OOTP Developments Forums - View Single Post

Scruff · 07-12-2009, 04:24 PM

This is an interesting thread.

I slow skimmed it, and don't think I saw this mentioned, but in order to use something like the Lahman database to come up with accurate fielding ratings, you are most likely going to have to start with the real life major league team and work your way backwards to the individuals.

This is what Bill James does with Win Shares. I don't think you would have to import players to their real life teams to do this. You can create the players ratings based on his real life team within the database and then import the player into a draft, or whatever after the ratings have been created, right?

For the Hall of Merit project at baseballthinkfactory.org, Dan Rosenheck has created a spreadsheet that basically rates every player from 1901 on for batting, base-running (not SB), fielding, pitching wins. The ratings he's come up with correlate pretty well with the current play-by-play metrics for modern players and he then applies the formulas back for the years where we don't have play-by-play. I would think even just using that spreadsheet as a jump-off point would help, heck the ratings could be directly imported into Lahman by adding a column or two (I believe he has a column that adjusts them based on playing time as well). It might be tougher for guys that played multiple positions, but I think it could be done.

But if you aren't using PBP data, you pretty much have to work backwards from the team, or it's not going to work.

07-12-2009, 04:24 PM	#43
Scruff Minors (Triple A) Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 243	This is an interesting thread. I slow skimmed it, and don't think I saw this mentioned, but in order to use something like the Lahman database to come up with accurate fielding ratings, you are most likely going to have to start with the real life major league team and work your way backwards to the individuals. This is what Bill James does with Win Shares. I don't think you would have to import players to their real life teams to do this. You can create the players ratings based on his real life team within the database and then import the player into a draft, or whatever after the ratings have been created, right? For the Hall of Merit project at baseballthinkfactory.org, Dan Rosenheck has created a spreadsheet that basically rates every player from 1901 on for batting, base-running (not SB), fielding, pitching wins. The ratings he's come up with correlate pretty well with the current play-by-play metrics for modern players and he then applies the formulas back for the years where we don't have play-by-play. I would think even just using that spreadsheet as a jump-off point would help, heck the ratings could be directly imported into Lahman by adding a column or two (I believe he has a column that adjusts them based on playing time as well). It might be tougher for guys that played multiple positions, but I think it could be done. But if you aren't using PBP data, you pretty much have to work backwards from the team, or it's not going to work.