Quote:
Originally Posted by RchW
Showalter is considered a managerial genius by many people. He is, in fact, choosing offense over defense which is a core part of the OOTP "best batting lineup" design.
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Then there's this quote from the article: "And Pearce played second, while more experienced second baseman Jimmy Paredes slotted in at DH."
So, in that game anyway, the Orioles took a defensive loss with no offensive gain: Paredes was in the batting lineup anyway; so he may as well play 2B instead of DH. Playing Pearce at 2B when Paredes was batting anyway is suggested to be to help him learn the position for future use, but you don't do that in major league games that count. Spring training or the minors, yes.
If in some games they manage to keep better hitters in the lineup by playing Pearce at 2B, a case can be made for it, if Pearce can even do a "poor" job (as opposed to a "horrendous" job) defensively.
In OOTP, playing someone out of position (even to get a better bat in the lineup) should only be done if the manager is pretty strongly on the "Favor Offense" side of the Offense/Defense slider. Showalter obviously is there, and I don't have the info to say whether or not he's right (when he's actually getting a better bat into the lineup; if he's using a better glove at DH, he's just wrong).
But a slider in the middle is supposed to do the "usual" MLB thing, so while the AI may be hard to get right, a slider in the middle (or certainly favoring defense) should lead to never playing someone out of position unless there's literally no one available who isn't out of position there.