The Truth About the Ratings Guide...

Everyone here in SBa has access to the same data given out by Strat-o-matic each season; the all mighty ratings guide. They say that it contains all the numbers you need to understand the cards and do a little bit of preparation prior to the physical set releasing. Now, what if I told you the ratings guide, was wrong? Well not wrong in the absolute sense but more misinterpreted. I built a basic calculator that would spit out a triple slash similar to what the ratings guide does but I use the actual values seen on the card to determine if these values are correct. 108 results come from rolling 3d6 with an extra modifier on a d20 for split results to vary the probability and make it more accurate to a real player’s results.

I went to find the perfect control subject; someone whose card is what you see is what you get. Someone who was not effected by park factors at all. A complete blank slate. That player is… Matt Carpenter. A very simple card in practice, just walks and hit by pitches versus lefties and has a bit more flavor versus righties. No nonsense whatsoever. I plugged those numbers into the calculator, and it came out exactly like how the ratings guide reads it. Very nice round numbers that are easy to interpret and you know exactly what you are getting.

Now what about everyone else? I went to find a player that I knew well, that I could trust. That player? Josh Rojas of the Arizona Diamondbacks. He hits very evenly against each side and has a varied amount of results. You get anything and everything from this guy. Now what do you plug into the calculator? I first put in the advanced results. Basically, it’s everything minus the symbols. 1-2 vL is a single into left for example and 3-11 vL is a home run on a 1-14. What I got was… odd. It was way higher than what the ratings guide gave me. The ratings guide gives me a triple slash of .246/.366/.361 versus left handed pitchers. What I got with the advanced results was .281/.401/.435. That is a significant increase to what we were given. Now, I thought “what if it is taking into account park factors in some way?” Oh, maybe they are using a neutral park of 1-10 for singles and home runs. I plugged that in and got a slash of .283/.403/.440 so even worse. Something must be up here. Why would they release these numbers that are not vindictive of the results on the cards. Then I got a thought. I threw the numbers into the calculator and it is not even the ball park results from their home park! That made it even higher because Arizona is a left handed hitter’s paradise. What the actual fuck strat?!

So, I went digging. I went to find the most pitcher friendly park to drop these numbers into the abyss for good. That park? Detroit. Singles on a three and home runs on a measly one. Not even this was enough to tank the numbers. It is getting closer to what I seek though. What if we completely remove ballpark factors? No factors whatsoever. Fucking bingo! What you get in the ratings guide is if you take the results with a ballpark symbol next to them and fucking nuke it. This is the complete bare bones build of a player playing in absolute hitter hell. Then I thought about pitchers? Could it be true for them as well? I took my baby boy strong chin Logan Webb (fuck the DH) and entered in his side versus righties and yeah, it’s the same. That is the absolute BEST a pitcher could be.

Now what does this all mean? Well… it certainly leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Ballparks are completely optional and that is why they have a separate symbol on them that removes something else to begin with. At least they give you the numbers for ballpark checks in the ratings guide but never in their Read Me or anything was a guide on how to interpret these numbers. They also only mention that ballpark singles have 5 total chances on one side of a card in that document so if you didn’t know that then, hey, there you go. It just seems odd to do it that way. I get it because you can extrapolate the data into whatever hitting/pitching environment you want to help formulate a team that works best for you, but it would be nice to have some kind of a mention on how to read the damn sheet. Not to mention the rounding they do oh my god the rounding. Significant figures people. Sig FUCKING figs. Anyway, that’s for taking the time to read this article. I now hope that this brings to light what the ratings guide actually means and how to use its data for all of us that struggle with spreadsheets as is.