Out of the Park Developments Online Manuals
 
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Ratings Overview
In OOTP, players have a number of skills that are assigned numeric ratings approximating the player's ability. The higher the number, the better the player is at that particular skill. OOTP's scouting model is enabled by default. That means that the player ratings you see on the screen may not be the players' true ratings, but instead they are your scout's assessment of that player's ratings.

Ratings Scales
The ratings in the graphic above are on a 1-100 scale, but the scales used to rate players in OOTP can be customized. You can customize the rating scales when you create a game on the Game Options page, but you can also change the rating scales at any time by navigating to OOTP Menu >> Game Setup >> Global Setup tab:

You can change rating scales at any time during a game without adversely affecting your league. Changing scales doesn't actually affect your players' skills, just how they are represented numerically. OOTP supports any of the following ratings scales:

  • NONE displayed - This will prevent ratings from displaying. Even if ratings are not displayed, however, they still exist and are used by the computer in decision-making. They are simply not visible to the human player.
  • 1 to 5
  • 2 to 8
  • 1 to 10
  • 1 to 20
  • 20 to 80 (in increments of 5)
  • 1 to 100

The vast majority of ratings fall in the range defined by your ratings scales. However, there are some rare cases where a player will have a rating that is over the defined maximum, such as a 120 on a 1-100 scale. You can choose whether these ratings should be displayed as their actual ratings, or if you just want to consider anything above the max as the max, i.e. treating "120 out of 100" as "100 out of 100."

Note: You cannot change the ratings scale if you are in an online league, and are not the commissioner.

Rating Colors
Eachscreenthat shows player ratings also has a color coding system, as follows:

Text ColorDefinitionRating RangeSample (1-20 scale)
Blue Excellent 81%+ 17-20
Green Good 61%-80% 13-16
Yellow Average 41%-60% 9-12
Orange Poor 21%-40% 5-8
Red Awful 0%-20% 1-4

So, in the graphic above, we can see that this hitter has "good" Power Potential, but "poor" Avoid K's Potential. He seems likely to turn into the prototypical power hitter who hits for a low average, with lots of strikeouts, but some pop.

Current vs Potential Ratings
There are lots of ratings in OOTP, but batting and pitching ratings alone have one other special feature. For each batting or pitching skill, players have two ratings instead of one: a current and a potential rating. For example, batters have both a Contact rating and a Contact Potential rating. The value given with just the ability name (Contact) is an assessment of the player's current skill level in this particular ability. A potential rating (such as Contact Potential) is your scouting director's assessment of how good this player could possibly become at this ability over time. (If you have scouting turned off, you still see potential ratings. It's just your coaching staff providing the information instead.)

For more information about current vs potential ratings, see Overall and Potential Ratings.

Note: Scouts are much more likely to be inaccurate when determining potential for younger players. For example, amateurs entering the draft straight from high school are more difficult to assess than a 5-year veteran.

Previous page: Other Ratings
Next page: OVR and POT Ratings