[David Watts]

Originally Posted by VanillaGorilla

Because they don't actually have ratings there, displayed or not.

A player that caught my eye while I was managing was Joe Kappel, another 1880s player who was serving as my back-up catcher. The AI would stick him in CF with no CF rating, and I would put in a def sub (I will click through innings when I am ahead and then decide on def subs).

Then I noticed that he was listed as the defensive replacement in CF in the line-ups I made where I asked the manager for the depth charts after I decided who I wanted to play. I was still replacing him with guys that had ratings. When I say 'ratings' I mean the positional ratings on the profile page.

We don't see David Ortiz playing second base without a rating, but we do see Lou Whitaker and Bid McPhee. In the case of McPhee, playing there primarilly, but getting no rating for it. In the case of your Whitaker, he got the start at 2B as an old guy instead of some better young bat who wasn't rated at 2B.

The AI is putting the players in there for a reason and not putting the Dunns and Ortiz's there for a reason.

I just pulled up my v 13 Whitaker. He played his last season at age 38, and had a 10 (on a 20 scale) rating at 2B. It makes sense for the AI to start a similarly aged Whitaker in your league, if he has that kind of def ability, still.

It makes sense for Bid McPhee to play 2B and win GGs. It doesn't make sense that after playing 2B for 250 games and winning a GG that he doesn't have a rating there.

It makes sense that he can play second base the following year, almost exclusively. It does not make sense that he starts the 2009 season with no 2B rating and ends the 2009 season with no 2B rating in spite of starting close to 80 games there and having played 149 games there in 2008.

If Adam Dunn was getting the start then I would say that defense is not being considered. But these are guys that should have ratings at these positions. They did have ratings at these positions in v 13. And in v13 if they didn't have ratings at these positions, after 300 games played at the position over 3 seasons they would have ratings there.

The ability to play the position is there for McPhee and Whitaker. The information regarding this ability is not being displayed for the human user.

I think what I might have to do is simply turn the ratings off altogether. It's not like I need them for the way I play the game. I don't build teams. For me it's all about watching a league grow history and the storylines that develop along the way.