mound10 wrote:Not sure how they determine S9 vs S8, so I looked at the Tom Seaver 1969 card that is an S8 to see why he was not S9. He went 8 or more innings in 24 of his 35 starts that year. He had 18 CG's and 17 starts of 9 or more innings. In 1973 he was listed as an S9 when he went 8 or more innings 22 out of 36 starts with 18 CG's and 18 starts of 9 or more innings. Why is one card S9 and the other S8 for very comprable innings per game statistics?
POW does not necessarily track with innings per start, our brains just want it to for simplicity's sake. The cards are created in the context of stock replays of individual seasons. The crucial variable in those contexts is how likely the POW is to trigger. The fact that Seaver got an S8 in 1969 despite having a worse card than 1973 tells me that his environment in 1969 was more pitcher-friendly, in terms of parks and opponents. The more pitcher-friendly an environment, the less likely a POW is to trigger, the earlier it has to be set in order to get innings per start right in the replay.