As an addendum to an earlier post, I understand that some folks wouldn’t be terribly keen on changing pitcher grades.
This is particularly true for those who think that pitchers can “pitch to the score” (despite evidence to the contrary) and therefore the pitcher win statistic is somehow meaningful.
Those folks believe a 20-10, 4.50 ERA pitcher who throws for a team that scores 5 runs per game deserves an A while a 15-10, 2.50 pitcher who throws for a team that scores 2 runs per game doesn’t.
Obviously you can figure out where I stand on that.
But I digress.
At the simplest, I’d recommend making the following changes to strikeout ratings for the 1901 APBA cards when bringing them over to the newest board version:
- National League
- Chesbro – add (Y)
- Dinneen – add (Y)
- T. Hughes – replace (Y) with (X)
- Leever – add (Y)
- Pittinger – add (Y)
- Tannehill – add (Y)
- Townsend – add (Y)
- Waddell – replace (Y) with (X)
- Willis – add (Y)
- American League
- Garvin – add (Y)
- Patten – add (Y)
- Young – add (Y)
This is to account for the fact that when the 1901 cards were issued, A pitchers earned about 1 strikeout per game because of PRN 9 rolls with the Bases Empty.
That’s no longer the case with the new boards and we need to find those strikeouts somewhere.
An A is roughly equivalent to a (Y) and an A(Y) is roughly equivalent to an (X).
Among pitchers who saw significant playing time, the cards as issued had 2 A(Y), 6 A without a (Y), and 4 non-A (Y) pitchers in the NL. That boiled down to needing to find a place to assign 2 (X) and 10 (Y) ratings.
Keeping their (Y) were W. Donovan, Hahn, Mathewson and White.
You may notice one additional (Y) in there and that’s Townsend, who had decent strikeout rates but is the #5 starter for the Phillies. He’s not likely to get a whole lot of appearances and throwing him a (Y) seems acceptable here.
Over in the AL, there was 1 A&C and 2 A pitchers with no (Y) ratings. So we basically needed to find place for 3 (Y) ratings.
That was easy enough as we distributed them out to the 3 pitchers with the best strikeout rates – Garvin, Young and Patten.
Sports And Dice 
I may have the opposite issue. I have older APBA boards and am acquiring the newer 1901 card set from 2015. What adjustments if any do you think are necessary for the pitching grades and symbols? Will there be too many strikeouts for A pitchers using the newer 2001 cards with the old boards?
You won’t have issues. The cards are printed in 2015 but just to add stats to them. They have the same PRNs and pitcher grades and ratings as the initial set. There’s nothing “new” about them.
Your bigger issue with the new cards will be that they have typos on the PRNs all over the place. I ordered them last year expecting new stuff, so I have learned all of this the hard (and expensive) way.
This doesn’t cover everything necessarily, but here is a starting list of typos on the reprinted 1901 cards.
(BSN) Cooley – Stat Line shows 6 G. Should be 63.
(BSN) Dinneen – Roll of 65 gives a Play Result Number of 25. The original card set has a PRN of 35, which is correct.
(BSN) Hamilton – Roll of 63 gives a Play Result Number of 3. The original card set has a PRN of 31, which is correct.
(CIN) Bay – Outfield position shows no fielding rating. The original card set has a fielding rating of 1, which is correct.
(NYG) Ganzel – Roll of 14 gives a Play Result Number of 0. The original card set has a PRN of 30, which is correct.
(NYG) Warner – Roll of 65 gives a Play Result Number of 25. The original card set has a PRN of 35, which is correct.
(PIT) Burke – Position shown is Firstbaseman. The original card set has Thirdbaseman, which is correct.
(PIT) Phillippe – Roll of 54 gives a Play Result Number of 2. The original card set has a PRN of 32, which is correct.
Thanks for the help! Hopefully I’ll have a good experience with this set. Never played a season earlier than 1908 before.