The process of creating a player involves a series of forms that allow you to specify some options, enter basic player information, enter statistics, and assign ratings for various baseball skills.

To create a new player, click View on the DMB menu bar and select Organizer. When the Organizer window appears, select the tab labeled Players. On the Players tab, click the button labeled New. This displays the options window.

Player creation options

This form allows you to specify the options that are in effect when creating players. The values you enter here are remembered and redisplayed for the next player you create, saving some time and effort if you are creating a number of players from the same team and using the same source of statistics.

1. In the boxes at the top of this screen, select the Era and Park to use for evaluating this player's statistics. All DMB players are created on an era- and park-neutral basis so they can be moved into new eras and ballparks and have their performance automatically adjust to their new surroundings.

Why is this necessary? Suppose a player hit 25 homers in 500 atbats. By itself, this means almost nothing. If he did this in a huge park during the dead-ball era, it's a tremendous accomplishment. But if he did it in Colorado in 1999, it means he has below-average power. So DMB subtracts the effect of his home park and compares his park-adjusted stats to the norms for his era. The result is a set of park-neutral ratings that indicate how this player performed relative to the norms for his era.

For both eras and parks, you can choose to use one from the active database or select from DMB's historical era and park databases.

2. Select the team to which you want to assign the player, leaving the value as <none> if you want the player to be added to the free agent pool.

3. Select the creation method you wish to use. DMB has two sets of formulas that it can use for creating players. The Left/right option is appropriate when you have the player's actual left/right splits and wish to use them to rate the player. The Overall option is best when you don't have left/right splits or if you prefer to have DMB generate a standard left/right differential for this player.

If you choose the Overall method, DMB uses historical norms to rate batters to perform better against opposite-handed pitchers. The difference is about 20 batting average points and 30-40 points in slugging average. In other words, a lefty hitter who batted .280 overall would be rated to hit about .287 against righties and .267 against lefties. If that player faces righties about 2/3 of the time, his overall average in his DMB games would be around .280. Similar adjustments are made for right-handed batters and for pitchers.

This means that the strategy of trying to get favorable left/right matchups in your DMB games is still very important, even if you're using players who were created using the Overall method.

4. In the lower left are a set of checkboxes that allow you to tell DMB to estimate various statistics for the player you are creating. You can use this feature if you do not have access to accurate statistical data for certain items.

If, for example, you are creating a batter and do not have any information about the number of times he was hit by a pitch, check the HBP box. If the HBP box was checked, DMB knows that you don't have this piece of information, and when the form for entering batting stats is displayed, the HBP box is grayed out so you cannot enter a value. When DMB converts those batting statistics into the event tables that determine batting performance, it estimates the number of HBP and uses that value.

If you know how many times the batter was hit by a pitch, leave the HBP box unchecked. DMB assumes that you will enter a HBP value when it comes time to do so. If you enter zero, DMB assumes the player was never hit by a pitch and rates the player accordingly. In other words, if you don't ask DMB to estimate a statistic for you, zero means zero.

NOTE: These estimates apply only when you have chosen the Overall method. If you are using the Left/right method, all of the statistics are required. If you leave something as zero, it will be treated as zero. No estimates will be made by DMB, so if you don't know the real values, enter your own estimates. In other words, if you know that a player had 12 sacrifice bunts overall but you don't know how they were broken down on a left/right basis, make a reasonable estimate. If the player got about a third of his atbats against left-handed pitching, and you think his sacrifice bunt rate would have been about the same versus both LHP and RHP, enter 4 versus LHP and 8 versus RHP. Even if this is not exact, you won't be far off, and the player will perform accurately in your DMB games.

5. Check the box labeled Enter fielding stats if you have fielding statistics for this player and you wish to enter them during the player creation process. This is optional. You can always go back and enter fielding stats later. And because fielding performance in DMB is determined by the defensive ratings you assign, not the fielding stats, you don't need to enter fielding statistics if you don't want to.

6. Click OK to advance to the player creation window.

Player creation window

After you have completed the options form, DMB displays another window that contains a series of forms that you can use to enter basic player information, statistics and ratings. At the bottom of this window, you'll see buttons that allow you to move to the Next form or Back to the previous form. When you are on the last form, the text of the Next button changes to Finish. Click the Finish button to have DMB take the information you have entered, create the player, and add him to the database.

The series of forms that display in this window depend on the options you selected (left/right versus overall, whether the fielding stats form should be included) and the role (batter, pitcher, dual) of the player. In every case, however, the first form is for entering basic player information.

The basic information form includes the player's name, role, primary position and birth date, among other things. See Players: General Information for a full description of how to complete this form. Click Next to advance to the next form and begin entering player statistics.

One or more statistics forms follow the basic information form. Each of these forms includes statistics that must be entered for the DMB player creation formulas to work properly and other statistics that are included only for display and reporting purposes. The required statistics are marked with an asterisk (*). See Players: Real-life Statistics for additional information on these forms.

NOTE: When you create a pitcher, the first statistical form that appears is for hitting stats.

The last form is always the player ratings form. Because the process of rating players cannot be done strictly by formula and usually requires that you apply some judgment to whatever information you have on the player, DMB does not attempt to create these ratings for you. You can enter whatever ratings you feel are appropriate given everything you know about the player. See Players: Ratings Overview and the related topics for a full description of these ratings.

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