DEFENSIVE RATINGS - SOM STYLE
(Reasearched & written by Jim Walsh of the Wisconsin Dairymen Team #10)
THE REASON
Each December the SOM Website posts the early edition of the fielding
ratings. It seems more often than not, we, those that play the SOM
game, are dissapointed.
Even though I've skimmed my way across and up-and-down the fielding
charts, I never took a serious look at the ratings of all the players.
It's one thing to look at my own players and decide whether I think
SOM robbed them or not. It's all together another thing to actually
look up most of the players in the Major Leagues and record their
SOM Fielding Ratings.
But this what I did.
I'll admit that my original plan was to discredit SOM's Fielding
Ratings, much the same as I did with their Computer Manager last year.
But I was also willing to admit that they were right if the numbers
proved so.
THE EXPECTATIONS
The ratings range from a 1 to 5 system, with 1 being Gold Glove caliber,
while 5's are generally given to those playing out of position.
So we could and should expect an average of around 3.0
Personally, I was guessing it would be in the 3.4 to 3.6 range.
From talk around the USPBL water-cooler, I suspect that others
were thinking along the same lines as me.
The dissatisfaction with the Defensive Ratings given was no secret.
THE RESEARCH
I used the SOM Ratings Book for this research. Therefore players
are located with the team that they ended the season with. This
makes some difference in that teams may have had a great fielder
for most of the season, but traded the player away before the end
of the season. These players would then be found on the second team.
But overall, since only the ratings were used in the research and
not the individual players, the findings should be accurate.
a) First the Defensive Rating of the player with the most ABs/Games
at a position was recorded. This is shown as the "Primary" player.
b) Next, the same was recorded for the player with 2nd most ABs/Games
at the position. This is the "Secondary" player for the Team.
This should not be confused with an individual player's secondary
rating which was not used in this study.
Only a player's first listed rating was used unless that player
was also the Team's secondary player at the position as well.
This was done for all Major League teams resulting in a total of
30 PRIMARY and 30 SECONDARY ratings at each position.
This totals 480 player ratings
c) Lastly, I recorded the First Listed Defensive Ratings for all
players with 100+ ABs.
THE FINDINGS
While the actual charts can be found below, here is what the findings
show:
The PRIMARY players averaged 2.7 in both the AL & NL.
The SECONDARY players averaged 3.2 in the NL and 3.5 in the AL.
The reason for this is that there are players whose primary position
is DH but are rated 5's as secondary fielders. Without those
players, the average would be 3.3 and much closer to that of the NL.
The Average of the PRIMARY and SECONDARY players for the entire Major
Leagues is 3.0
The average for those with 100+ ABs in each League is also 3.0!
So no matter how you look at it, it seems that SOM does assign
the Defensive Ratings fairly afterall. While there may still be an
argument of whether specific players were rated too poorly, SOM
has stayed right in the middle when looking at the Big Picture.
INTERPRETATIONS
Okay, I was wrong. I'm guessing a lot of you believed that the
average rating would be above 3.0 as well?
I think that the reason we find the ratings for our own players too
low in many cases is that;
1) We have a lot of the same players each year. It's far more
likely that a player will gradually get a lower rating than a higher
rating each season. So we are probably going to see more declines
than increases.
2) We use a lot of platoon players. The PRIMARY players did have
much better ratings than the secondary players and those that were
further back in the depth chart. We may be using players that were
not the higher rated player on their team.
3) Because we have only 20 USPBL teams, there are a lot of Major
League Players not used. Admittedly, we are spoiled when it comes
to ratings. We often are not satisfied with "average" players.
We expect our players to be rated 2's and are disapointed when
we get 3's and 4's.
Well, that's just my take on the topic.
While the 5 hours of research ended up producing just one paragraph
of FINDINGS, it was an interesting study. After playing SOM for so
many years, it's at least comforting to know that they really have
made the "3" rating the real Average. And I'm assuming that the
same would hold true for past and future versions of the SOM game.
Here's a few things I discovered when doing the research:
The best PRIMARY Ratings were for the NL Shortstops.... 2.3
This was surprising since the NL did not have any "1" rated SS
this season. They did however have 12 "2"s, 3 "3"s and just 1 "4".
The best PRIMARY Ratings for the AL was Thirdbase with a 2.5
The best SECONDARY Ratings in both leagues was at Centerfield.
Combining both PRIMARY & SECONDARY Ratings, CF was the best at 2.7
There were 10 "5"s among those with 100+ ABs, 8 of which were in the
AL, and 5 of those were at Firstbase. The only "5" rated PRIMARY
was Eric Karros of the Cubs, who was eventually replaced by a far
superior gloveman in Randall Simon and his "4".
While the overall ratings in the AL & NL was 3.0, they got to that
average along different routes. The AL had more players on the
"ends" with 5% rated "1"s and 4% rated "5"s. The NL had just 3.5%
rated "1"s and just 0.5% rated "5" and a lot more in the mid-ranges.
