" magazine in the late '90's that they had some sort of "scouting" system with individuals assigned to rate players on each MLB team. Whether that's something they actually used then or now we don't know. I assume that someone in the company uses

some of the various defensive stats that are readily available. But based on research I have done, as well 

as some others in the USPBL, that we don't always see a correlation between WAR, RANGE FACTOR,

DRS etc and the ratings given to players.

Which brings me to this article.

We used to depend on the Gold Gloves to give us a head's up on some of the 1 ranges.

Strat would also award one or two bonus 1's to non-Gold-Glovers. For the rest of the players, we would generally rely on the previous seasons and general knowledge gained from media reports.

For many decades, this worked out pretty well.

Then about 15 years ago, Strat figured that they didn't have to follow what the rest of the baseball world was doing and could assign range ratings however they pleased. And in more recent times, the Gold Gloves themselves finally started basing the award using some stats in the mix.

Now I'm not objecting to whatever methods any organization or game wants to use when determining range ratings. If you start your own game company, you can decide on the ratings yourself.

My problem is that they aren't consistent. If they've been giving 1's and 2's to Gold Glove winners and 

in more recent years, the nominees, then that's what we can expect. So when we get the Range Preview

and find that our GG winners/nominees like Vlad Jr and Brendan Donovan got 3's, well, that is irritating.

This year I seem to see more players dropping 2 grades than ever before. And while I haven't counted

the total number of 1's and 2's and how this compares to last year, there sure seems to be a whole lot more

of the 3's and 4's this year.

Here's a comparison of the Range Ratings as awarded by the Gold Gloves, The Fielding Bible Awards,

and the Strat Ratings that appear in the Preview.

There were 20 players given Gold Gloves (GG), 10 in each league. 

The Fielding Bible (FB) doesn't separate the league, so I took the top 2 at each position to get 20.

Since Strat didn't include Range Ratings for pitchers, that would leave us with 18 players, so I used two

ratings for each of the UT/Multi-Position players to get us back to 20.

The GG and FB had 10 players that appeared on both their lists: Trevino, Walker, Rodgers, Gimenez,

Arrenado, Kwan, Happ, Straw, Betts and Tucker.

Comparing Strat Ratings  to GG and FB, we should find that the ideal score is 20 "points". That would

be a 1 for each of these players. Over 20 indicates that the Strat Ratings were higher than a 1.

The Gold Gloves score 30. The Fielding Bible scores 27. 

The GG missed on 3 players + both positions for both UT players.

The FB missed on just 1 player  + both UT players. Apparently Strat does not value the UT players.

GG: Donovan received 3's at both positions while LeMahieu received 2's at both.

FB: Edmond and Varsho both got a 2 at their first position and a 3 at their second position.

Vlad JR. missed by the most for a non-UT player, getting a 3. Happ and  R Urias both received 2's with the

Gold Glove group while Happ was the only non-UT player among the Fielding Bible group with a 2.

Some differences between the GG and FB:  The 8 on the Fielding Bible Awards that did not win Gold Gloves (remember we're not including the pitchers here) were Rutschman, Mateo, Edmond, Varsho, Olson, M Rojas, Hays and M Taylor. Of these, all 6 of the non-UT players got 1's. As mentioned, the UT players

Edmond and Varsho got 2's and 3's. 

The 8 Gold Glovers that weren't among the Fielding Bible Award winners were Realmuto, Swanson, 

Grisham, V Guerrero, J Pena, R Urias and the UT players, Donovan and LeMahieu. Just 4 of the 6 non-UT

players received 1's from Strat.  

Overall we still do get a pretty clear picture that your Gold Glove winners have a great shot at getting

a 1 range. 13 of the 20 players (65%) did just that. And not counting UT we have 13 of 16 (81%).

We see an even better correlation between the top two Fielding Bible winners with 15 of 20 (75%)

getting 1's, and not counting UT it's 15 of 16 (94%).

Just don't get excited for your UT players that win Gold Gloves and Fielding Bible Awards!

By - Jim Walsh  Wisconsin Dairymen #10

If you want to check out the Gold Glove and Fielding Bible winners along with information regarding them, here's your links:

GOLD GLOVE

FIELDING BIBLE