The Global All-Time All-Stars are a collection of 50 teams, of 25 players each, designed in the traditional SIBB manner. Nearly every professional baseball team is represented, from 1876 to 2012, including Japanese teams, Negro Leagues, and now long-defunct 19th century teams ~ any players for whom statistics could be found.

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Download the entire package of teams and era charts.

Why 50 teams?

Elegance and competitive balance. Specifically, this allowed the relocated franchises of the 1950s to have distinct teams, e.g. the Brooklyn Dodgers are one team, and the Los Angeles Dodgers are another. By breaking up the original 16 teams into two squads, you also allow the expansion teams to compete against them on a reasonable footing ~ all teams draw their players from about 50 years worth of seasons.

Did you normalize?

Absolutely, using routines I've been refining specially for SIBB play for almost 20 years. That said, in the thousands of hours I've spent doing this, I've come to believe that normalizing baseball stats is composed in equal parts of both hard, quantifiable stats, and artistic decisions. These teams are normalized for era of play: you'll see Deadball-era sluggers like Cravath hit 'em out like A-Rod. But I did not normalize for ballparks ~ after a lot of research on this, I'm not convinced that doing so is defensible statistically. And besides, the goal here is to field 50 competitive teams. If a team's batters benefitted from a short porch, then their pitchers suffered from it, and that should more or less balance out. (I'm also convinced that ballplayers adjust their game to their environment more than we give them credit for, but that's another story.)

What does this cost? Will printed charts be available?

You can download the 50 teams for free. As for printing charts: maybe. When you download, I'm going to ask you whether or not you'd be interested in purchasing printed charts. It isn't cheap to print, so I will do so only if we have sufficient interest.

Will it be available for the SIBB computer game?

I will be delighted to give these to Richard Dombrovski so that they can be included in his excellent SIBB computer game. If anyone wants to volunteer some time to help re-format my excel charts to fit Richard's needs, please email me.

Why team charts instead of player cards?

A very significant part of the attraction of this game for me is the colorful team charts. To me, this is art. Anyone who wants to convert these into individual player cards can email me and I'll be happy to provide assistance. (PS: does anyone ever make colorful player cards? I'd like those a lot more!)

Other tidbits:

1. All player ratings are based on the stats from the player's entire career.
2. Batter splits are based on actual data wherever possible (thank you Retrosheet!), which these days goes back to the late 1910s. I used the generalized vs RHS/LHS data for the periods when only that is available (reasoning that complete games were so frequent, this data is fairly accurate.)
3. I view being a starting pitcher and being a relief pitcher as two separate positions, much like 2B and SS. Where enough splits data exists for both roles, pitchers got two charts; old-timers, Nippon & Negro Leaguers use a standardized approach (a little worse as starter, a bit better when relieving). Similarly, position players who pitched a fair bit are given a pitcher's chart (e.g., George Sisler, Ben Chapman, etc.)
4. Fielding ratings may be a muted vs. other SIBB games you've seen. I think a +10 is extraordinary (it certainly has amazing impact on opponent batting averages), and as such, should be rare. Like the season charts, I'll never rate a player lower than -5 (and that is quite rare too).
5. There are many almost-made-it players. In some cases, they may be "better" than players I selected. Inclusion required a minimum of 5 years playing professional baseball. From there, players who figured prominently in the all-time lists for their teams (most wins, most hits, etc.) tended to get the nod as the most representative and recognizable players for their franchise. (And I almost never included modern short relievers who were not closers.)
6. Yes, I'll probably update them from time to time, especially to get new, exciting players who achieve 5 years service time into the mix.
7. Nippon Baseball players have a competitive adjustment applied, based on my own research of players who played in both NPB and MLB and how NPB stats translate to MLB effectiveness. (I'm proud to say that Darvish pitched almost exactly as I'd expected him to last year.)
8. Nippon Baseball players who also played in MLB (Ichiro, Matsuzaka, Darvish, Uehara, to name a few), have their charts based on their total, combined, normalized stats.
9. Players are assigned to the team that they played the most for. In a few cases, I adjusted this and players were assigned to their second franchise (for example, I put Keith Hernandez on the Mets as the Cards II team had a glut of firstbasemen, and Dennis Martinez on the Expos as the Orioles were well-stocked with pitchers; and Herb Pennock is on the Red Sox I because the Yankees I stole their best LHS, some guy named Ruth.)

I hope you'll find this a fun addition, and increase your enjoyment of SIBB baseball. Please feel free to email me, Dave LeLacheur with any questions, comments, or arguments for players who should have been on your favorite team. I've been remaking SI baseball charts ever since discovering a 1-2-3 spreadsheet in 1994, and welcome the debate.

© 2013, Dave LeLacheur. All rights reserved.