Real Life vs Strat or How cards are made

Read this at somworld.com and thought it was too good not to share:

Real baseball and Strat baseball are two different things, not in the way you manage but definitely in terms of player valuation. What looks good in real baseball may have less value in Strat baseball. The statistics you see at the end of the season don’t tell you about the quality of the Strat card. In many cases, the actual statistics can be far removed from the units on the card.

We will use the Starling Marte and Evan Gattis 2013 cards as examples.

Marte had a .466 OBP against LH pitchers and a .315 OBP against RH pitchers for his actual statistics. In Strat, Marte’s OB units represent an on base percentage of .531 against LH pitchers and .349 against RH pitchers.

Gattis had a .308 OBP against LH pitchers and a .284 OBP against RH pitchers for his actual statistics. In Strat, the Gattis OB units represent an on base percentage of .263 against LH pitchers and .248 against RH pitchers.

The Marte Strat card has better numbers than the actual season performance. The Gattis Strat card has poorer numbers than the actual season performance.

Marte is better, Gattis is not as good, and how do we account for that?

First, the HBP statistics is a consideration that can dramatically affect the card units. The HBP units are divided evenly on both sides of the hitter card.

Marte had 24 HBP occurrences in the 2013 season. He had 4 HBP vs. LH pitchers and 20 HBP vs. RH pitchers in the regular season. Gattis had 4 HBP occurrences in the 2013 season. He had 0 HBP vs. LH pitchers and 4 HBP vs. RH pitchers in the regular season.

The Strat card formula uses 24 for LH and RH calculations. It doesn’t matter in Strat that Marte got 4 against LH and 20 RH pitchers. Strat will use the total instead of the split statistics.

Marte has 10 HBP units, Gattis has 2 HBP units, on both sides of their cards. It doesn’t matter that Gattis had 0 HBP occurrences against LH pitchers. He gets HBP units on the LH columns because he gets them on the RH columns.

Second, we have to look at the league average or the average that is used by Strat in their carding process. Strat does not always use the exact league average. We estimate that they do this so people will not break their formula but this is a simple opinion.

Let’s look at league average from the basic card perspective.

Player A hit .280 and Player B hit .260. That’s what they will hit when you replay the season. The Strat basic game is 100 percent accurate.

They will not hit .280 and .260 respectively on their cards. The final numbers are composed by the combination of results from the hitter cards and the pitcher cards. A + B = Season Total, if you will. We can also add the X-Chart fielding as variable C. That makes the equation A + B + C = Season Total.

Let’s say that the pitcher cards faced by Players A and B have an average of .270.

Player A will then have a hitting column average of .290. Player B will have a hitting column average of .250. That’s the only way they can get to their actual season totals.

Players A and B are separated by 20 points on the batting average with their real statistics (.280-.260).

The degree of separation is 40 points on the batting average in Strat (.290-.250) in order to get their real-life totals.

Like the Marte/Gattis example, the Player A card is better than his real life numbers and the Player B card is worse than his real life numbers.

This process for making the hitter/pitcher cards is repeated not only for batting average but all other categories.

We can use home runs as an example. A full-time 162 game player with the N rating should get 12 home runs off the pitcher cards. The remaining home runs will come off the hitter cards.

Player A has 50 home runs. Player B has 20 home runs. They both play 162 games and have 600 at bats.

Player A will have HR units on the card to generate 38 home runs (50-12).

Player B will have HR units on his card to generate 8 home runs (20-12).

The bigger numbers for hitters mean even bigger units on the card. The lower numbers for pitchers mean even lower units on the card.

That’s the basic design of the Strat carding process. A hitter that is just average for the MLB season, let’s say 12 home runs and a .250 average, is not that good in Strat. He won’t get a “bump” on his hitting columns.

Interesting, but it just means a below average hitter is helped by pitcher rolls and the all the opposite permutations.

Along the same lines of the original post on this thread, I think I've found a fairly reliable way to estimate the strat cards:

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=634334

I posted my predictions before the ratings book was released. My predictions and the ratings book readings are very, very close for multiple batters that I did estimates for.

You can buy the ratings book now, but people in keeper leagues might be interested in trying out the method, if you really want to estimate a player's card before January each year!

It will be interesting to do further comparisons once the actual cards are out. I think it will be close on a reading by reading basis, doubles, triples, pure home runs, ballpark home runs, etc.