Help w/Creating Stats Cheat Sheet
 

UPDATE: July 3 2020

Cheat Sheet v1.2

The changes I've made are:

• Removed Green Color from the middle column labeled Average.
• Changed Font Color on some columns to White
• Applied BOLD to all letters and numbers inside the chart

I think this updated Cheat Sheet looks better if you are going to print it out. The average and below-average column colors looked fine on screen and even printed by some printers. Many printers produced a page where the two columns were almost indistinguishable. If you don't print the Cheat Sheet, but rather leave it on screen in your web browser, I personally think the original Cheat Sheet looks a little better. But now, you all have a choice. Enjoy!

https://i.imgur.com/USiSCkF.png

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Here is the Cheat Sheet v1 -- I really appreciate the help I received from so many people in this thread and via PMs & Reddit. This is a very generalized chart to help mostly newbies who aren't well-versed in Sabermetrics when they are evaluating players. I glance at it when looking at free agents or even my own lower-level farm club rosters. Some of you are no doubt going to dispute some of the values I've placed on the chart. Most of the data came from Fangraphs or other reputable baseball statistics websites. Some came straight from OOTP users' suggestions.

Feel free to edit this chart for anything your heart desires. If you have a recommendation for specific statistic permanent change, please let me know. Likewise, if you feel there is a statistic that is missing from the chart, please let me know. If you can, also provide me with what you would consider average, awful & excellent values.

Please remember, this little exercise wasn't to come up with every statistic OOTP keeps. This Cheat Sheet is meant to be a fairly small chart to look at some of the most important stats that should be considered when trading a player for another, looking at the Free Agent List for a sparkplug or deciding who you should cut after Rookie or Short-Season A ball.

Download Excel File Here


https://i.imgur.com/9NzzkIZ.png

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What stats are most important to you?

I've been well aware of the Sabermetrics revolution for more than a decade, but I never fully embraced it for my own purposes. As a result, I'm not exactly 'with it' when evaluating player performance using advanced metrics.

I want to cheat a cheat sheet in Excel that will list 5 or 6+ advanced stats for Batters, Pitchers & Fielders. Then I'm going to use Fangraphs or Baseball-Reference to figure out what is considered to be a low value, average value, and very good value. This way, I can reference my printed cheat sheet when looking for free agents and thinking of initiating a trade with another team.

So, I'm hoping some of you would give your opinion on what are the most important advanced stats when evaluating a player's performance/value. I could be a stat or two for pitchers or hitters and even fielding stats, if you think those should be included. Fangraphs has very nice charts for all sorts of random stats, but I only want to think about the most important ones.

Here is nice and simple OBP from Fangraphs:

Woba, wrc+, wraa

Excellent. Thank you! I have no idea what those even represent. LOL But, I will in 5 minutes. :thumbup1:

I will second wOBA and WRC+ for hitters. For pitchers, FIP, BB/9, K/9, and K/BB.

None of that is the be all end all, though. For example, I have one sim where I play in Comiskey park in 1932. It has a park factor below .800 for homers for both righties and lefties, which means that it is more than 20 percent harder to hit a homer there than a normal park. My team also lacks power. Sabermetrics says to have your three highest hitters by wOBA in the 1, 2, and 4 spots in the order. I play more traditionally in that park and have a 1 hitter who can get on base and run followed by a 2 hitter to move him over and 3 and 4 hitters who hit for a high average so they can drive him in from second or third. My team is never going to homer, so why play for the three run homer? It isn't coming.

The moral of the story is that you always have to consider the context.

Thanks fuzzy_patters! Yes, I know that there isn't one or two magic stats that are going to sum up everything a good GM needs to know - that's why I need to create this little cheat sheet.

I played baseball all the way through college (1996) and I've been setting up my lineups exactly as you are because that's all I've ever known. I think it's time to get my butt in gear. I'm embarrassed to even make this post, but it's my own fault for never taking the time to understand the advanced stats. Again, thanks man! :thumbup1:

I like using era+, war, and fip for pitchers and for batters ops+, war, and avg

First, awesome for having an open mind to this stuff

Second, good advice so far

For hitters,
I look at OBP/ISO/wRC+

wRC+ tells me how good the hitter was compared to their league. Better than 100 is good.
OBP and ISO tell me how that player produced that. By avoiding getting out, or by hitting for power. Preferably both.

BABIP is also important. It can help you figure out if a player is more likely to get getter, worse or stay the same next year.

With all of these stats, you need to compare to ratings to see if a player should be better or worse than their performance. If a player had a high ISO, but has low power and gap power, don't expect that same ISO next year.

Same with OBP and Avoid K,,Contact and Eye.


