Rankings Methodology
Effective Date: August 6, 2026
Document: Rankings Methodology
Operator: Fastpitch Authority, 126 Shipman Ln, Double Springs, Alabama 35553
Contact: support@fastpitchauthority.com
This document describes exactly how Fastpitch Authority rankings are calculated. It is published so that any parent, coach, or college recruiter can check our work rather than take our word for it.
## The rule that comes first
**Rank position is not for sale, in any form.**
Whether a family subscribes is excluded from every input to the calculation. Attending a Prospect Day cannot move a ranking. There is no paid placement, no boost, no consideration of any kind. A girl whose family has never paid us a dollar is ranked identically to one whose family pays for everything.
The only thing that moves a ranking is what happened in a game.
## What the ranking is computed from
Game records kept in Flex Scorebook, pitch by pitch, by the coach in the dugout.
Not self-reported statistics. Not a highlight video. Not an opinion, a scouting grade, or a reputation. If it did not happen in a scored game, it is not in the number.
Verified metrics from Prospect Days — exit velocity, home-to-first, throwing velocity — appear on an athlete's profile with their chain of custody, and are **not** an input to the ranking. Performance ranks against performance. A fast player who does not hit is not ranked as a hitter.
## Cohorts: who is compared with whom
An athlete is never ranked against the whole sport. She is ranked inside a cohort, and the shape of that cohort depends on which competition she plays in.
| Competition | Cohort |
|---|---|
| Travel | age group × division (A / AA / AAA / Major) × geography |
| Park & Rec | age group × Park & Rec × geography |
| School | level (Varsity / JV / Freshman) × class (1A–7A / Private) × geography |
Geography runs at three levels: **state**, **region**, and **national**. Each is computed separately, so a girl holds a state rank, a region rank, and a national rank at once, and they can differ.
School softball runs February to May. A girl who plays school ball and travel ball appears in both cohorts in the same calendar year, on two separate sets of numbers. That is correct and intended — they are different competitions.
Hitting and pitching are separate boards.
## The hitting formula
For each athlete we compute a regressed on-base percentage and a regressed slugging percentage, and add them.
```
regressed OBP = (H + BB + HBP + league_OBP × 25)
÷ (AB + BB + HBP + SF + 25)
regressed SLG = (TB + league_SLG × 25)
÷ (AB + 25)
score = regressed OBP + regressed SLG
```
Total bases are counted normally: a single is 1, a double 2, a triple 3, a home run 4.
## The pitching formula
```
regressed K rate = (K + league_K × 50) ÷ (BF + 50)
regressed OB rate = (H allowed + BB allowed + league_OB × 50) ÷ (BF + 50)
regressed R rate = (runs allowed + league_R × 50) ÷ (BF + 50)
score = regressed K rate − regressed OB rate − regressed R rate
```
Strikeouts help. Baserunners and runs hurt. All three are rates per batter faced, so a pitcher who throws more innings is not rewarded or punished for volume alone.
## What the regression is for, and why it matters
That `+ 25` and `+ 50` in the formulas is the most important thing in this document.
Without it, a girl who goes 2-for-2 in her only game would hit 1.000 and top every board in the country. Every ranking system that does not do this has the same failure, and it is why small-sample leaderboards are not believed.
What we do instead is add a **prior**: before her own record counts, we start her at the league average for her cohort — 25 plate appearances' worth for a hitter, 50 batters faced for a pitcher. Her real performance then pulls her away from that average, and the more she plays, the further it can pull.
The practical effect: a hitter with 6 plate appearances and a .667 average does not appear near 1.000. She appears a little above average, because six trips is not yet evidence. The same girl after 60 plate appearances, still hitting .667, sits near the top — because by then it is.
**The league average used is the average of her own cohort at that scope.** A 14U AAA hitter in Alabama is regressed toward the 14U AAA Alabama average on the state board, and toward the 14U AAA national average on the national board. This is why a girl's state and national ranks are not simply the same list filtered.
## Qualifying
An athlete must reach a minimum before appearing on a board — a floor on plate appearances for hitters and batters faced for pitchers.
**These floors are deliberately low at launch and will rise.** With few games recorded, a high floor would leave every board empty, which helps nobody. As real volume arrives the floors go up toward a full-season standard of roughly 15 plate appearances and 30 batters faced.
The floor is a rule about visibility, not fairness. The regression is what protects the integrity of the ordering; the floor just avoids publishing a board where nobody has played.
The floors in force are stated on the rankings page.
## Ties
Where two athletes score identically, the one with the larger sample ranks higher — more evidence for the same result. Any remaining tie is broken by a stable internal identifier so the order does not shuffle between runs.
## When rankings update
Rankings recompute weekly, on Mondays. Each run replaces the season's board and stores a snapshot, so historical positions are preserved rather than overwritten.
A game scored on Saturday appears in the following Monday's board.
## Who appears
Every qualifying athlete is ranked, whether or not her family subscribes.
For non-subscribers the position exists and is counted in the field, but the name is not shown. Subscribing reveals a name. It does not change a position, and the calculation cannot see whether anyone has paid.
**Athletes under 13 are not shown on public ranking boards at all.** Not with consent, not with a subscription, not on request. Their statistics are recorded and available to their own families. A public leaderboard of children under 13 is not something we are willing to publish, and that exclusion is enforced in our database rather than by policy.
## What this method does not do
Published honestly, because a methodology that only lists its strengths is marketing.
- **No strength-of-schedule adjustment.** A girl who hits .400 against strong pitching and one who hits .400 against weak pitching currently score the same. This is the largest known weakness and the most likely thing to change.
- **No fielding.** Defence is not in the ranking. We capture fielder and trajectory on every ball in play, but we do not yet rank on it, and a ranking of defence built from that alone would be misleading.
- **No park, weather, or umpire adjustment.**
- **It depends on the coach keeping the book.** A team whose coach does not score games has no ranked athletes. That is a limit of any record-based system.
- **Small cohorts are small.** Being first of four is stated as first of four. The field size is published alongside every rank for exactly this reason.
## Corrections
If you believe a number is wrong, tell us. Email **support@fastpitchauthority.com** with the athlete's name, her team, and the game in question.
A scoring error is corrected in the game record, and the ranking follows at the next run. We do not adjust a ranking directly, because a ranking that can be edited by hand is not computed from anything.
## Changes to this methodology
If the formula changes we will update this document and the effective date. Material changes will be described plainly, including what moved and why. We will not change the method quietly.
## Contact
Fastpitch Authority
126 Shipman Ln, Double Springs, Alabama 35553
support@fastpitchauthority.com