Ratings Available

Yeah, that would be fun. Of course, as I'm sure you know, the ratings are only part of putting a team together. It helps you evaluate players, but you still have to get all the parts necessary for a winning team (and then have a little luck too! )

Say, I'm offering to give away a limited number of the 2012 ratings. If you'd like one, just for kicks and grins, send me an email and I'll send you (and anyone else) last year's ratings for the average park.

Yes, evaluating players is only a part of the game, but it is a major part of the game. It is what you use to decide which players to pursue, which players not to pursue, where in a draft you want to draft players, and how much a player fits into your various strategies (e.g. park type and team type). So when you use someone else's ratings guide to do a significant part of evaluating your players, you are using someone else's ratings guide to significantly assist you in playing the game itself. So, players who win using rating guides are doing so by getting significant outside help in a significant portion of their game play. In doing so, they lose that great satisfaction in knowing that they won--division titles, playoff games, or championships--on their own without the significant help of an outside ratings guide.

I don't think I agree with you about using a ratings guide as somehow denigrating the accomplishment of putting together a winning team. I think we both agree that the hardest part is actually putting the pieces together. Having a good team is still an accomplishment no matter whether you have your own system, or get feedback elsewhere.

Not everyone has the time to dedicate to the game. I'm glad you do as it's a lot of fun figuring this stuff out and getting into the nuts and bolts. Honestly, I don't have to think about the nuts and bolts too much any more because it's all automatically calculated for me. I can just start working on putting the pieces together.

Thanks for your generous offer, but I have to pass. As someone who gets great enjoyment myself in evaluating players on my own and winning on my own, I wouldn't want to begin the slippery slope of even examining your ratings system..

LOL. No problem. Just thought we might be able to share some ideas and improve each other's systems.

Yeah, that would be fun. Of course, as I'm sure you know, the ratings are only part of putting a team together. It helps you evaluate players, but you still have to get all the parts necessary for a winning team (and then have a little luck too! )

Say, I'm offering to give away a limited number of the 2012 ratings. If you'd like one, just for kicks and grins, send me an email and I'll send you (and anyone else) last year's ratings for the average park.

Yes, evaluating players is only a part of the game, but it is a major part of the game. It is what you use to decide which players to pursue, which players not to pursue, where in a draft you want to draft players, and how much a player fits into your various strategies (e.g. park type and team type). So when you use someone else's ratings guide to do a significant part of evaluating your players, you are using someone else's ratings guide to significantly assist you in playing the game itself. So, players who win using rating guides are doing so by getting significant outside help in a significant portion of their game play. In doing so, they lose that great satisfaction in knowing that they won--division titles, playoff games, or championships--on their own without the significant help of an outside ratings guide.

I don't think I agree with you about using a ratings guide as somehow denigrating the accomplishment of putting together a winning team. I think we both agree that the hardest part is actually putting the pieces together. Having a good team is still an accomplishment no matter whether you have your own system, or get feedback elsewhere.

Not everyone has the time to dedicate to the game. I'm glad you do as it's a lot of fun figuring this stuff out and getting into the nuts and bolts. Honestly, I don't have to think about the nuts and bolts too much any more because it's all automatically calculated for me. I can just start working on putting the pieces together.

Thanks for your generous offer, but I have to pass. As someone who gets great enjoyment myself in evaluating players on my own and winning on my own, I wouldn't want to begin the slippery slope of even examining your ratings system..

LOL. No problem. Just thought we might be able to share some ideas and improve each other's systems.

Um, I never said anything about "denigrating" anything. I did say that players who use the significant outside help of an outside rating guide to evaluate players will not get the gratification of winning on their own without significant outside help, since evaluating players is a major part of the game...which is true. And we don't agree that "putting the pieces together" is the hardest part, since I never said that. Evaluating players is the hardest and most important part of the game. If you don't evaluate the players well, you will not put together the pieces of a good team because you will have picked the wrong pieces. You will also not tailor your team to your stadium well, and you will most likely lose. So winning by evaluating players using a ratings guide (such as yours) still may be somewhat of an accomplishment, but it is definitely a lesser accomplishment than evaluating players and winning on your own.

Anyway, good luck using your own ratings system, which would obviously constitute winning on your own. And good luck selling your ratings guide to other players. I'm sure a lot of players will forgo the accomplishment of winning on their own for the lesser accomplishment of winning by letting you (or others) evaluate their players for them.

Ok. I guess I can agree that it's more satisfying if you have your own system and you can have success with it.

