Is the question "Am I a sandbagger" or "would I be considered a sandbagger"?
There's a slight difference.
The first one is asking "what is the reality?"
The second one is asking "how will other people perceive me?"
How other people perceive you doesn't have much impact on the reality.
If you are intentionally playing worse than you could, you're a sandbagger.
What awards you get (or don't get) are irrelevant.
But is it possible people might see you as a sandbagger, despite an honest effort
to play at 'full speed'? From my experience, the answer to that is almost always yes.
Almost anyone can get falsely accused of sandbagging, except 9's / 7's.
99% of the time this is just the loser making a lame excuse,
or someone who doesn't get how pool works, crying about things they don't understand.
Very rarely is the person accused of sandbagging, actually missing on purpose
and trying to rack up innings. I know many of you consider it naive to believe that.
For the record, it's possible to win and to sandbag. APA rankings are heavily based
on the number of innings. In fact that might be the ONLY important thing.
I believe a league operator told me once:
"it's possible for a 7 to get beat by a 6 a hundred times and never go down".
So yes, you can get top gun and still sandbag, but taking far more innings to win
the matches than you should have.