How the MLB draft game works

Every American and National League player in the Lahman Baseball Database, 1871 through 2025. Hitters need 1,000 plate appearances to be rated on a career, starting pitchers 300 innings and relievers 100. A player's position is the one he played most; a pitcher is a starter when at least half his games were starts. Left, center and right field are one outfield pool, and the DH slot takes any hitter. The Lahman release also carries Negro Leagues seasons under a separate license, so they are not used here.

For each season and league, a hitter's on-base percentage is divided by the league's and his slugging by the league's, and the two are added and 1 taken away (a relative OPS where 1.00 is league average). His value that season is his plate appearances times how far that sits above 0.75, a stand-in for a replacement hitter. Comparing every season with its own league is how a 1930s hitter and a 2010s hitter end up on one scale.

For each season and league, a pitcher's value is the earned runs a replacement pitcher would allow in his innings (125 percent of the league's ERA) minus the earned runs he allowed, plus a quarter run for each save.

Career value (70 percent) and the average of his five best seasons (30 percent), each measured against the 99th percentile at his position (capped at twice it), then honours add 0.01 for each All-Star selection, 0.03 for each MVP, 0.03 for each Cy Young and 0.05 for the Hall of Fame, capped at 0.15. They are kept small because the All-Star game began in 1933 and the Cy Young in 1956, and the stats are what every era has. That score is ranked within the position again.

A pool rates its own players from that order: the best at a position is 99, and the rating falls by 8 times the natural log of one plus his rank divided by how many a lineup starts (1 at each infield spot and catcher, 3 outfielders, 1 DH, 3 starters, 2 relievers), never below 40.

The Lahman database is published after each season ends, so the most recent pool is everyone who played in 2024 or 2025, rated on those two seasons with 2025 counted double. Hitters need 150 plate appearances across the two, starters 60 innings and relievers 25. Form is 85 percent of the score and the career score 15 percent.

A team's strength is its players' ratings weighted by slot:

A 162-game season: 27 six-game series on a round robin schedule. Both scores are drawn around 4.5 runs; each point of strength difference moves the stronger team's expected runs up 0.06 and the other's down 0.06, home field moves them 0.1 each way, and each score varies by a standard deviation of 2.8 runs. A tie goes to extra innings, worth a run to the winner, who is more likely to be the stronger team. The top four play best-of-seven semifinals and a final (the top two in a league of two or three).

The box scores are simulated, not real: hits and home runs are drawn from each hitter's rating, the team's runs are shared out, the three starters take turns, and a reliever can pick up a save in a close win. The MVP is the best simulated season, scaled up by how often his team won.

Statistics come from the SABR Lahman Baseball Database, copyright SABR, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0. The ratings and stat lines on these pages are built from it and are shared under the same license. Player ids that link Lahman to MLB's own come from the Chadwick Baseball Bureau register (Open Data Commons Attribution 1.0), and the photos are MLB's headshots; where there is none, the card shows a plain silhouette.