Real Stats (no translation) are exactly that - the player's actual, untouched statistics.
The equivalent average given here is only adjusted for the league offensive and the home park -
no difficulty adjustments at all. An average player in any league has an EqA of .260, by
definition, and that is how they will appear here. Likewise with pitchers - while the stat
line shows his actual innings and runs allowed (it says ER, but it is really R), the various
forms of ERA are adjusted to be 4.50 for an average pitcher. If I haven't screwed up
somewhere, these should match exactly to the "adjusted for season" values on a major league
DT card. If you are going to a game, major league or minor league, and you want to know what
kind of performance to expect from him, these are the numbers to look at.
Regular Translation: This applies adjustments for league difficulty to the player statistics,
resulting in a changed line. Everybody, from every park, is translated to the same underlying
standard. Hitters go to a league that hits .270/.330/.420 with a .260 eqa, pitchers go to a league
that allows 9 hits, 1 home run, 3 walks, and 6 strikeouts per nine innings with a 4.50 ERA. For
majors, these should be a close - but not necessarily exact - match for the "adjusted for all-time"
numbers (the translation process can cause slight differences from the exact rating, typically no
more than two points of EqA, unless PA are really low.) Ideally, this is how the player would
perform if he were called up to the majors right now - allowing for the difference between the
real majors and the standard league. In practice, they fall short. Most of that is because the
player most likely to be promoted is the one who is playing farthest over his head, a form of
selection bias. Players in AA or lower are even more likely to fall short, because the translation
routine is calibrated for one-level jumps, and there does appear to be an additional drop in
performance for players whotry to jump two (or more) levels at once.
Peak Translation: Applies a typical aging pattern to the regular translation, to try and assess how
good the player will be at his peak. Peak generally means somewhere around age 27; however, since
the components of offense don't age at the same rates (speed decays earlier than power, for instance),
and since players don't have the same mix of those components, the actual peak age has some variability,
as early as 25 for pure speedsters and as late as 30 for sluggers. The adjustments for pitchers are
considerably more sketchy; the very idea of a typical aging curve relies on predictable, steady changes
in performance, while pitchers tendencies are dominated by essentially unpredictable point impacts,
most commonly either injuries or developing a new pitch. All in all, though, the peak translation is an
important tool for me to assess prospect status.