For pitchers
FIP- and ERA+ (ERA- exists and is better than ERA+ but OOTP doesn't use it for whatever reason).
These tell you how well a pitcher pitched (sort of) compared to the league. ERA+ is heavily influenced by defense. The same pitcher on a bad defensive team will have a worse ERA+. FIP isolates the pitcher performance more, but misses some things.

But, again, you'll want to look at Stuff and compare to strike outs, Movement to compare to home runs, and control to compare to walks to see how those things should be expected to change going forward.


For defense, it's really all about UZR or ZR, whatever OOTP calls it. One thing with UZR that's different than the other stats I've listed is that the other stats are rate stats. It doesn't matter if a hitter hit (or a pitcher pitched) 100 times or 1000 times. UZR does matter. It accumulates. For that reason it's often more useful to make it a rate stat by putting it over 1000 (or whatever) innings. If one player has 5 UZR in 1000 innings and another has 5 in 500 innings, there's a good chance the guy with 5 was better (imagine that's more like 10/1000 innings).

Like with pitching and hitting, make sure the ratings support the performance. If a player with excellent defensive ratings has a poor UZR for a season, expect it to improve. And vice-versa.


The important differentiation I've alluded to is knowing what stats tell you what a player did and which ones help you figure out what a player is likely to do.

If a hitter has a .320 wOBA. That's what that player produced in that time frame.
But if that .320 wOBA comes with a .200 BABIP, you can (in most cases) expect an even higher wOBA going forward. Likewise, if it's a .440 BABIP attached to that wOBA, expect it to get worse.

Same for pitchers, but in the opposite direction.

BABIP is important, is what I'm saying.


Also, have to mention WAR. Use it. It's good. Take some time to understand it. Understand what it is, and what it isn't, then use it for what it is intended.

Thank you brother for a lot of helpful info :) More of an old school tradionlist but trying to understand and use some of the new school stuff always can learn and get better

Wrc+ you can also compare players of different eras. Most other stats you can't compare directly

Thanks, Bluejays!! I also asked this question on Reddit and your recommendations have also come from several different people. That tells me something. Either you're all insane or you're all telling me something I need to pay attention to. I'm pretty sure it's the latter. :D :laugh: :thumbup1:

It sounds like you and I are in the same boat. I remember when I first noticed these "weird stats" on Baseball-Reference. This was probably 2001'ish. I had no idea what the heck they were and I didn't want anything to do with 'em. :laugh:

Oh, that's really cool. I didn't know that. When I take note of recommended stats in this thread, I'm going to have to read up on most of 'em. I don't want to just know what's a good value and what's not, ya know? But, I'll get there! :)

Thank you, CBeisbol. I personally believe that it will be difficult for me to build a true dynasty if I don't start learning this stuff. Frankly, the fact that I am this uneducated about Advanced Statistics in 2020 is beyond ridiculous! OOTP is one thing, but learning these Adv. Stats will probably give me a better experience when I watch real baseball on MLB.TV (except for this year! BOO!) :( And when arguing players with friends, of course. :)

Anyway... Wow. What a post! I really have to give you an Xtra Large thank you. In my short time on this website, you have helped me with many questions & problems...and the responses are often lengthy, including explanations or personal opinions to help me resolve an issue or understand a topic better. I really, truly appreciate that. :) Another person in this thread, jimmysthebestcop, always seems to provide me with help and guidance. So, thanks to you and to everybody in this thread...I don't mean to exclude any person, but certain usernames are easier to remember, visually, so a big thanks to all who've helped me here or anywhere with OOTP.

Okay, enough gushing... :p Thanks for explaining ISO. I had a feeling that would pop-up in this thread. That may end up being one of my favorite stats for the time being. My team can't hit for nuthin' and when they can, I only have a few guys with any pop. Example: Big Dave Winfield (fav player as a kid) is counted on to provide some power. 6'6" & 225lbs.. That was a monster back in that era. The last three years, '83, '84 & '85 he has given me 9, 12 & 16 HRs, respectively. In real life, over the same three seasons, he hit 32, 19 & 26! The baseball gods are playing with me... :angry: :rant: I can not wait to release him next season. :laugh: Oh, how I'll miss his .217/.283/.378 slash line. :rolleyes:

I'm glad you mentioned the Basic Batter's Ratings. I've been noticing, and I'll admit it's a small sample size, when looking at Hitter's Ratings (not power guys) for great hitters of the era like Tony Gwynn, Wade Boggs, Willie Wilson, Paul Molitor these guys all have really, really good to great Contact Ratings which I expect. What I didn't expect is their Eye/Discipline Rating is going to be low. Very low in some cases. I wonder why that is. I'm not saying it's wrong, but it doesn't sound right to me.

For fielding, I had a feeling someone was going to mention Zone Rating. I gotta look it up - I have no idea what it truly is - but I see that statistic appearing in a lot of conversations about player fielding ability.

