Do you value stats or ratings?

[joshd19]

Coming out of a recent discussion on Discord about discrepancies in overall vs. component ratings (and sometimes internal discrepancies involving OVR via the scouting tab in the BBA game file), I'm curious to know about everyone's approach to evaluating players using stats or ratings. When scouting is enabled in other leagues, this is the difference between a "favors tools" vs "favors abilities" scout. Please also leave a comment indicating whether this approach is consistent across other leagues you play in or specific to your BBA experience.

[RonCo]

Picking semantic nits...I'm going to have to think about this one. The term what I "value" makes me pause. I "value" (hence use) both ratings and stats, but in my world they have different purposes.

[Dington]

Usually use ratings as a starting point, knowing the rating is really +/- 10 of the actual rating. Stats kinda tell you whether it's plus or minus.

[jiminyhopkins]

I value ratings until the league decides to change them!

[RonCo]

In my brain, the whole purpose of "scouts" or any other analysis is to identify (and project) true skill in any specific capability, and then give management a sense of how that package of skills will translate to Wins.

In OOTP, true skill in any particular capability is defined as the player's component rating on the 1-200 (or whatever) scale.

We show the component ratings on the 1-10 scale, which (with the exception of Contract and Stuff, which are fancy-dancy calculations the game sucks at when ratings are bloated like our are), translate directly to where the 1-200 rating is. So we know, for example, a guy with a "5" power is between 80-100 on the Power scale (unless the game has tweaked the scale a little ... it's been some time since I dug through that). The question still stands, however, how valuable the player is, because there is a serious performance difference between an 81 and a 99 even before the random number generator smears the truth further.

Stats, when pushed up against league context, can give us some insight into that question. So they are really valuable. Stats also tell you a lot more about things like Contact and Stuff (and to a lesser extent Movement), because, like overall ratings, those are calculated projections that OOTP gives you. I trust OOTP devs are trying to give us good info there, and in a "normal" league perhaps those are close enough for government work...but in any league where the ratings aren't fairly normal (like PT!), those projections are fraught with danger.

In OOTP the projection of both current value of a player's overall package and future value is some weird calculation that the game creates. Since the numbers they give often don't match my personal view of what wins baseball games, I tend to simply ignore OOTP most of the time when it comes to this aspect, and trust myself.

[RonCo]

I guess I'll call it "I value them the same."

[Krathan]

I chose “I value them the same, but that only kind of true. I value both of them as they relate to each other and sometimes I value each one more than the other depending on the situation.

I usually start with ratings when I’m looking at a large group of players, like when I’m trying to narrow down which potential free agents I might want to sign. Then I look at their stats, starting with their most recent stats, and then how those stats line up with stats from other years. I try to determine if the stats and the ratings agree. If they do, I probably favor that player. If they don’t, but I’m still interested in what I’m seeing, I try to decide what I can learn from those differences that might help me see what that player will do in the future.

Then there are times where I start with stats. That generally happens when I’m looking through my minor leagues. Now, my minors leagues are filled with a bunch of trash players according to ratings. However, there are guys that I like a fair amount because they have put up stats that have piqued my interest. Sometimes, I’ll discount the stats based on really bad ratings, but even a lowly rated guy can convince me make sure he gets playing time by putting up good numbers consistently. Who knows, maybe their rating will eventually catch up or maybe they’ll just be a guy who plays above his ratings. (Or they could just be someone who falls off once he hits a certain level of competition.)

[BaseClogger]

I use ratings to filter a list of players and then rely on underlying peripheral stats to narrow down.

[BaseClogger]

Nathan makes a good point about young players in the minors. Sometimes their ratings “catch up” with statistical production in a way I see less often with older players.