Players: Offensive Ratings

All players should have a full set of ratings in the Offense group, since all players (including pitchers in non-DH leagues) may be called on to bat and run the bases.

WARNING! These ratings are required for batters and pitchers. If you create a player that does not have a full set of these ratings, it may affect realism and cause problems (possible crashes) with the game.

The offensive ratings are grouped in a box in the upper-left corner of the player ratings form:

Sacrifice bunt rating

The Sacrifice bunt rating indicates the player's ability to advance a runner with a sacrifice or squeeze bunt.

In real-life games, bunt singles are quite rare in sacrifice and squeeze situations (about 10% of the time), but the runners advance over 80% of the time when the batter gets the ball in play. But a significant percentage of bunt attempts are fouled off, putting the batter behind in the count and significantly reducing his effectiveness. The ability to get the ball in play is often the thing that separates the best bunters from the worst.

When we assign bunt ratings for modern seasons, we study pitch-by-pitch and play-by-play data from every real-life game to determine which bunters have more success getting the ball in play and advancing the runners.

The ratings range from Excellent to Poor. The better the rating, the fewer the number of foul bunts, and the higher the success rate when he does get the ball in play.

Bunting for a hit

Most of what we just said about sacrifice bunts applies to bunting for a hit, except that this rating applies only when the batter attempts to bunt with the bases empty or with two out.

In real-life games, bunt singles are fairly common in these situations. The best bunters are successful over 40% of the time. But because the hitter often tries to get a running start on these bunt attempts, two-thirds of them are fouled off, putting the batter behind in the count and significantly reducing his effectiveness. As with sacrifice and squeeze bunts, the ability to get the ball in play is often the thing that separates the best bunters from the worst.

The ratings range from Excellent to Poor. The better the rating, the fewer the number of foul bunts, and the higher the success rate when he does get the ball in play.

Running rating

The running rating measures the player's ability to take extra bases on singles, doubles, and caught fly balls. It measures both running speed and the player's judgment about when to take the extra base. Some slow runners have good ratings because they know when to try for the extra base. Some fast runners have low ratings because they don't read the ball off the bat very well or because they're too aggressive and get thrown out frequently.

When we assign running ratings for modern players, we use detailed information about the number of extra bases a runner takes on singles, doubles and fly balls, and the number of times each runner is thrown out on the bases.

If you do not have this information, you can assess a player's running ability based on statistics and other factors -- triples, stolen bases, defensive position, batting order position -- that suggest speed or lack of it. This method isn't foolproof -- our studies always uncover fast players who don't seem to succeed on the bases -- but it's a good method when you don't have play-by-play data to work with.

The running ratings range from Excellent to Poor. We rarely assign a running rating better than Average for pitchers and catchers, but there are exceptions from time to time.

Jump and steal ratings

The jump and steal ratings work together to indicate how well this player can steal bases. The jump rating measures his ability to read the pitcher and get a good jump on a steal attempt. The steal rating measures how successful he is on those attempts.

When we assign jump and steal ratings, we look at the player's stolen base and caught stealing totals, but we also examine the play-by-play data to see whether these statistics are telling the whole story. Some players pick up a few bonus steals as a trailing runner on double steals that were really earned by the lead runner. Others are very selective, trying to steal only against the weakest catchers and pitchers. So we don't rely on a strict formula when developing these ratings. However, because most people don't have access to this type of information, we've put together some guidelines to use when creating your own players.

One way to calculate the jump rating is to divide the number of steal attempts by the number of times the player reached first base (singles + walks + hit by pitch), using the following table:

Excellent stealing ratings are reserved for players who succeed at least 83% of the time. Average stealers are successful about 67% of the time. Poor stealers are thrown out more than half the time.

Hitter type

This rating indicates whether the batter is a pull hitter or spray hitter. A right-handed batter is considered a pull hitter if he hit theball to the left fielder, third baseman or shortstop at least 50% of the time in real life. The same rule is appliedto left-handed batters, but the right fielder, first baseman and second baseman are used instead.

Clutch rating

This rating indicates whether the batter is especially tough in late-inning situations where the score is close. A great clutch hitter is rated as a Terror, while others are Normal.

Baseball researchers have tried on a number of occasions to find players who consistently perform better in the clutch, but they have had no success. No matter how you define a clutch situation, hitters tend to hit just as well (or badly) in those situations as they do overall, given a statistically meaningful number of plate appearances.

As a result, the clutch rating system is only a minor factor in your DMB games, and we don't give out a lot of Terror ratings. When we do, we assign them to players who hit very well (and better than their normal level) in the late innings of close games in that particular season.

Power rating

This rating doesn't appear on the ratings form, but we'll mention it because it's on the player profile and in other places in the game. It indicates how well a player hits for power (doubles, triples and homers) against left- and right-handed pitching, and it is automatically calculated by DMB whenever you create a player or modify a player's event table.

This rating, which has values ranging from Excellent to Poor, does not determine the outcome of any plays. Its purpose is to give you a quick indicator of how much power is represented in the player's event table, and is therefore a useful companion to the player's batting average.

Statistically, the rating represents a batter's rate of extra-base hits after adjusting for park.