Dear EFL Answer Man:
We’ll have some debs from Japan & Korea (I assume) in our end-of-April draft. How will their defense positions and ratings be assigned?
- using only their April MLB stats
- using their records from last year in their previous league
- something else I haven’t thought of
thanks…
— Greatly Grateful Guy
Dear GGG:
Our rules say all our players’ stats are based on their previous major league performance, except players with no major league performance get a default rating at their primary position, as determined by the Commissioner.
We don’t look at their minor league stats. And we don’t look at their stats in foreign leagues. This is for one or all of three reasons:
- We don’t think performance in those other leagues predict major league performance very well, and/or
- We — or, more specifically, I — don’t know where to find comparable stats from those other leagues, and/or
- We– or at least I — haven’t thought about this issue very much (or not at all). We’ve only been playing EFL for 22 years. Don’t rush me!
So for the players debuting this year, their defensive ratings will be default ratings at their primary position, as determined by the Commissioner.
The Commissioner has never done a complete defensive stats review in April. A complete update is a LOT of work — 10 hours, maybe. The first one gets done in late May, when sample sizes get a little bigger and more meaningful. So, up to now, new debs haven’t moved off their default ratings until June. Nor do they get rated at more than one position until June.
The league could order the Commissioner to do an April rating of all the players, and he’d have to do it. I don’t recommend this because:
- Every new player starts by being assumed to be replacement level. By the time he reaches 162 innings, the assumption that he’s at replacement begins to diminish, replaced by as assumption that he is average, modified by his actual performance level. By the time he reaches 500 innings, all the assumptions have been leached out of the picture and he’s rated based on several defensive ratings that estimate how many runs the player saves with his defense, compared to a replacement level fielder. So — a late April re-rating, for many debutants would still be heavily weighted with the presumption of replacement level performance. A full time player might have 250 innings by the end of April. He’s could be close to 500 by the end of May, and his rating will have much more meaning.
- To have the ratings ready for people to study for the end of April meeting, I’d have to have them done by several days before the end of the month. This means I’d have to start in the middle of the month, exacerbating the unreliability and random weirdness of the April ratings.
The league could order the Commissioner to specifically re-rate April debs. Giving the good ones a chance to earn upward revisions might be worth the unreliability of the small samples. Maybe.
The league could order the Commissioner to research Japanese and Korean defensive stats, and enter those from prior years. IF they are commensurable with MLB stats, this could yield interesting ratings not much different in reliability than the ones we are using now for Rookies. I don’t know where I’d find these stats — and I don’t read Japanese or Korean.
The league could order the commissioner to give the default ratings at more than one position. I could live with this.
Without a new directive from the league, the Commissioner expects to do the first full rating in late May.
— Mr. EFL Answer Man
