Companion Adjusted-OVR (aOVR)

The Companion Adjusted-OVR (or aOVR) is a proprietary stat intended to better represent the true value of a card. It is an adjustment to a card's OVR, taking desirable (and undesirable) stats into account. The aOVR is more than a simple weighting system; it also uses extra modifiers to provide balance and context to the stat.

How can aOVR help you make decisions?

A card's OVR gives you rough idea of how good they are. Higher is typically better, but not always. Because the OVR is a simple average of the five stats a card has, it can be skewed by a large bump in any stat. And not all stats are created equal. High FLD or STA is typically less useful, while high POW or VEL is great.

The 9 Inning Companion's aOVR adjusts the OVR based on stats the community typically favors: CON/POW/EYE for hitters, LOC/VEL for pitchers. It doesn't completely disregard the undesirable stats; it just values them less. Then, it applies modifiers based on how the card's stats align both on their own and against other cards at their position.

Ideally, your team will be stacked with cards who have aOVRs higher than their standard OVRs. This would mean that you're getting the most bang for your buck out of every card.

Here's an example. Take a look at these two outfielders (Billy Hamilton and Reggie Jackson):

These two outfielders have the same basic OVR of 69 but that doesn't mean they're equal. In fact, I don't think any of us would take Hamilton over Reggie if they were both team cards.

That's because Reggie's stats are heavily skewed to the hitting side, while Hamilton is heavily skewed to SPD (at the expense of the hitting stats). Since the game doesn't favor SPD or FLD, Hamilton will be much less effective. This will be further amplified at Diamond grade, where Reggie's GI could put as much as +25 into POW while Hamilton would be lucky to get +13 into that same stat.

How does aOVR help here?

Since aOVR weights each card's base stats according to how valuable they are in the game, it can show us a clear distinction between these cards. Hamilton's aOVR is 65.8, a noticeable -3.4 OVR difference from the OVR on the card face. Meanwhile, Reggie is sitting pretty with a 74.5 aOVR, a whopping 4.9 OVR difference.

While Reggie likely won't be stealing any bases and may be a slight liability in the field, the game doesn't seem to be bothered too much by that. Base stealing is frustratingly difficult, and defensive cards simply aren't as impactful.

But slugging? Slugging is huge in the higher levels of play, especially in battle modes like Ranked and Club. And Reggie will certainly be knocking a lot more homers than Hamilton!

Future Updates

While there may be slight tweaks to the aOVR formula in the future, it's currently stable and there are no pressing updates in the pipeline. My goal is for this stat to be fixed for all cards such that it is a reliable metric for you to base decisions off of. Future tweaks will likely affect only a small number of cards.