Perhaps this is already known, but I couldn't find anything searching Forum posts. I've been curious about what players are available if theme leagues are set up with "random AAA."
I assumed that either all players in the WIS database would be available or that all the players in the four AAA levels (below, average, above and way above) would be possible.
But I didn't find either when I looked. I set up a theme league and set the AAA level to random and the selection to manual (pick your own).
Then I did some searching. What I found was that there are definite salary boundaries for Random AAA.
For position players: 1,575,000 to 4,425,000
For starting pitchers: 700,000 to 5,250,000
For relief pitchers: 475,000 to 4,250,000
For position players the salary range overlaps both Average and Above Average AAA categories and the lowest 1,375,000 of the WAA. For starting pitchers random overlaps both Average and Above Average plus the top 250K of the Below Aveage and the lowest 1.8 million of the WAA. For Relief pitchers the overlap with Ave and Above Ave holds with the top 225K of the Below Ave and the lowest 1.475 million of the WAA also included.
I didn't check to see if the actual players were the same in these overlaping salary ranges, but most of them certainly would.
With the breadth of the salary ranges I assumed that the player pool for Random would be much larger than the others. Based on the number of catchers at the various AAA levels this seems to be true. There are 1,091 BA catchers, 1,852 Average, 1,089 AA, and 455 WAA. At the random level there are 3,135. So there are many more players available with Random than in any of the other categories. Maybe that's what makes it "random" in WIS speak.
So if you're setting up (or joining) a theme with random AAA nobody will get a 23 Ruth or a 200K scrub. In general what you will get will be worse than WAA, better than BA, a little better than Average and a wash with AA. Stamina A for position players will usually mean poor stats. Except as scrubs the great majority of the position players would be useless in high cap leagues, but you could get lucky a draw the 2008 Dodger Manny. There are some very good relief pitchers in the pool, but as with Manny, the pool is huge so you're going to have to be really lucky to get one.