how to make your own apba baseball cards

So, for example, my concern about a guy like Christy Mathewson not being able to come anywhere near his real-life strikeout rates with only a (Y) on his card were somewhat unfounded. The 1901 set was issued in 1988, before things like (ZZ), (K) or (R) ratings had been issued.Īnd, more to the point, when this set was published, the board included Strikeout readings for some pitchers on those hits that get taken away due to being an A or B pitcher. I’d been trying to play these cards with the latest set of boards. However, it was only recently that a thought occurred to me.

So I set off on an adventure of re-grading and re-rating every card from that set based on an elaborate set of equations using the card data. I entered every result of every card into a spreadsheet, weighting them by their plate appearances that season and I couldn’t find any way that strikeout totals would come anywhere close to historically accurate. Only 6 of the 32 NL starting pitchers have a (Y), while none of the 32 American League pitchers have a strikeout rating. I tried to do it once and quickly found something was amiss with the cards.įor example, of the 32 pitchers who are members of the 4-man rotations in the National League, 29 have a (Z) and 1 has a (W).

I have a long, horrible history with this project. I’ve dove back into a replay of the 1901 season using APBA Baseball.

How to make your own apba baseball cards