1963 Henry Aaron
 

I just pulled this card and I was very dissapointed to see that its rated 'only' an 85

In 1963 Aaron had his best year at the plate 179 OPS +
.319/.391/.586
9.5 oWar and 9.1 WAR

Why is this card not high 90s or even perfect?
I try and understand the ratings behind the cards but some just make me scratch my head.
1963 the run scoring envrioment was begining to shift strongly towards pitchers after the 1950s and Aaaron that year was 79% better than league average.
This is one of the more baffling cards.

Whenever you figure & understand the ratings of cards please let me know. I got George Foster card of the year he hit 50 HR. He's never hit 20 in a full season for me. That's leaving ballpark at default. Or Lefty O'Doul card the year he hit .398, only 1 & in 8 seasons he hit .300+...Almost like putting random names on cards

...which has nothing to do with the opening post, but keep trying…

I obviously can't say anything about OOTPD's secret sauce for coming up with the individual ratings, but the overall ratings might of course be chosen in a way to make a card more or less readily available since it affects drop rate. Maybe the pundits decided that the Hank Aaron card should be readily available rather than another one of the 15k+ PP specialties.

I was gonna say this is one of the better 85s in the game among cards I've followed a bit. The 85 is just an 85 in the corner...well not JUST an 85 but I do believe it is a better card than at least one other Aaron card that has a higher OVR than 85. Yeah.

At this point, I have given up on figuring how they decide on the rating. It's their decision and that's it. They pretty much have to overrate and then underrate some players either way to create a balanced card pool.

Sorry about that. My George Foster won the HR title for me with 48.

But my 1972 Johnny Bench, his best offensive season of his career, has done diddly-poo for me.

YMMV

If you allow me to play the devil's advocate:

- Consider he was 2nd in plate appearances
- He was not in the top 10 for 2B or 3B, hurting his gap rating;
- He was not excellent at drawing walks, hurting his eye rating;
- He struck out a bit, hurting his avoid K rating;
- He had one of his worst defensive years, hurting his defensive ratings;
- He was 3rd in AB per HR, which is very good but below 2 other players which must make a difference in a universe spreading across 125+ years of baseball.

I think all those factors take his overall down. What I can't explain though is that he was better per PA against RHP for most of his stats (except BB) but his splits are really favoring facing LHP, so there must be some weighting in the formula that I don't understand (I'm no math wiz).

Thanks for the 125+ years of baseball visual, first.

Now of course, I must insist you're under-estimating top 3 in a given season anyway. 125 seasons x 3 best HR hitters...375. So even if all 375 cards are in the game he's somewhere 200-375th best HR hitter in PT you'd think.

(I'm pretty sure they aren't.)

Henry Aaron.
A name that over the course of 162 full games should always hit at least 25 home runs. & should almost never go 9 games without one.

I think single-season cards for guys like Hank Aaron are always going to be a bit lackluster. In real life one of his main assets (in addition to power of course) was durability & consistency. He racked up so many counting stats (and fame) partially because he stayed healthy and productive for an incredibly long time. But longevity doesn't really seem to do much in PT (see any thread about Cal Ripken). Despite his lofty HR totals, when you look at homers on a strict per-PA basis, which I assume is what the game uses, he's only the 40th-best HR hitter in history. In 1963 his HR/PA ratio was only 4th best in the league. Killebrew was the real monster that year with an incredible ratio (1 extra homer in 100 less ABs).

Not taking anything away from Hank of course...durability is a real asset in real life and he was incredibly valuable to his team. Just trying to explain why I think his cards are not as good as the perception of his talent level.

<snip>

Including back in 19, I have never had an Aaron that was reliable. Sometimes good (never great), sometimes dismal, you had no idea from season to season. Just my luck I guess.
I thought about this card but that eye rating against righties doesn´t seem to make it worthwhile, and then there´s the atrocious defense.
I haven´t run across him in any of my leagues yet, so perhaps when I do I will be proven wrong. Hope so. :)

Edit: This morning (my time, so middle of the night for most of you) you could have gotten him for 3500, now there´s one listed for 5K, with a BIN of 20K. Oh the power of the internet! :D

The perfect version is playable and representative of Aaron's career. As said before, a lot of his value was in durability and playing at a high level for a very long time. In perfect team every player is durable and can play at the same level forever.

Remove the name from the card and look at the stats. A .977 OPS doesn't rank in the top 500 seasons of all time. His defense was bad. It's probably a diamond card based on offense alone that drops due to positional value and defense.

OOTP is all stats not stories.

His 14.3 at-bats per homerun ratio that season (what OOTP power rating represents) is 431st all time. Would there be an uproar if 2001 troy glaus had the same rating?

Very true indeed. It´s a pity I couldn´t find a winning card for him, he was one of the few players that made going to the game when the Braves were in town tolerable.
As for the perfect Aaron, you and I run in different circles. :D

Aaron is my everyday Right fielder. I don't prioritize RF/LF defense and he's been pretty good.

That's next on the things to add, Devs!
A Durability factor.
Some guys are prepared to play 200 games in a row. Go to sleep for 10 days,, and play another 2000.

Others will fake an injury if they're being paid well.

Was the 14.3 a little more consistent than the average 14.3? Not that you can expect that to be accounted for...

Just a difference between 11, 13, 19, 14, 6, 9, 15 & 12, 14, 26, 3, 6, 10, 19 (<---AB between HR)

Just setting a very vague example, though, not trying to make much of a point.

If it was or wasn't then what should that mean for the ratings? Like every player I'm sure he occasionally went a week without a homer and some games had two of them.

At the end of the season it's all the same