In order to determine who was initially eligible for the S.T.A.R., I applied the following criteria to create the initial player pool.  My theory here based on my experience working with the player data is that we needed some “black line” to determine whether a player would be considered or not.  This black line became an objective measure of who to look at.  That being said, some accommodation needed to be made for current active players, some of which are clearly “better” than those who barely crept over the black line.  For the most part, these players would be “over the line” in 1-2 seasons anyway.  A little subjectivity here, but so be it.

As far as the size of the player pool, it seemed to me in analyzing my main source of data at this point (the major league baseball web site statistics database – if you haven’t been there it’s a great way to query up large amounts of data) that we can safely assume that a pool of 2,000 players should be sufficient for this purpose.  One could certainly argue for a slightly higher number, or perhaps more accommodation for catchers in particular, but that is one of many arguments to make.  The initial cut of 2,000 fell out as follows:

1)      1,300 Batters (excluding Negro Leaguers) made up as follows:

A)    929 or more hits, which started at 925 but to keep within 1,300 but was adjusted slightly for active player accommodation.

B)     At least 750 or more hits for active players ending the 2009 season, which equated to the top 150 active players in terms of hits according to the mlb.com database.  The lone exception to this (insert applause here for Red Sox fans) is Dustin Pedroia who by virtue of his 2008 AL MVP award became automatically in the top 1,000.

C)    From the pool in B) above, subjectively adding enough to get to the 1,300 batter limit for the batter pool.

2)      500 Starting Pitchers (excluding Negro Leaguers) made up as follows:

A)    114 or more wins

B)     A handful between 107-113 wins based on merit (a little subjectivity here, forgive me) adding in the likes of J.R. Richard.  With wins as the pool criteria, this seemed warranted looking at the results (unlike with hits for the batters).  Even for this category, career ERA+ was used within this band for objectivity.  In case you were wondering, J.R. Richard didn’t make it into the final 1,000.

C)    Any Cy Young or MVP, since they are automatically in as we will discuss.  Pete Vuckovich is one of a handful who got in here despite only 94 career wins based on his 1982 AL Cy Young Award for the Brew Crew.

D)    At least 79 wins for active Starting Pitchers of which subjectively a few were added to round out the 500.  This amounts to the top 66 active Starters at the end of based on mlb.com being considered with Dan Haren being the cutoff.

3)      96 Relief Pitchers (excluding Negro Leaguers) made up as follows:

A)    125 or more saves

B)     Any Cy Young or MVP, since they are automatically in as we will discuss.  This adds Mark Davis due to his 1989 Cy Young Award despite only 96 career saves.  It also add  Jim Konstanty with only 74 career saves who gets in here on the basis of his 1950 MVP as a reliever with a then NL record of a whopping 22 saves, as noted in “The Baseball Encyclopedia”.   Obviously this was long before the era of the closer that beloved Cub Bruce Sutter ushered in.   

C)    Any reliever name in the “Total Baseball” 400 greatest list, which are also automatically in as we will discuss.  Once again a lone Red Sox player is the beneficiary here as Dick Radatz gets in despite “only” 122 saves in the pre closer era.

4)      104 Negro Leaguers made up as follows:

A)    103 Players from the long awaited Strat-O-Matic Negro League Roster Set.  Kudos here to Scott Simkus, credited as the key researcher of Negro League statistics by Strat-O-Matic.

B)     Hall of Famer Monte Irvin, left out of the Negro League set due to his significant major league career (he was included in the Strat-O-Matic Hall of Fame Roster Set).  As I previously mentioned, Irvin’s combined career in the Negro Leagues and Major Leagues (731 hits mostly as a New York Giant, but 92 as a Chicago Cub!) always presented a fairness issue for me in the early days of this project, as how do you exclude career major leaguers between 732-928 hits.  OK, so this is obviously not a big deal, but remember I am an anal accountant and the grey areas bug me.

So that’s how I landed on the 2,000 who would compete for a spot in the S.T.A.R.  Not the most scientific of approaches, but then it is after all only a fantasy right?  Keep in mind that only half of these guys will actually make it onto a S.T.A.R. roster, and even fewer of them will get a cup of coffee during the season other than the 25 man rosters and injury replacements.  When you consider the less than 700 or so that will make any significant contribution to the Dream Season despite the 17,000+ players in major league history (or roughly the 10,000+ who got more than a cup of coffee in the show), I think you can agree this is pretty rarified air that these guys live in.