I'm not sure it's "evaluating players" for someone. True there are ratings, but you can't just use ratings without any thought. You have to make sure that you balance fielding with hitting and hitting LHP as well as RHP. Even with ratings you have to evaluate what the strengths that go into the rating and how to meld them together.

Yep, Evaluating is hard. That's why you need some sort of system to do it. Whatever you have time to come up with. At a minimum I think you need the data disk or book that SOM sells.

I gotta say, winning, no matter how you do it, is more fun than losing.

Ok. I guess I can agree that it's more satisfying if you have your own system and you can have success with it.

I'm not sure it's "evaluating players" for someone. True there are ratings, but you can't just use ratings without any thought. You have to make sure that you balance fielding with hitting and hitting LHP as well as RHP. Even with ratings you have to evaluate what the strengths that go into the rating and how to meld them together.

Yep, Evaluating is hard. That's why you need some sort of system to do it. Whatever you have time to come up with. At a minimum I think you need the data disk or book that SOM sells.

I gotta say, winning, no matter how you do it, is more fun than losing.

I agree with you on the first sentence. And while I don't agree with the "no matter how you do it" part in your last sentence, I do agree that winning is more fun than losing.

As to your second paragraph, an outside ratings guide absolutely evaluates players for the person who uses them, since it rates[b][/b] them; ratings are evaluations. Making sure you "balance fielding with hitting and hitting LHP as well as RHP" is what you do after the ratings guide (or you yourself) has evaluated the players for you; that's post-player evaluation game-play.

And no, you don't need the "data disk or book that SOM sells" or any ratings guide whatsoever. I, and many other players, have played this game for many years without using any ratings guide, and I do OK. I make the playoffs 40% of the time and win about 3 championships a year. Those aren't fantastic numbers, but they're solid, and--as we've discussed before--they come with the significant gratification of knowing that they came on my own...and that I beat other players who used ratings guides...

Anyway, again, good luck selling your ratings guides. I'm sure they make excellent evaluations of players (and stadiums et al.) and that they will help managers who don't want to (or can't adequately) evaluate players on their own.

I.Strether, you made your point, you do not need ratings from anyone else, why not leave it at that? I think the service Joe offers is a worthwhile. Good luck to you, I hope to see you in a league soon.

Hey , if you want to count all the card chances yourself, knock yourself out. We all used to do it. I'd rather pay a few bucks and have it done for me

I.Strether, you made your point, you do not need ratings from anyone else, why not leave it at that? I think the service Joe offers is a worthwhile. Good luck to you, I hope to see you in a league soon.

Radagast Brown, don't tell me I've "made my point" when you didn't read my posts well enough to know what my point was. If you did read them well, you would know that it had nothing to do with my (or others) not needing an outside ratings guide to do quite well at SOM. It was that evaluating players is the most important part of the game, and players (like you) who use outside rating guides to evaluate players and win are accomplishing substantially less than those players who evaluate players and win on their own. I merely mentioned my (and others) not needing a ratings guide to succeed at SOM to counter Joe's assertion that one needed an outside ratings guide to succeed.

I'm also sure Joe's service is worthwhile, since you (and others) clearly feel you need it to adequately succeed at SOM. So, good luck to you as well, I also hope to see you in a league, even if you'll most likely be needing an oustide ratings guide to compete in it...

Hey , if you want to count all the card chances yourself, knock yourself out. We all used to do it. I'd rather pay a few bucks and have it done for me

Dude, you give me way too much credit. By no means do I "count all the card chances myself;" I'm an English teacher who is mathematically challenged at best and mathematically illiterate at worst. I do, however, examine and evaluate the cards (one doesn't need to count card chances to do so) myself and get a lot of enjoyment doing it, and, as I've mentioned above, I think it's cool when those examinations of my own produce winning teams.

As to your point that "we all used to do it," as if nobody plays without ratings guides anymore, that's just not true. I know others currently playing SOM who do not use (and have never used) a ratings guide before, and I'm sure there are many other players out there who also evaluate players for themselves. Considering there are many players out there whose play I admire, i would hope they are among that group.

Sorry, I just assumed that was what you meant. I used to count the card chances when I was a teen in the 60's and just assumed everyone has done this. In fact, I used to sell a ratings guide myself for draft league play called TheStatman. It was based on Pete Palmer's linear weights system applied to the strat card. It was a lot of work and honestly I just don't have the patience anymore to take on a task like that. It was fun though

No prob, man, and you should take great pride in successfully applying a linear weights system to a baseball simulation; I'm sure even Bill James, himself, would be impressed.