Who Should Play Shortstop?

[knockahoma]

Another discussion got me to thinking. Having spent a lot of years in infield practice, the whole range factor thing interests me.

I see some great effort from saber-dudes in "adjusting" situations for various shortstops. The shortstop Smith has a pitching staff which coaxes more grounders than Jones', etc.

I'm fairly new at this saber stuff. I brought this up once, but it would be interesting to measure only how many grounders a player get to. You'd have to adjust for that, of course, but you'd be adjusting for just one element, rather than grounders, pop-ups, line-drives and simple catch and step on the base plays, which only obfuscate the situation further, because ALL of those recorded assists and putouts are being used to measure range.

If we had an infield practice with 5 major league shortstops consisting only of grounders, could we get a decent idea who had the best range? Having spent a gazillion years with infield practice, I think so. The same first step on grounders should translate similarly to popups and linedrives. You might have one player who excels on going out for pop-ups, but you get the idea.

Anyway, all that got me to thinking about how OOTP works. What if Smith, year after year, has better range than Jones, but Jones' range-rating is significantly better than Smith's. If Jones is maximizing his opportunity with his pitching staff, logically, Smith would only do worse in that same situation.

So, especially considering how OOTP works, all things being equal, should you EVER trade a highly rated shortstop for one with a mediocre rating, but perpetually better range factor?

I'm talking about where you can see the actual ratings of the players.

[OldFatGuy]

Originally Posted by knockahoma

Another discussion got me to thinking. Having spent a lot of years in infield practice, the whole range factor thing interests me.

I see some great effort from saber-dudes in "adjusting" situations for various shortstops. The shortstop Smith has a pitching staff which coaxes more grounders than Jones', etc.

I'm fairly new at this saber stuff. I brought this up once, but it would be interesting to measure only how many grounders a player get to. You'd have to adjust for that, of course, but you'd be adjusting for just one element, rather than grounders, pop-ups, line-drives and simple catch and step on the base plays, which only obfuscate the situation further, because ALL of those recorded assists and putouts are being used to measure range.

If we had an infield practice with 5 major league shortstops consisting only of grounders, could we get a decent idea who had the best range? Having spent a gazillion years with infield practice, I think so. The same first step on grounders should translate similarly to popups and linedrives. You might have one player who excels on going out for pop-ups, but you get the idea.

Anyway, all that got me to thinking about how OOTP works. What if Smith, year after year, has better range than Jones, but Jones' range-rating is significantly better than Smith's. If Jones is maximizing his opportunity with his pitching staff, logically, Smith would only do worse in that same situation.

So, especially considering how OOTP works, all things being equal, should you EVER trade a highly rated shortstop for one with a mediocre rating, but perpetually better range factor?

I'm talking about where you can see the actual ratings of the players.

Wouldn't that also depend on your team though? I mean if you've got a 5 man pitching staff of Derek Lowe clones, the better range would be more important than with a staff of 5 clones of Randy Johnson, wouldn't it?

I don't follow a lot of the saber stuff, but the range "stat," at least as I understand it, doesn't really tell me much as a shortstop playing behind the first example above will always have a better range stat than the shortstop playing behind the second example.

And I am just very, very unclear on what the range "rating" in OOTP means. In my mind it means a player with a higher range rating will get to more balls than a player with a low range rating if they played behind the same exact staff every day. Ok, I get that.

But I don't get what the difference is between say a range of 9 (in yellow) and 14 (in green) [1-20 scale] is in terms of results. Does the 9 rated shortstop get to 50 fewer balls than the 14 rated one over the course of 140 ground balls??? Geez, I hope not, that seems pretty drastic. I don't know how to quantify exactly how important the range rating is in OOTP.

If you get some answers to that in this thread, then you've helped me a lot. Although it wouldn't help answer your question I guess.

[knockahoma]

Wouldn't that also depend on your team though? I mean if you've got a 5 man pitching staff of Derek Lowe clones, the better range would be more important than with a staff of 5 clones of Randy Johnson, wouldn't it?

On the range, you're right. That would matter. Actually, now that I think about it, I'm speaking of range and field percentage. I see shortstops with bad ratings in both do better than expected. To take out the pitching staff, let's change the focus from range to field percentage. What should you go with: A shortstop with a higher rating, or one that has a lower rating, but a higher field pct?

But I don't get what the difference is between say a range of 9 (in yellow) and 14 (in green) [1-20 scale] is in terms of results. Does the 9 rated shortstop get to 50 fewer balls than the 14 rated one over the course of 140 ground balls??? Geez, I hope not, that seems pretty drastic. I don't know how to quantify exactly how important the range rating is in OOTP.

That would be very interesting. Maybe I'll run a test league and see what I can see.

[Pineapple]

This is sort of a tagent but below are some interesting articles regarding defense and aging. I wonder how OOTP's engine compares?

Field aging curves by Tom Tango

Infield Defensive Age Curves

[bwburke94]

I thought Who was on first. Or do you mean Hu?

[knockahoma]

I thought Who was on first. Or do you mean Hu?