For those that play stats only...
 

For those that play stats only,

Which stats do you put the most emphasis on when making player evaluations?

Always been intrigued to play that way, but haven't ever done it in all my OOTP years.

The same stats you use to evaluate real life MLB players......

I'm not a fan of WAR (like the idea, but not the way it is calculated).

Depends on the player.

I know it seems like a cop-out, but seriously. If I need a middle infielder, I'm not going to care too much what the guy's slugging percentage is. I'll look at each player based on what I'm looking for at the time.

Not the only ones, but the "overview" stats that I use are these:

1) FIP and ERA+ for pitchers.

2) wOBA, OPS+ for hitters.

3) ZR for fielders.

for fielding do you look at any of the ratings or only at ZR? i'm having problems with ZR because AI doesn't play people at there optimal position. I have a gold glove 2B, that AI always played at 3B so his ZR was actually negative... so i have resolved to use ratings for Defence,, still playing around and no fully comfortable with stats only, but getting there,,,,

Yeah, for fielding I use ZR and EFF but I also have defensive ratings on (1-5 on very low accuracy).

As far as how I evaluate players, pitchers are mainly FIP and ERA+, batters are mainly OPS, OPS+ and wOBA. However, if I have certain needs (like rangy OFs for a team with flyballers or strong fielding IFs for a team with a lot of groundball guys) I will usually forsake a bat for a glove, it's almost always cheaper that way. So my lineups usually consist of a couple of superstar batters and a ton of cheap veteran FA pickups who are good on the glove. If they can bat too, that's just gravy.

A couple of key evaluation elements to me for pitchers are velocity and GB% (obviously). Velocity will improve over time with 19 out of 20 prospects (according to my countless hours of not conducting research) so if my scout thinks a kid has good stuff and his velocity is at least in the low 90s, I'll pick him up because I can trust his velocity (and thus his stuff) will climb fairly significantly (of course, I have to be convinced that the kid can hang based off of more than just stuff).

FIP and wOBA.

FanGraphs: "Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) measures what a player’s ERA should have looked like over a given time period, assuming that performance on balls in play and timing were league average."

I use most of the sabermetric measures noted above (I hesitate to call them "stats") as well. I probably use ZR the most for fielding. But it is never just one or two things. It's a mosaic of several factors all evaluated at once.

IMO, one of the most important things to do in stats only is to contextualize the data (if that is even a word). You can't just say player X has a +1.05 ZR in CF and say he is really good. I find it helps to really understand the circumstances. How are the corner OFs defensively? Does the rotation have a lot of fly ball pitchers? Is the ball park huge? All metrics have some limitations. Understanding the limitations and evaluating X in the context of Y is very helpful. Of course, this takes a lot of time, hence stats only can also take a lot of time.

do you guys remove International FA who come with no stats in your leagues?

I don't generate any.

You really need to have actual leagues in your game for these guys to come from, feeder leagues, international leagues, etc...or there's no good way to evaluate them.

how do you create an international Feeder? i have my College, JUCO and HS but did not see any option to create for the international July 1 crop, and the FA who come in offseason.

Turn those off.

that's what i was doing, but Isryion got me curious with his comment.

The objective is to make sure that everyone who is eligible to be drafted or signed has a stats history

thanks. makes sense.. if you don't mind me asking two more questions. College guys who don't sign, and will be draftable again next year. Do you assign them back to a College, or let them idle until next year?

and do you consider Awards in HS and College to be too much information and turn them off? i'm using gold glove winners as an indicator, is that bending the rules? (top pitchers and hitters are obvious enough, so not much help, but they are an indicator when given to a first year player, so i guess same applies)

I ignore both, but do what you like.

Never assume.....

You create an international league in your world (made up of whatever teams you want) and then allow teams in your league to sign them as free agents.