Oakland Park Baseball

Hey, what do you guys think of letting people qualify for the LeaderBoards, etc. based on games played rather than at-bats?

Per the "Rules" section of the website, currently "to qualify for the Top Average, Top Slugging Percentage, and Top APS (Average Plus Slugging) on the Leader Boards during a season, you need to have 50% as many at-bats as the person with the most at-bats for that Season."

Since at-bats can vary more widely than games played (for a variety of reasons), what about making it 50% as many games played as the person with the most games played?

Another option would be to let someone qualify if they met either criteria, 50% of leader's games played OR 50% of leader's at-bats.

I want to do something to increase the number of people who qualify for being on the LeaderBoards. (As always, the best thing we can do for this is to ensure peoples' continued participation.)

I'll create the Season 3 LeaderBoards last to give time for folks to give me input on this.

I think your last option is a good idea.

Baseball=Life wrote: Since at-bats can vary more widely than games played (for a variety of reasons), what about making it 50% as many games played as the person with the most games played?

I think you're on somehting good, but not this option. This would mean if you got hurt for a year, then everyone else would be rising up.

Everything should be based on something stable, based on the number of games played by the group.

So Peter, do you mean that, in order to qualify, a person would need to have played in X percentage of games of, not the individual GP leader, but instead the overall Oakland Park Baseball games played for that season?

yes... and for the overall career as well. One benifit is that it makes it more about the group and not one perticular person.

To qualify for season leaders in any AVERAGE stat, I think you should have to have 3 times the amount of games played for AT BATS. So if there are 20 games in the season, you would need 60 at bats to qualify. It seems like that is the way it is now, and it is fine.


For career leaders for any AVERAGE stat, I think you should just need at least 125 at bats. But as time goes on, you can't make it a per/game thing because then you are basically saying any new players won't be able to be on the leaders until they play a few seasons.

The reason the requirements for min ABs for the Career Leaders (in the Record Book section) are less than the requirements for min ABs for the Season LeaderBoard is because I think someone who has over 50 ABs has shown a trend. I mean, I have 315 ABs career ABs right now, so just 10% of my career total is 31 ABs. Since career ABs keep going up cumulatively, something had to be done to keep new people eligible, since they'll never really be able to catch up with me, in terms of career ABs.

Hey, FYI, Nick re-vamped the "Career Stats" section of the main website, so it reflects an option for Season 3 stats. He also added more pictures to the "Photos" section, and also put a new link on the main navigation bar called "Boxscores" where you can find the boxscore archive. Thanks, Nick!

Finally, you may notice the LeaderBoard section of doesn't reflect the current season. I figured it didn't make sense to create a LeaderBoard until we had some games under our belts for Season 3. So I will be updating the LeaderBoard after the game this Sunday.

I like scott's 50 % at bats or games of the highest player total.

Here's what I'm going to do:

To qualify for the Career section of the Record Book, you need a flat standard of 50 minimum at-bats. This standard doesn't change over time. If you have 50 AB's you can qualify for the Career Records.

But for the Season LeaderBoards...... here's the standard:

You must have 3.1 ABs for the total number of league Games Played. So if the league has played 10 games, you need 31 ABs. This will be easy to attain because our average at-bats per game is actually 6.5. Interestingly, it turns out last season's standard of 51% of the leader's ABs translates specifically to 3.1 AB's per games played in Season 2. In other words, although the method of qualifying changes and becomes relative to the total league games played, it doesn't change quantitatively. Also of interest is that this is the standard used in MLB in-season Leader boards.

Again, for Career Record Books, 50 AB's to qualify. For Season LeaderBoards, you need 3.1 ABs x Total League Games Thus Far That Season.

50 ABs are way too little. I think it sould be closer to 75 or 80, or even 100. career leaders should be hard to reach, much harder than single season leads.

The question is, do you think 50 ABs is too few to establish a trend? I don't think it is. 50 ABs is a long enough time that performance cannot be labelled a fluke. Cuong Ha is a great example (and probably why you are bringing this up).... he barely qualifies but when he came back recently, he showed exactly why his numbers are legitimate and not a fluke. If you still disagree, please kindly explain why exactly 50 ABs is not enough to establish a trend.

Well, after 50 ABs, I was hitting over .600, no?