Furthermore along this line, we find that in the AL there were 2 "1"s
at SS but only 2 "2"s, while as mentioned above, there were no "1"s
in the NL but 12 "2"s.
Of those with 100+ ABs, the most were at Catcher with 62 players and
the least were at SS with 48.
The most common rating was at Catcher where there were 27 "3"s,
followed by 26 "4"s at 1B.
There are no "1" LFs in the game, but there are 5 CFs and 2 RFs with "1"s.
Although not related to the Ratings, I found that ATL has 21 players
listed with 100+ ABs. ANA led the AL with 17 players with 100+ ABs.
On the other end of this, OAK/BAL has 12 and MIL/HOU has just 11.
Looking further at those with players of 400+ ABs, I found that CIN
has just 2! I find this really amazing. CLE has just 3 in the AL.
Another odd thing, probably due to a late season trade is that PIT
has no player with RF listed first that has 100+ ABs.
John Vanderwal is the SECONDARY 1B for MIL in spite of not having
played 1 inning at the position. Sexson played every inning of every
game so SOM had to assign someone as the backup just in case.
DEFENSIVE RATINGS CHARTS
SOM FIELDING PROJECT: All 30 TEAMS
P= Rating for the Primary player on a team
S= Ratings for the Secondary player on a team
DR= Defensive Range Rating
NATIONAL LEAGUE
RATINGS OVERALL
DISTRIBUTION DR AVG
POS P/S DR 1 2 3 4 5
CA P 2.7 2 3 8 3 - 2.9
S 3.1 - 3 8 5 -
1B P 2.9 2 4 3 6 1 3.1
S 3.3 - 2 7 7 -
2B P 2.9 1 4 7 4 - 3.0
S 3.2 - 2 9 5 -
3B P 2.7 1 6 5 4 - 3.1
S 3.6 - 2 4 9 1
SS P 2.3 - 12 3 1 - 2.8
S 3.4 - - 9 7 -
LF P 3.1 - 3 8 5 - 3.1
S 3.0 - 5 6 5 -
CF P 2.4 2 7 6 1 - 2.6
S 2.9 - 4 9 3 -
RF P 3.0 1 4 5 6 - 3.1
S 3.2 - 2 9 5 -
NL AVERAGES 2.7 for PRIMARY Players, 3.2 for SECONDARY Players.
NL AVERAGE for PRIMARY & SECONDARY Players is 3.0
AMERICAN LEAGUE
RATINGS OVERALL
DISTRIBUTION DR AVG
POS P/S DR 1 2 3 4 5
CA P 2.6 1 5 6 2 - 3.0
S 3.4 - 2 5 7 -
1B P 2.7 3 2 5 4 - 3.5
S 4.3 - - 1 8 5
2B P 2.8 2 3 5 4 - 3.1
S 3.4 - 1 7 6 -
3B P 2.5 1 8 2 3 - 3.0
S 3.5 - - 7 7 -
SS P 2.7 2 2 8 2 - 3.0
S 3.4 - 3 2 9 -
LF P 3.0 - 6 2 6 - 3.2
S 3.4 - 3 3 7 1
CF P 2.7 3 5 3 4 - 2.8
S 3.0 - 3 8 3 -
RF P 2.9 1 5 2 6 - 3.2
S 3.6 - - 8 4 2
AL AVERAGES 2.7 for PRIMARY Players, 3.5 for SECONDARY Players.
AL AVERAGE for PRIMARY & SECONDARY Players is 3.1
MAJOR LEAGUE AVERAGE IS 3.0 :
CA - 3.0 1B - 3.4 2B - 2.9 3b - 2.9
SS - 2.7 LF - 3.3 CF - 2.5 RF - 3.1
RATNGS Distribution for the MAJOR LEAGUES of all players with 100+ ABs.
POS NUMBER 1 2 3 4 5 DR AVG
CA 62 3 14 27 18 - 3.0
1B 60 5 5 18 26 6 3.5
2B 53 3 12 24 14 - 2.9
3B 49 2 16 16 14 1 2.8
SS 48 2 18 18 10 - 2.9
LF 57 - 11 19 25 2 3.4
CF 50 5 21 18 6 - 2.5
RF 52 2 13 18 18 1 3.0
TOTALS 432 23 110 158 131 10 3.0
TEAM PAGES
One of the sections found on the LINKS page is for TEAM PAGES.
Some of you have your own websites relating to your teams.
The links to them can be found here.
If you have something you would like everyone to check out, just
send out a note to the league or to the commish for inclusion
in a Beacon or USPBL Update.
Scott Adams has a site for the MIDWEST XPRESS going.
The link is below, as well as on the LINK page.
TEAM PAGES
MIDWEST XPRESS: Scott's Team #17 has it's own home