lilspike0738, could you explain why you think the range ratings in this SIM are "complete garbage" when I have shown that they are based pretty precisely on the same official stats as the MLB range ratings - on the real life range factor used in MLB compared to other players' performances in the same year at the same position?

What WOULD be a basis for range factors that were not "garbage" if not the real life range factor stats of players' performances?

SLB uses the real-life numbers. It's as simple as that. Fielding percentage and range factor are basic statistics, which is important since anything beyond fairly simple would become very problematic with a player database stretching back into the 19th century. They're not "magically" pulled out of somebody's ***. They're actual numbers. Nothing in SLB is assigned by WIS staff. It's all lifted off the Baseball-Reference stat page for the player in question.

I hope you're just trolling. If you're actually this stupid, you probably shouldn't be throwing your money away on a numbers game.

I hope you're just trolling. If you're actually this stupid, you probably shouldn't be throwing your money away on a numbers game.

Winner!
THREAD CLOSED

aw cmon. The fun was just about to commence.

Brilliant response.

Actually he is smarter than us he has no active teams and this is the first post he ever wrote in 12 years.

The best part about this thread is it's given me a couple of new owners to block permanently, thus reducing the amount of time I need to spend on the forums.

Posted by italyprof on 3/2/2016 8:12:00 AM (view original):
Okay, there is no way to measure how far players CAN or COULD run (when they played) across left or center field.

BUT WE DO KNOW how many balls they got to and caught. We can measure that and make it a stat,

It is called "range factor" - it was developed by Bill James. Here is how it is calculated, which is not something invented by WIS or SIM baseball:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_factor

So we are now rating a player's fielding range, rightly or wrongly, on what they actually DID in real life, not how good they looked running one time (see the discussion between Brad Pitt as Billy Beane and his scouts early in the movie "Moneyball" for why the "eye candy" test is not a good way to evaluate players).

The letter grades given for range - as several people explained in another thread - is the measure of how good a player's range factor (or fielding percentage for the fielding grade) was COMPARED TO OTHER PLAYERS IN THE SAME POSITION IN THE SAME YEAR.

So go to the Draft Center, click on OF to search for an outfielder. Now, click on one of the areas for searching a player and go down to "range" and then put in the numbers 8 and 12 - to get only players with B range or higher - better than Bo Jackson in 1989. Put "1989" in the year, so we get only those players.

You will see that 43 players come up - Barry Bond, Kirby Puckett, Lenny Dykstra - actually Dykstra comes up as four different iterations, so we really have 40 players.

So 40 players had more putouts and assists per inning played in the outfield than Bo Jackson did in 1989, IN REAL LIFE. THAT is why he is a C range for that year.

d_rocks97:

In 1894, Hugh Duffy played 1060 innings in the outfield. He had 315 putouts and 27 assists. He made 27 errors for a fielding percentage of .927. His range factor per 9 innings played in the field was 2.90. These stats come from:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/d/duffyhu01.shtml

WIS lists Hugh Duffy 1894 as C- field, and A range.

Now when we search for 1894 OFs with range factor of A or A+ - meaning we click on "range" as a search variable and put in 11 and 12 as the parameters, we get 7 players with A range.

Let's pick one to compare him with Duffy. Billy Hamilton: In 1894 Billy Hamilton played 1149 innings in the outfield.He had 370 putouts and 15 assists. He made 15 errors. His fielding percentage was .963. His range factor per 9 innings played in the outfield was slightly better than Duffy's: 3.02 - range factor being putouts plus assists calculated here for per 9 innings played, so 3 a game as opposed to 2.90 for Duffy, which is pretty darn close, leading to them having the same range factor for that year. But Hamilton is listed as a "B" in fielding, as opposed to "C" for Duffy, because his fielding percentage as 36 points higher - indeed he made 12 fewer errors.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/h/hamilbi01.shtml

There is no magic here. It is all based on real life stats of what the players did in the year in question, and the grades are comparative with others from that same year, and so corrects for different playing conditions over time - as in the use of better gloves today has led in a linear direction toward higher fielding percentage for over a century. So a "B" in 2015 is compared to poorer fielders, and better ones, in 2015, not to how well someone fielded when gloves were primitive.

Let's look at a poor fielder from 1894 now:

If I look for a "D" range - I put 2 and 3 - D and D+ - as my parameters for 1894 outfielders - I get 11 players.The worst who played nearly full time was Tuck Turner. He played 620 innings, had 140 putouts and 7 assists, and made 16 errors. His putouts+assists per 9 innings (range factor) in the field was 2.13, compared to 2.90 for Duffy and 3.02 for Hamilton. Almost a whole out difference per game, or 150 outs per seasons. A lot. His fielding percentage of .902 was poor even for those days. His 16 errors in a little over half the number of innings that Duffy played making 27 makes Duffy look pretty good by comparison.

This is why Hamilton is a B field, Duffy a C, and Tucker a D. And the range factors are also significantly different for that year for those three players - Duffy and Hamilton about even, a slight edge to Hamilton, with Tucker's being very poor. So he is also a D field.

THAT is how this is calculated and I do not see how there is any fairer way to do it than to use what ACTUALLY HAPPENED IN REAL LIFE. Unless you want to rely on video (which is not a one-to-one perfect reproduction of what happens, but a video representation of it, with the digital or film vision having its own speed which can affect how fast someone seems to be going when we look at it by the way - see the Magritte painting "This is not a pipe", or read Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction for an introduction to these issues.).

So that is how the fielding grades are determined. If you look up any players from a more recent year - 1989 or 2015 or whatever, compare their fielding percentages and their putouts and assists per inning it will be clear why one player is a B or C instead of a D, and why their range is A, B, C or D compared with others from that same year. Period.

Thanks Prof. Maybe if the attention seeking troller sees it again it will sink in! Or better yet give Profs post a thumbs up, hopefully he's not so slow that he can't count up the stars.

I guess I'm on most peoples ignore. Whatever.

No grizzly_one, it is that people here have a lot of respect for you, so while I admit to being perplexed by a few of your comments here I did not want to get into a debate with someone who on most issues clearly knows a lot more than I do, plus your comments were critical of the Sim but not nasty to people here.

So actually you are one of the people I wish we heard from more often on the Forums.

Thanks crimsonblue. I admit that I only came to understand how fielding grades and range grades are calculated here by a discussion by, if memory serves and I apologize if I am leaving anyone out, skunk206 and contrarian23. So really I just went and looked up numbers to see how it worked out concretely. I would not have figured it out on my own.