Quote:
Originally Posted by Neags23
Well, I think what ctorg may have been saying is that given an athletically and defensively gifted enough 19 y/o, which is (I would think) a majority of players getting drafted, they should be able to learn new positions over the course of their minor league careers. Obviously the Prince Fielder's and Ryan Howard's of the world wouldn't become decent enough center fielder's not to embarass themselves, even when they were 19.
But there is a pretty high number of players in low minors that switch positions all the time. It's that old saying, "If you can hit a baseball well enough, a team will find you a place to play." That doesn't necessarily seem to ring true in OOTP '07.
I've played my aforementioned 1B at LF for over 1000 innings at the rookie and short season A levels and haven't seen any kind of OF ratings bump. Also no experience bump. He's almost serviceable out there (about 12 errors, but a very low RF). After another 1000 innings or so, if I see no improvement, I may just have to 'improve' him myself.
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Yes, this is more along the lines of what I meant. Take someone like Jose Reyes. Very good shortstop. Given his speed, I bet if the Mets had groomed him as a CF, he would have made a good CF. But in OOTP, most guys with really high raw ratings (i.e. arm, range, etc.) in the IF have very low raw ratings for OF. I'm not talking about the Prince Fielders or Ryan Howards, but the guys who are good fielders and should be able to translate that to various other positions in the early parts of their career. They still may have positions for which they are best suited (IF or OF), but for the most part, I think they should get pretty good raw skills at both.
I do acknowledge that there are guys who are great infielders who probably could not have been great outfielders. Robin Ventura comes to mind. IF requires reaction speed, whereas OF needs running speed more. Still, I think that
most good fielders will see their skills translate to either infield or outfield if they are trained from an early enough age. I suspect that the ability to make the switch diminishes over time.