What These Ratings Measure

The ratings published on JeffSelfSports are designed to answer a simple question:

How strong is a team or player relative to the rest of the field?

Rather than relying solely on win–loss record, these rankings evaluate how teams and players perform and who they perform against. A narrow loss to a strong opponent may be more informative than a blowout win over a weak one.

The goal is not to predict betting outcomes or guarantee future results, but to provide a consistent, data-driven snapshot of performance and underlying strength.

What Goes Into the Ratings

Across sports, the ratings are built using the same core principles:

  • Performance margin matters, but extreme blowouts are intentionally dampened
  • Context matters — stronger opponents carry more weight
  • Results accumulate over time, not just wins and losses
  • Sport-specific behavior is accounted for

Different sports require different approaches. Game-driven sports such as football, basketball, and hockey are evaluated on a game-by-game basis, while baseball relies more heavily on season-long production metrics.

How to Read the Rankings Table

Each rankings table includes context-specific columns, but commonly features:

  • Power / Rating – A summary measure of overall strength or performance
  • SoS (Strength of Schedule) – The average strength of opponents faced
  • W / L / T / OT – Traditional results, included for reference

Higher rating values indicate stronger performance relative to the rest of the league.

Rankings are most meaningful when compared within the same sport and season, not across different sports or eras.

Baseball Rankings (How They’re Different)

Baseball is handled differently from other sports.

Individual baseball games are highly variable. A strong team can lose a low-scoring game due to sequencing, bullpen usage, or a single play. Because of this, baseball rankings rely less on game-by-game outcomes and more on what teams and players consistently produce over time.

MLB Team Rankings

Team rankings are based primarily on runs scored and runs allowed, blended with actual win–loss results. This approach provides a more stable measure of team quality than standings alone and reduces noise from close-game variance.

MLB Player Rankings

Player leaderboards focus on production per opportunity:

  • Hitters are ranked using a composite offensive metric that rewards power, on-base ability, and baserunning efficiency.
  • Pitchers are evaluated based on offensive production allowed, where lower values indicate stronger performance.

Qualification thresholds are applied to filtered and final reports to ensure fair comparisons across different workloads.

For full technical details, formulas, and definitions, see the Ratings Methodology.

Important Notes

  • These ratings are descriptive, not predictive guarantees
  • They do not account for injuries, lineup changes, or situational factors
  • Updates reflect games and statistics included in the dataset at the time of calculation

For a deeper technical explanation of how the ratings are calculated, see the full methodology page.