PT 21 Defense Rating Fix for Pitchers
 

Have a look at the attached picture - Guidry played 1.1 IP in CF in his entire career yet he has a better defense rating than a couple of Joe Dimaggio cards. I understand this game is not a carbon copy of reality, but that's a bit too much arcade stuff and it needs to change IMHO.

Another improvement would be if cards like Pete Rose had defensive ratings at additional positions if they played those other positions in previous seasons.

Blah blah
 

My general take is:

If you can play catcher, you can play catcher.
If you can play first base, you may be able to play 3rd base.
If you can play second base, you may be able to play short with a strong arm.
If you can play short, you may be able to play 2nd base.
If you can play 3rd base, you may make an OK 1st baseman.

If you can play left field, you can probably play right field, and maybe center if you have speed.
If you can play center, you can probably adjust to the corner outfield positions.
If you can play right field, you can play right field.

And learning the outfield is a lot easier for an athlete than learning any of the IF positions.

Other adaptations should be based on history or future projections, & not as you brought up here with Guidry just because a guy played a few innings at a position.

And also as you brought up one of the biggest oversights is when you train a player at a position, they sometimes become better at that position than at their primary position. At best they should become as good. The other thing to address is maybe a player wasn't spectacular at a position but he did play it regularly. If he played it regularly and was not particularly weak (forced into that role because his bat was valued and there was nowhere else to put him), there might be a secondary rating for real-life experience that keeps a guy like Guidry from playing a better CF than certain versions of DiMaggio. That is their rating based on how well they played or are projected to play there plus(+) an experience rating where they are either comfortable or not at the position (if they had a lot of real-life experience there for that season or career for career cards.) If not, the player's blunders or mental errors would be higher for players who have trained up or could project to play a position but have no real experience there.

BJ Surhoff would like a word.

And hell, every other aging catcher with bad knees pushed out into LF.

Basically, anyone who can move enough to shag ground balls can play First..And yes, everyone is looking at you, Buckner.

Please try to stay focused on the topic which is pitchers with very little MLB experience at a position having better ratings than experience fielders at their position.

I'm not debating if players can or cannot learn other positions here. There are threads for that. Thanks!

Yes, the silver 79 Joe DiMaggio has CF defense of 23. Is that card even usable in silver tournaments? Why have such a card? What justifies such a low rating anyway? Does defense even matter in this game? But, the main point is that no one is going to use Guidry 99 in CF, so is purely cosmetic. Even so, you might like to use 79 Joe in a silver tournament without qualms and if 1 inning at CF gets 50 surely Joe's experience is deserving of more than 50. If Joe were alive, he might even file a lawsuit for defamation of character.

Cosmetic or not, what I'm trying to say is that 1 inning of CF in your entire career doesn't justify in my opinion a better rating than a guy who has played there regularly during his career, even if he had a bad year defensively.

I agree, but what do the numbers really mean? No one really knows, do they? Does a 50 rated CF make 1 more play per season than 23 rated? 5 more? 10 more? How many more does someone rated 80 make? I think it was Matt Arnold that wrote a while back something like "I don't know what difference defense makes, and I can see the code!" BTW, can you check 99 Guidry to see if he can even be used as a two-way player?

Unfortunately I can't, it's a screenshot from the AH. It's a new card that was won in a tournament last week.

Yeah, I thought of that...(that no one really knows what the ratings equate to anyway) but sometimes you can observe a direct correlation...I doubt that quote is word for word.

By the way, my summary is extremely general. I made the point to use the word general before take...general take...general observations on sometimes how an average athlete can adapt out there on the diamond. Because in many cases, that's what might need to be sort of projected into the game.

I titled it Blah blah with the hope that no one would interpret it as anything more than some honest offhand observations from 30 years of following baseball.

If the game still limits any pitchers from being two-way players due to poor batting ratings, Guidry will be prohibited. One good rating, whether it be Guidry's OF defense or Bob Gibson's speed on the base paths, is not enough by itself to make them eligible (or at least it hasn't been in the past).

Also, random fact, Don Mattingly and his left throwing arm played about 13.5 times more (18 innings) at 3B in his career (all in 1986) that Ron Guidry played in CF :D

Well, you can check ZR stats in a given season to get an idea of what kind of effect a defender has on runs/wins. My own testing seems to conclude that CF/SS is interchangeable as the most important defensive position. Each of them is worth about 8.5 wins if you upgrade a terrible defender to an elite one, all bats being equal. Just from one specific test though.