Fielding

[David Watts]

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.

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

[Syd Thrift]

Ah OK, I’ll try to. I know that my league started and I ran a bunch of its history when the game still had that issue where there were way too many baserunners getting thrown out on hits but that shouldn’t affect infielders.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

Ah OK, I’ll try to. I know that my league started and I ran a bunch of its history when the game still had that issue where there were way too many baserunners getting thrown out on hits but that shouldn’t affect infielders.

Thanks, Garlon also showed that as good as Ripkin was, the game had guys like Ivan Dejesus performing at a historically bad level as well. So bad, he said, it was impossible to believe a team would play him.