I am looking for the master formula....Any ideas?  I have already had people tell me not to use one but I am going to so don't waste your time telling me other wise.  Can anyone give me their thoughts on what they would do.

=SUM(Contact*1.25+VS Right+VS Left+Eye*1.25+Speed*0.3+Power*0.9)

For hitting

Then for fielding

Range

+Glove+

Arm Str

+ Arm A

Range + Glove + Arm Str + Arm Acc

Range

+Glove+

Arm Str

+ Arm A

then add pitch calling for catchers.

Range

+Glove+

Arm Str

+ Arm A

Range

+Glove+

Arm Str

+ Arm A

It seems everything is important in fielding.

Pitching

=sum(Vs L + Vs R + Control * 1.5 + Velocity *.75 + sumP 1-5 *.75)

on a 0 to 2 basis if you could tell me how you would plug these in.

Thanks

First, divide your hitters into 3 categories.    C, corners, middle.   What you're looking for from fielders change so you need a baseline when compare their hitting ability.   For instance, I don't give a rat's *** about a catchers range or glove.   So I only want to compare those guys to similar players.  2B/SS/CF need far more range than the other positions so I want my high range players grouped together.

Second, divide your pitchers into 2 groups.   Many RP only have 2 pitches.   If your formula goes P1-P5, you're never going to want a RP on your staff.

Third, set minimums in certain categories before making comparisons.    I like my positions players to have at least 1 split over 55.   Pitchers need control over 40, splits over 50 and at least one pitch over 70.

Finally, don't be married to your formula.  Use it to get players in order and then decide who fits. 

Posted a formula I developed here.
www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx
Really if you do want to use a formula you should run a regression on your world because each world is different.

Also Mikes tips on grouping and minimium thresholds make a lot of sense.

You also have to tweak it based on ballparks.  But I thought that would be a bit much for a n00b.

Mike's last comment in his 9:16am post cannot be stressed strongly enough.

I use spreadsheets and formulas to rate players.  Came up with some basic formulas early on, and adjusted them over time as I gained more experience.  But over time I realized that there were too many subtleties in this game where you really cannot come up with a "one size fits all" formula for all position players, or for all pitchers.

For example: I have a one player on one of my teams that my formula says should be somewhere around replacement level for his position.  For the past couple of seasons he's been one of my more productive offensive players.  Conversely, I have another player on one of my teams who my formula says should be a stud.  But he's putting up just barely above minimum replacement level numbers season after season.

I've thought about reworking my formulas to try to accomodate these discrepancies, but have decided not to because my fear is that if I become too attached to formulas to make decisions in this game, then it becomes too black and white.  And this game has too many subtle shades of grey for that approach to really work.

Use your formulas as a loose guideline, but not as an end-all decision maker.

I tweak my formula all the time.   One thing it's helped me do was find flaws in ratings.   If a player is consistently underperforming despite what my formula says, I look for the rating that might move him up the list.   It's also how I found out that baserunning is an important, and overlooked, rating. 

Formulas, spreadsheets? I just look at the health rating and move on to the next player ....  

I did split all my players into the categories recommended by Mike.  It was the only logical way to get them off the site.  I haven't done the minimum requirement so I will do that.  Just based on what you said it seems you need to weight the

Catchers range and glove would be both *.5 pitch calling would be*1.5

SS/2B/CF would have range *1.5

Pitchers it seems you would want Pitches 1 - 2 *1.25
Pitches 3-5 *.75

For players not in the ML level would you take less than the minimum suggested and consider they will grow into what you are looking for?

I would rate vsR more important than vsL for both hitting and pitching.  I have routinely seen batters with 35/80 L/R splits hit .300 for the season while an 80/30 guy hits .240

I used to have a spreadsheet that I relied fairly heavily on. I found it gave me a pretty good estimate. I will say that the way you are doing it makes no sense. A formula should correspond to a quantifiable number (ie, a regression formula to predict OPS) than an arbitrary number of "goodness." In your example above, a player with 80/70/60/60/70 and 50 speed would be a "386" and a player with 80/90/50/50/50 and 80 speed would be a "368". Well you have determined that the first player is better and that's all well and good (although somewhat debatable in my opinion), but how much better? Would you rather have the first player at 5M/yr or the second at 3.5M/yr?

If you take some sort of arbitrary rankings formula like that and use it for a while, you will start to be able to attach value to it, but if you are going to do something like that, you would be much better off tying it to something like WAR which gives you a quantifiable value measurement.

But beyond that, I am sure I am not the only veteran player of this game who will tell you that predicting a player's production (within a reasonable margin of error) is actually a relatively easy part of the game. The difficult part is making salary decisions, long-term roster management, predicting player development/decline, and actually acquiring said good players.

The most important 2 points about using a formula are points one and four from Mike's 916 AM post.  To emphasize his point one, I don't even include fielding or baserunning/speed in my formulae; I predict hitting stats and then ask if that's enough bat for the glove and/or legs I'm looking at.  I've tried some crude mixed formulae but I wouldn't hang my hat on them.  To emphasize his fourth point-- the goal of a formula is to identify from a long list of names (available FAs, draft list) who the players are that are even worth looking at.  You then have to go away from your formulae and look at the whole set of player ratings to make your ultimate player selection decisions.  For example, I'll sort my draft hitters by my bat formula number-- but then I (a) go through the playable bats 1 by 1 to see who I want, and (b) look for every player whose legs or glove make a significant major league contribution and look to see if the bat is good enough for me to draft them.

My formula has 4 totals.   VR, VL, hitting ratings plus speed/baserunning, the five hitting ratings alone.  VR, VL and H+SBR are more tie-breakers than anything else.  I don't care if my slugging 1B has a speed of 3.   That's not his job. 

A general formula that you plug in for all players will give you a team full of guys with decent but not great fielding, decent but not great hitting and decent but notgreat speed.  I agree with Mike here - you need to almost have a different formula for each position - so at 1B and DH and maybe even LF you are looking heavily at the hitting ratings, up the middle and third base you look more heavily at defense or even speed.  catcher you need to factor pitch calling in...and so forth. 

This might be a stupid question - but does the overall rating have a significant impact on the player quality or development versus the other ratings (e.g., contact, power, VsL and R)...