Someone on Reddit suggested UBR / BsR - mentioning it's something about base running. I thought that was pretty cool. Well, I printed out your post CBeisbol. I've written the other guy's suggestions on that printout and I'll have to start reading Fangraphs & Baseball-Reference sometime soon.

Thanks everyone!

No one ever seems to talk about it but I love BsR to gauge how well they did running and stealing bases.

I'm also definitely in the minority in this but I hate having to go through so many views to look at all these stats so it's a world changer that in 21 I can take the top stats that I like to view and place them in the basic view and quickly size up a players output in the first page that comes up for them. I would recommend all the stats with a plus or minus next to them as they are standardized so its great as a gm to use them to evaluate and make player decisions. Use them along with BABIP.

The main advantage to ISO over SLG is that SLG folds in OBP. You'll get some weird sluggers if you just look at SLG. Absolutely wRC and wRC+ are the way to go. With, as I said, OBP and ISO to get more detail.

Eye rating is tied directly to walks.
Boggs walked a ton. I'd expect him to have a high rating
Gwynn didn't walk much, he should be lower

Cliff's notes.
Divides the field in to zones. With players responsible for different zones. Different plays are easier or harder. Players get credit both for plays they did or didn't make.

Also mentioned it, didn't.

It keeps track of when players take extra bases or fail to take extra bases.



One of the big "revolutions" of advanced stats is converting plays to runs.

The old argument of who's better the bat-first or glove-first SS are easier to answer now.

We know, to a high degree of certainty, how many runs (fractions of a run) a walk, a single, a double, a triple, a home run, a hit by pitch, reaching on error, a stolen base, a caught stealing a defensive play, etc are worth.

And we can add up all the plays a player makes to see how many runs they produced. Then convert those runs to wins (WAR) No, it's not perfect, but it's very good.

One thing to do is see which metrics count runs. Batting average doesn't count runs, neither do RBI, ERA or runs. But nor do wRC+ or FIP-. Some that do: UZR, UBR, and wRC (note the lack of the "-").

On that note any stat with a "+" or "-" means it has been adjusted to account for the things like stadiums (think Coors vs PETCO) and compares to league average for that season (think 1900 vs 2000)


Enjoy the ride

There's a few mentions of BABIP here. While it's true that BABIP is influenced heavily by luck, that's not the entire picture in terms of the OOTP engine. Every batter actually has a hidden "BABIP" rating which is a sub-component of the "CONTACT" rating you see on the player page. So to some degree, some hitters can maintain higher BABIPs than others...it's not all luck.

Right. If a player has a high BABIP and low contact rating, be suspicious. Or doubt it completely

The same is true IRL. League average BABIP is around. 290. But some batters will have "true talent" well above or below that.

I once saw player hit .421 with a crazy BABIP of a .440 for a full season. It was total luck as his ratings and previous stats didn't support that. Nextt year he naturally regressed. It was a lower league so I didn't pay it much attention.

To give ALB123 a glimpse into a simple way I use the stats/ratings

I'm currently shopping my free agent to be closer and an OF popped up who hit .430/.235/173 (OBP/ISO/wRC+ that's a .336/.430/.571 AVG/OBP/SLG line) for the season. That's super. He hammered the ball. Great addition to my team, right?

I see his Contact rating of 40 and Avoid K of 45 and get suspicious. Yup. .390 BABIP. He's quite unlikely to hit .336 again.

Compare to another hitter with a 60 contact and 60 avoid K (and gap, power and eye ratiings similar to the first player) who hit .398/.211/156 (again OBP/SLG/wRC+) with a .347 BABIP.

Obviously the second player is the better hitter, even though the first player was soundly better in the previous season. The second player is much more likely to come close to his previous year's production

I really wish siera was included in ootp for pitchers. And xFIP-

Thanks for the example. I just copy/pasted it into my ootp desktop text file which includes hints, tips, examples. That's so wild. I never would have thought of the predictive nature of BABIP, but it makes so much sense now that you've explained it. :thumbup: Free Agency began in my saved game this afternoon and all I've been doing is lookingat BABIP & wRC+ for my players and guys on the market. There's no reason for me to rush...Still, I'm like a little kid on Christmas now that I know what to glean from those two stats. Yay! :D :laugh: :boogie:

I blew an 8 game lead in mid-August this past season and finished the season 1 GB those darn Tigers. I have got to improve this lineup and I know I'm going to do it if I take my time and do my homework with these Advanced Statistics. :)

Geez! I never even heard of SIERA before reading your post. :confused: I just googled and read about it. Very cool. Maybe one-day OOTP will add it among other new stats. :mellow: I'm so happy that I can finally select the Pitching Stats 2 included View and not get dizzy anymore. :p

British and starting to get really into baseball. This thread will help me enormously with not only OOTP but understanding the real game too. Thanks

Speaking as someone who's been playing this game for years, this is an excellent and valuable thread