[Syd Thrift]

Fielding works a little bit differently than everything else. For one, if you want to turn off fielding/baserunning ratings, there's a third box you'd want to check (personally I play with current/potential ratings off but I leave those on so YMMV). Otherwise, those are kiiiind of "potential" ratings but not in the sense that the game's ginned up actual potential ratings a player strives to reach.

Behind the scenes there's an internal "experience" rating that maxes out at 200. What these ratings are, are the players' current rating based on their current toolset - so for infielders it's some combination of arm, range, hands, and turning DPs (for 1B height is also a factor) with a modifier based on that experience at the position. The "potential" number is what their ratings would be if they had 200 experience at the given position. In your guys' case it looks like he's never played 2B before so he'd be a bit of a disaster but if you gave him a couple months in the minor leagues or set him at 2B and had him play throughout spring training he'd probably be pretty OK there.

You can usually train a player to get a rating at a position if they're good enough and if their handedness allows it (left-handed throwers can never play catcher, 2nd, 3rd, or short, no matter how high their ratings might be) through a single spring training, which is also a good time to retrain an older player to, for instance, play first base if their fielding at another position has gone way down. It takes only around a year or two to get position XP all the way up to 200 so utility players are absolutely a thing. That said, the actual fielding ratings very, very rarely increase, especially as a player gets older than around 23 or so, so if a guy is rated as a 55 shortstop (in your case), that's as good as he'll ever be at that position, even with high TCR.