Quote:
Originally Posted by Syd Thrift
My experience is that in order for a player to be a worthy shortstop in a fictional league they should probably have a 60 or higher overall at the position. You can get away with a 50 there if they’ve got good offense or if you’re just plugging a hole but even a 45, which is supposedly average, is not going to cut it. Does that mean they’re too high? Perhaps that’s the issue; I only know what I have in front of me. Also I think shortstop and center field are outlier positions in that regard because there’s such a big premium defensively - even 8th the fictionalized 70s you can get away with 40 rated 2nd and 3rd basemen if their tools are in the right places (a third baseman has to have a good arm and at least not terrible hands; a second baseman can conceivably lack range if they also have good hands and can turn double plays). Also I think the 20-80 scale encompasses all players who are rated to play somewhere and one deal with fictional leagues is that often you have third basemen for instance who are 20/80 to play shortstop but, if they were a historical player, would never get an inning there IRL.
But I do think that compared to historical leagues, you do get 80/80 guys at short and center, which very rarely happens in historical leagues, and that’s not even a knock on all the work Garlon et al have done; as noted, I think it’s a simple issue with historical fielding stats, period.
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Was hoping you would take a look at your fictional league and see what the top Zone ratings have been through the years. Thinking I might give fictional a try at some point. If anyone else with a long running league wants to post their results too, it would be appreciated. Like I said, if you look in the Historical Forums section of OOTP21 I bumped the thread in which Garlon detailed what he was seeing in the historical game back then. SS's were having historically best seasons on a yearly basis, for example Ripken had a 74 ZR in his screenshot. Thanks