About the Inside Edge Player Ratings

player ratings About the Inside Edge Ratings

MLB Player Ratings

OVERVIEW

Inside Edge, the respected scouting service of Major League clubs, has tapped its pitch-by-pitch database of millions of pitches from 2002 to present in order to develop MLB Player Ratings.

Our unique system for rating players goes down to pitch-level, not just at-bat level. There are three primary ingredients to our Player Ratings:

PITCHERS:
1) Pitch Effectiveness: the premise is that good pitching is a matter of a) throwing strikes and b) not letting those strikes be hit. PEFF measures a pitcher’s ability to throw strikes, get outs, and not allow hits.

2) Quality At-Bat Percentage: This is actually a hitter metric but QAB% Against for pitchers is very telling. A Quality At-Bat is one that results in a hit, walk, HBP, Sac Fly, Sac Bunt, or even an Out if it was hit hard, or any at-bat that lasts 7 or more pitches. QAB% is the percentage of at-bats that are quality (as defined here). A high percentage is good for hitters, and low % is good for pitchers.

3) Endurance (for starters) and consistency (for relievers). We must take into consideration the number of innings logged by starters and relievers in order to even the playing field and avoid over rating pitchers who have posted good results, but with limited sample size.

HITTERS:
1) Quality At-Bat Percentage: The box score only tells part of the story when it comes to successful at-bats. In typical situations, the hitter’s objective is to hit the ball hard somewhere, and a well-hit ball (regardless of outcome) is considered a quality at-bat. Reaching base, making pitchers throw a lot of pitches (7 or more), and successfully sacrificing an at-bat are all ways to log a “quality at-bat”.

2) Power: Quite simply, a double is more valuable than a single, so our system rewards hitters for extra-base hits.

3) Speed: Not all hitters are power-hitters. Many rely on another great asset, speed, to get more hits, and obtain more bases. That is why we factor speed into the hitter player rating equation.

Bringing it all together:
The final rating for each player is derived primarily by his ranking in each of the above areas.

The Inside Edge player ratings are a new and exciting part of our companywide effort to offer outstanding and significant analytics to MLB clubs and media.