Playing guys out of position

[Another Mike D]

I was trying to search but not having much luck...I'm sure it's out there, but what can I say.

In 6.51 and earlier, you could play a guy out of position in the majors and there was a good chance he'd make a few errors and then eventually learn that position. Has anyone done any studies or looked at this in depth? It doesn't happen very often in the bigs (a guy suddenly playing a position he's never played before, except maybe some OF) during the season, and the game never penalized people enough.

My online league just converted and I am re-examining that rule. In 6.51, no GM was allowed to play a major leaguer out of position during the season. In 2007, is it still easy? Are there still small ramifications? Thanks!

[ruffdermis]

The Royals organization, in thier infinate wisdom, moved Mark Teahen from 3b, the position he had played his entire career, to... RF. So yeah, its happened in real life, In my limited experiance in game, its usually taken the better part of a year to get a players defense in a new position to "normal" levels. Its pretty easy to change positions back and forth, both for one game and permanantly, and there are still penalties.

[Neags23]

Guess your search didn't turn up this thread:

Defensive Development

[Another Mike D]

Originally Posted by Neags23

Guess your search didn't turn up this thread:

Defensive Development

Thanks! I was doing out of position, defensive penalties, and more. But I didn't put in defensive developments. It's interesting, it doesn't seem to penalize if the supporting ratings are high enough. It's extremely rare in the majors that you see guys just start playing new positions during the season, with the exception of OF and sometimes C-->1B.

I don't know where I stand on allowing players to play on the ML roster out of position.

[mrbill]

I think the question is, is it a loophole in the game to play guys out of position? That thread says a lot, but doesn't directly answer that question anywhere down the line. So, does someone's actually performance (say, a SS moving to 3B in season) look out of line with what their current ability might dictate? And, does that same someone learn the position through time roughly what you might expect of someone in real life (not that there's many examples and the variation is pretty large)?

I'm in that same league, and I thought 2007's model was better at gradually working someone from no rating to full potential rating (based on their IF/OF ratings), based on the development process. I'd like to have less rules about this kind of thing as long as the game treats it fairly.

[RonCo]

The v2007 game can be very harsh on guys who are learning a position in the majors.

[mrbill]

Ah ha, RonCo. You're who I suggested Mike D go talk to about whether we should keep the "can't play out of position in the majors" rule. I take it you feel the fielding model for out of position major leaguers is better now than in 6.5? Enough so you would or wouldn't want a rule like this in place?

[RonCo]

My online league got rid of position restriction rules due to lots of testing we did on v2007.

Here's an example of a 1B trying to learn 3B in the regular season. 46 games at the postion, 18 errors (http://www.thefobl.com/news/html/pla...ayer_2654.html)

Here's an example of a poor SS trying to learn 1B. 18 games, 3 errors (http://www.thefobl.com/news/html/pla...ayer_2430.html)

Here's an example of a utility IF I've been trying to make into a jack of all trades in the minors. Note his fielding performances... (http://www.thefobl.com/news/html/pla...ayer_3491.html)

Here's a thread on our site that discusses some earlier testing: http://www.thefobl.com/forums/showth...sition+defense

If anything, my current opinion is that v2007 may actually have gone a little _too_ far to the other side and made it too difficult to convert--especially between the IF and OF, but my mind isn't made up on that yet.

Bottom line, I see no reason to restrict position learning at this time.

[mrbill]

Thanks, your dedication to getting to the bottom of questions like this is a real benefit to the OOTP community.

[Another Mike D]

Muchos gracias! This is exactly what I was looking for. I will have to police it a little to make sure guys aren't using it to tank, but maybe we'll rid ourselves of that rule too.

Funny, mrbill equated learning the positions to an RPG game; that's exactly what it's starting to seem like.

[jools]

I would agree with Ronco. In 2006 I positioned a CF on LF, and in just two weeks he messed up so badly, our fielding percentage never recovered that season.

I'll never do that again in the Majors. In the Minors it's okay, although 2007 seems a lot less generous than 6.5.

[StyxNCa]

I find it odd that moving a CF to another OF position would result in disaster. Actually, moving any OF to another OF position shouldn't make that much of a drop off. CF's are usually the ones with the best range, so I don't understand how moving to RF or LF should cause them to fall off the face of the earth. They have the other talents required to play the other positions...after all, if they have the skills needed to have a rating for CF, so they have better ratings than necessary for the other 2 OF positions.