Besides a rough rule of averages which would say the more games you play, the more lily you are to have an really awesome day, or a really lousy one, there are many factors.

Did most of your games come at DeFemery?

Were you playing in eras that had more turnout (less ABs per game) or with poor turnout?

Was this pre or post metal bat rules?

Besides, lifetime leaders should not just be based on the ability to see a trend, but longevity. It took Ken Griffy Jr. into 8 years to get to the minimum Abs requirement of 4,000 Abs to count for the MLB’s all-time leaders. Sean Casey, a good hitter whose .305 career AVG places him hear the top 100 of all time only qualified with 4000 ABs at the final week of last season: his 7th full-time season in the MLB.

Pete Rose is the all-tme MLB leader for ABs in a creer. The requirement for 4000 ABs before one can qualify is roughly .3 times that amount. Right now, with Scott leading the way in total at-bats with 329, our MLB equivalent of minimum ABs needed to qualify would be 98.7.

If that was our minimum (let’s round to 100), 17 players would already qualify. This includes AntMo, Daniel, and Jason, all of whom have not come regularly since we started keeping stats, plus Rich, who only had one really full season. This is very inclusive.

I understand he concern for creating incentive my making the career leadership’s attainable. However I feel that when low standards of participate get awarder at 50 ABs, you are in fact supporting the low turnout. Giving people a high standard will make people say “Hey! I am only 30 Abs away from the lead! That’s just 4-7 games. Am I free this weekend? Awesome!”

So, those are some of my thoughts

Hey Peter, I definitely appreciate the time you spent writing the above post. I think, however, that you may not have addressed my key question, ie exactly why is 50 ABs not long enough to establish a trend? What are you wanting to avoid from happening?

Keep in mind that I'm the main person who would lose from this, since I'm the career AB leader---all the more people who could compete with me in the Career Record Books. I don't feel your points about DeF games %, metal/wood bats rule, or turnout's effect on ABs/game address my point about how 50 AB's is 50 AB's. Ok, 50 ABs at DeF aren't equal to 50 ABs at CF, I'll give you that, but we are far from being able to see (and thus account for) these types of splits. That's still waiting on DeFSTar.

And your final point about people with 30 ABs feeling more incentive to come because they aren't far away from qualifying... well that's exactly what I want to make happen. Upon re-reading your post just now, I realize you're saying people with 30 ABs will look at it as "I only have to play 4-7 more games, then I qualify and can stop showing up!". I don't actually believe anyone would look at it this way, do you? Even if there is a person who thinks this way, they're worth losing because we will gain more sum participants because more people will feel they are fully participating, are considered a peer statwise, etc. To me the cost-benefit analysis weighs toward making it more, not less inclusive by lowering the bar to 50.

And, another key thing... It's not important to place value on longevity in the Career Record Books. The career record books reflect who has kicked the most ass while out there playing, for all of their appearances---all we have to avoid is a statistical fluke of someone having 8 good games and then not playing anymore, for instance, hence the 50 min AB standard.

Honestly, at most I could see 60 ABs being the qualifier, but any more than that is just disincentivizing new people. 50 ABs is a lot of performace to analyze someone on!

And, I'm not sure what your career numbers were after 50 ABs. Unfortunately that information is not available for Season 1 (when you hit the 50 AB mark). No one who isn't a very good hitter has been able to keep a high batting average past about 35 ABs, actually. ["HIGH" relative to our league!!!]

About how a 98.7 AB standard minimum (.3 * career AB leader) would be "inclusive"... well I appreciate you're seeing the glass as half-full, but look at the people that would no longer be included! Shawn J., Fred B., Nick C., even with a combined 224 ABs!

i agree with peter 50 abs isnt enough . last sunday matt c went 6 for 7 and he is currently 10 for 11 giving him .909 avg so lets assume he starts slumping for him and goes 20 for 40 that would make his avg .588 or the new ba champ. should career stats be something you build up to for a carrer not in a little more then half a season. so i dont think 50 abs is enough. i think 100 abs is low enough.

also i bet anyone decent by our standards can hit 30 for 50 in games at def i consider the fact i only went 4 for 8 sad. and ive said it before but dorian should not be tied for the most hrs in a game. so maybe we should keep the stats separate from fields but i guess thats what DefsTAr will do