[injury log]

First, welcome to the game, Mark- always good to see others in the UK are discovering OOTP. I believe you are referring to 'ratings', and not to 'stats'. There is no straightforward answer to your original question (what are good ratings). This is, in part, what makes baseball so interesting- it's a complex game. A few comments;

-Potential ratings indicate how good a player might eventually become, but have no influence on how well a player will perform now. Potential ratings can change a lot over time, and are crucial to consider when evaluating young players you might acquire in trade, or players you might acquire in draft, or when projecting what your team might look like in the future. Because young players are cheap (they can be paid the Major League minimum salary for their first three years), many teams, particularly those with small budgets, stock up on young talent, in the hope that they will soon have a core of low-salary stars;

-There is no simple answer to 'what is a good rating', since it all depends on the quality of players in your league. For example, in a 30-team league, there may be several players with Power over 15 on a 1-20 scale, while in an 8-team league, it might be very unusual to have Power that high. If you want to get an impression for what ratings would be elite, above avg, etc, in your league, I'd suggest going to the Transactions screen from your league menu, and choosing 'Show All Players'. You can then, for example, display Pitching Ratings, and show only SPs (starting pitchers). From here, you can rank (by clicking on the column header) all pitchers by Control, Movement or Stuff to see the ratings of the best (and worst) players in your league;

-Note as well that ratings are colour-coded- blue indicates an elite rating, while red indicates a miserable one, with a spectrum of colours in between;

-For pitchers, the most important ratings are Control, Movement and Stuff. You won't go too wrong by thinking of each as having equal importance, though it is a little more complicated in the game. For example, pitchers with well below average Control usually are not at all successful, but an elite Control rating is not nearly as useful as an elite Stuff rating. Of course, the quality of your team defense will also influence the number of runs your team allows;

-For hitters, the most important ratings are likely Contact, Power and Eye. Avoid K is the least important, since it is already incorporated into the Contact rating, and I'd recommend ignoring it altogether. Speed and Steal ratings may also be important, depending on what style of baseball you want your team to play;

-Defensively, the most difficult positions to play are C, SS, CF and 2B. Because fewer players are capable of playing these positions, the offensive demands at these are much lower than at, say, 1B or LF, where almost anyone can hold their own. So, a typical 1B is an offensive powerhouse, with very good Power and good Contact and/or Eye, while a good SS might have low Power, but might have very good defensive ratings, and good Contact and (often, because SSs are usually athletic) Speed. If you can find a SS who hits like a 1B (someone like Alex Rodriguez back when he was a SS) then you've got an extremely valuable player. There are no hard-and-fast rules, however, and real-life teams have been successful with all sorts of players in different roles. The flexibility of OOTP allows one to experiment with any number of combinations of players;

-I normally consider defense to be very important at the difficult positions: SS, 2B and CF in particular- and much less important at 1B, 3B, LF and RF. Others may disagree with me!

Hope you'll enjoy the game!