The Seiler Rating System

One of the features of the 2010 MLB Draft Notebook will be a unique player rating system. I’m calling it a player’s Seiler Rating for right now, but I reserve the right to change that if it seems too self-absorbed.

When creating the rating system, I wanted to convey three main things. The first is the projected draft slot of the player. I decided to break that out into a numerical system, with 1 being the best possible number. Since teams can have greatly differing opinions on players, I didn’t want to just put a round number on it, but a range instead. So here’s what the draft slot rating system looks like:

1: Rounds 1-3

2: Rounds 4-6

3: Rounds 7-10

4: Rounds 11-15

5: Rounds 16-25

6: Rounds 26-50

Since the draft notebook is really only covering players in the first 25 rounds, there will likely be little to no players that get a 6. Just remember that this number has nothing to do with talent. This isn’t BA or PGX’s rankings of draft-eligible players. It’s my perception of where they will be drafted.

The second thing I wanted to convey was a player’s overall ceiling. Since I want that to be next the draft slot number, I decided to make it an alpha-based rating system. Here’s how it is broken out:

A: Superstar (Equates to a 70+ OFP)

B: Above-average MLB Regular (Equates to a 60-69 OFP)

C: Average MLB Regular (Equates to a 50-59 OFP)

D: Below-average MLB Player/Backup (Equates to a 40-49 OFP)

E: Not a Prospect/Organizational Player (Equates to a 20-39 OFP)

This is a ceiling rating, not a likelihood of reaching that ceiling.

Therefore, the third part must convey the likelihood of reaching such a ceiling. That rating essentially gives you the average of all possible future outcomes of a player’s rating, too. Simply multiply the ceiling times the likelihood of reaching it, and you will receive the average outcome. I wanted to make this numeric again, just to simplify the thinking of it. It’s simply a percentage reduced down to the first number of the percentage. So a player with a 90% chance of hitting his ceiling will receive a 9.

Now that we have the system, here’s how a rating might look in the Draft Notebook, using last year’s #1 pick Stephen Strasburg.

Stephen Strasburg Position: RHP School: San Diego State State: CA Year: Jr. Height: 6’4’’ Weight: 220

Birth Date: 7/20/88 Seiler Rating: 1A3 Last Drafted: Never

This information will be followed with the writeup in the Draft Notebook, and the formatting looks better outside of WordPress.

Hope this helps you understand what you’re getting. You can pre-order the 2010 MLB Draft Notebook in a column right next to this entry.