1911 Card Set - First Glance

I am preparing to do a 1911 BBW replay, so I recently purchased the 1911 card set and BBW disk. I made the mistake of ordering them right before Christmas - no holiday shipping horror stories here though - APBA processed my order immediately and it was delivered in about a week from Georgia to the Chicago area. The timing was probably a little shortsighted on my part, but it all worked out.

1911 is not advertised as a revised set, but it does state that all 535 players are carded. The cards do include all the Master Game ratings/symbols, plus I am positive this set had been run through the new algorithm's for pitcher’s grades, etc. Example: Buck O'Brien of the Red Sox made five starts, 47.2 innings, with an ERA of 0.38, and got a grade of A&B(XW) … which is definitely not an old school pitching grade. 

Defensive grades definitely took a hit:

 

Three C8's, 23 C7's

 

One 1B5 (Ed Konetchy), five 1B4's, 22 1B3's

 

One 2B9 (Eddie Collins), three 2B8's, ten 2B7's

 

Two 3B5's (Larry Gardner, Terry Turner), twelve 3B4's

 

Zero SS9's, seven SS8's

 

One OF3 (Chief Wilson w/39 Arm), 47 OF2's

 

The 1901 set gave all of the players two error numbers on their cards, and even though I added a third error number to half (by plate appearances) of the players I was still ended well below the actual number of errors. The 1901 set did have a normalized distribution of fielding ratings that we are all used to seeing, but 1911 is much tougher when it comes to assigning defensive ratings. For one thing, there are zero teams with a fielding one at both second base and shortstop, which may end up being more of a "runs scored" issue as opposed to a "total number of errors" issue. It may be difficult for some teams to ever be able to add up to a consistent fielding two team defense.

 

I am still contemplating adding a second error number to some of the 1911 cards. I am sure I will get the usual ~1.5 errors per game as I have with my other non-1901 replays, but that is still ~2.0 errors per game below what the actual number was.

 

In the 1949-R and 1957-3R set the fielder's arms averaged out to just above 30 and they do so as well in 1911 (30.6). Fourteen players have an arm rating of 26 or below, while eleven players are at 36 and above. The only one with an arm above 36 is Owen Wilson (Pittsburgh) with 39. Wilson is also the only OF3 in the set … APBA must have a historical liking for Pittsburgh right fielders.

 

There are a total of 67 players rated at catcher. Nineteen of them have a positive arm rating (+1 to +3 only). Six are at +0, while the remaining 42 catchers all having a negative arm rating, with the three catchers at -4 being the worst. So basically, each team, more or less, has a single quality "starting catcher" and then a bunch of backups, and there are certainly a bunch of backup catchers in this set.

 

The average of all the player's speed numbers comes out to 10.3, right in between 1 and 20. There are 14 players in the 1911 set with three 31's (H&R3) and there are 10 players with zero 31's (H&R0). I am not sure H&R0's existed before, but maybe I just don’t remember them. The average of all the H&R numbers comes out to 1.45, right in between 1 and 2, again, likely right where it should be.

 

I do like the revised sets. Most of the rough edges are sanded off, especially around the area of pitching grades, and all players are included. I have regraded pitchers and have manually created uncarded players previously, but my experience with other revised sets is that re-grading pitchers is no longer needed and again, all the players are carded.

 

Other notes:

 

Philadelphia (NL) utility player Jimmy Walsh is the only is the player to appear at every position, including pitcher and catcher.

 

Pittsburgh outfielder Jerry D'Arcy is carded as Jerry Dorsey. He is listed as D'Arcy in Baseball-Reference.com … I suspect this is a historical artifact that just never got corrected.

Lewis Oscar "Bull" Smith was carded with Washington for a one-game appearance (No AB), although BBR lists his final major league appearance was in 1906 ... I suspect this is a historical artifact that just never got corrected.

Johnny Priest and Guy Zinn were carded with the New York Giants (NYN) but should have been included with the New York Highlanders (NYA). They are on the right team on the disk. Honestly, if that is the worst mistake APBA ever makes then we are all in pretty good shape.

 

I was able to find and download both a Reach Guide and a Spalding Guide PDF for 1912 that covers the 1911 season. It is always interesting to see what tidbits you can glean while glancing through them plus it is a great way to pick up some of the flavor of the times.

 

Anyway, plenty left to do before I start playing games yet, and I see that Blogger still likes to do weird things with my basic text. More to come ...