[Eugene Church]

Arm is very hard to determine...Range can be done fairly well. Even using Baseball-Reference, you can only get some idea of these...and sometimes these stats are misleading.

As you might guess it is very time-consuming and tedious to do this.
I have done it 3 times for my historical leagues...once at the public library using Total Baseball and the Encyclopedia of Baseball...then I discovered Baseball-Reference.com...which made it much easier to do the research.

If an OF has a great arm, teams don't run on him, therefore his assists will be lower than someone who has a poor arm and everybody runs on him, therefore he will look good statistically, but in reality, be poor. That is, the poor arm will have many more chances for assists, but a very poor percentage. This also applies to catcher arms.

Sometimes in the Baseball Era you have fewer strikeouts, therefore more balls in play and more assists and putouts, so it is hard to compare players of different eras...or teams run more on the bases, therefore more outfield assists...teams bunted more, therefore catchers, 3b and 1b had more assists.

You really need to compare players against their contemporaries to be somewhat accurate.

I use Putouts to determine the Range of an OF...this seems to be a pretty good determinant. I divide the games scheduled by the number of games played and multiply this by the total Putouts. If a player plays 100 games with 100 PO in a 154 game season ...it would be 154 (games scheduled) divided by 100 (games played) , then multiplied by 100 (putouts)...his rating would be 154 putouts per season.

an OF with 100 games played with 200 putouts would be rated at 308 putouts and be considered much better than the first player.

an OF with 140 games played with 375 putouts would be rated at 412 putouts and be considered much better than the previous two players.

This formula allows you to compare a player who play 50 games to those that play 100 or 154 or 162 games. It's not perfect, but it give a pretty good indication.

Then you have to set up a range to assign ratings in OOTPB. Basically I used this range to assign OF range ratings: over 350=A or 5 on a 1-5 scale...325-375=B or 4...290-325=C or 3...260-290=D or 2...below 260=E or 1.

I check assists to get Range for infielders...although as stated previously...assists may vary by the era...I used the same formula used for outfielders...Games Scheduled divided by Games Played, then multiplied by total assists.
To assign OOTPB ratings for 2b and SS, this scale was used: over 475 assists per season=A or 5 (on 1-5 scale)...450-475=B or 4...425-450=C or 3...400-425=D or 2...under 400=E or 1.

3b scale: over 325=A or 5...300-325=B or 4...275-300=C or 3...250-300=D or 4...under 250=E or 1.

1b scale: over 125=A or 5...110-125=B or 4...90-110=C or 3...75-90=D or 2...under 70=E or 1.

C scale: this is the hardest position to do...for range I use the player's Rfg rating in Baseball Reference and compare it to the LGrfg (league average for the postion)...also look at assists, double plays and passed balls per season.
It would be nice if "runners thrown out" stats were kept like they currently are...but this is only recently.

For catcher's arm, I look at assists and double plays per season...although this can be misleading as a poor arm might have more TOTAL assists because teams run on him so often and give him more chances to increase his totals.

Pitchers: very hard to compare eras...use assists and double plays to as some indication...mainly go by fielding percentage.

This may help you some...but be aware it is a lot of work.