I wish someone could come up with something that shows IRL any OF's who moved from one place to another became disasterous.

Most players have played many positions in their life, be it in high school, college or the minors.

Just because they haven't played there in the majors doesn't mean they don't have the skills needed to play other positions. Many times where they play is decided by what the team needs, especially in the OF. There are very few players that played just ONE outfield position their entire career.

I understand that learning infield positions is more difficult, but not impossible.

My opinion is the game makes it much harder to learn a position than it should be.

[ctorg]

I think that players with zero experience at a position play too badly at the position in 2007. I also think that if you take a player who is young and raw enough and has good agility and speed, you can get him to learn just about any position. Some guys may have optimum positions where their skills are best used, but guys change positions pretty commonly in the minors. Many guys are moved away from the catcher position, for instance, like Carlos Delgado or Craig Biggio (okay, so his came at the major league level) if they can play elsewhere better or can contribute more or whatever other reasons.

For some reason I can't seem to explain this the way I'm thinking of it.

Take a very athletic guy who's at rookie level minor league. He can play just about any position, but he doesn't have much skill at any position. He ends up going to SS because that's what the team needs. Over time, he gets better at the position but he becomes less able to develop at other positions. By the time he's at the big league level, it becomes a much bigger effort for him to learn, say, LF, than it would have been at the rookie level.

It seems to me that that is how things generally go and OOTP should reflect it.

Or maybe that's just how things seem to go.

[RchW]

Originally Posted by RonCo

The v2007 game can be very harsh on guys who are learning a position in the majors.

So true. I had a 2B learn SS in the majors and he had 36 errors in the first 90+ games. By the end of the season he was much improved, around 45 errors total. I almost traded him.

[Elendil]

The first year Biggio moved from CF to LF he started making a massive number of errors. Oddly, his transitions from C to 2B and from 2B to CF probably went more smoothly...

[StyxNCa]

Originally Posted by Elendil

The first year Biggio moved from CF to LF he started making a massive number of errors. Oddly, his transitions from C to 2B and from 2B to CF probably went more smoothly...

This may be true, but he didn't come up as an outfielder. Guys who play OF full time don't come into baseball as a LF, or CF or RF. They are just plain OF and can switch between the positions fairly easily even if they come into the majors playing one primary OF position at first.

Working on the database I've been working on, I have been dealing a lot with fielding stats, of course, and I haven't run across anyone who played any substantial time in the majors who played only 1 position out there. I haven't really run across many part timers who were just a one position OF either.

[Zeyes]

Originally Posted by StyxNCa

Most players have played many positions in their life, be it in high school, college or the minors.

That's the rub with OOTP, perhaps more so than the ratings system itself...players are created with zero experience at most of their positions, which is probably not quite realistic. Still, the alternative would be that most position players in the universe would have half a dozen or more position ratings (many of them pretty bad, of course), which may not make for that great a user experience.

[StyxNCa]

Originally Posted by Zeyes

That's the rub with OOTP, perhaps more so than the ratings system itself...players are created with zero experience at most of their positions, which is probably not quite realistic. Still, the alternative would be that most position players in the universe would have half a dozen or more position ratings (many of them pretty bad, of course), which may not make for that great a user experience.

I'm just here to offer info. I am not here to offer solutions. I'm not that smart.

[jools]

Originally Posted by StyxNCa

I find it odd that moving a CF to another OF position would result in disaster. Actually, moving any OF to another OF position shouldn't make that much of a drop off. CF's are usually the ones with the best range, so I don't understand how moving to RF or LF should cause them to fall off the face of the earth. They have the other talents required to play the other positions...after all, if they have the skills needed to have a rating for CF, so they have better ratings than necessary for the other 2 OF positions.

That's exactly why I thought I'd get away with it.

The player in question was CF Moran Alcarin: http://rasreth.com/ootp/news/html/pl...ayer_2331.html

In 2013 (Middle Earth Time) he played 17 games at LF while having a 0 LF rating, and made 5 errors, posting a .844 percentage. He also played 19 games at CF (67 rating) and made no error at all.

It's the only example I have, but combined with Ronco's experiences, that's enough for me to never try it again.

[RonCo]

That's not great, but not total disaster, either. My guess is that if you leave him play there for awhile longer he would pick up the position moderately well. Conversions from CF -> RF/LF tend to eventually work to a greater degree.