[OMGPuppies]

Originally Posted by DrTobiasFunke

From my experience in the base game, if a guy has 50-60 range and 60+ error for his infield ratings he'll train up to an elite 1st base (arm and DP are rather useless for a 1st baseman). So really, the vast majority of infield players can become a great defensive 1st baseman. But I don't really think it's all that worth it to invest in top most defense in 1st base, just because of the small fielding sample sizes they have to work with.

Here's a little math from my league using an extremely unscientific metric I call Missing Outs, where you add up all the outs they "could've" got, as scored in the expanded fielding stats on the player page. The unmarked players have played 140-150 games, while Goldy's and Vidro's stats are prorated to 140 (from 80 and 89 games respectively).

Scott Spezio 6.7 ZR / 222 chances / 31 Missed outs (8 Impossible)
Antony Rizzo 5.4 ZR / 223 chances / 34 MO (12 impossible)
Rod Carew 3.9 ZR / 207 chances / 39 MO (9 impossible)
Ryan McMahon 3.2 ZR / 238 chances / 49 MO (18 impossible)
Luke Voit 2.2 ZR / 204 chances / 39 MO (12 impossible)
Paul Goldschmidt* 4.2 ZR / 187 chances / 36.75 MO (14 impossible)
Jose Vidro* -0.4 ZR / 202 chances / 40.75 MO (8 impossible)
Max Kepler -4.8 ZR / 214 chances / 58 MO (14 impossible)

So, in the course of a typical season the an abysmal 1st baseman, compared to one having a golden glove season, might net you about 1 games worth of outs, which isn't nothing, but if you're comparing the best 1st baseman to my slightly below average 1st base-in-training Jose Vidro (who's also 5'10", so I'm kinda dubious on height really being a requirement for 1st), the difference comes out to 9 outs. And 9 outs over 200 chances, well even the highest rated guy can have 9 errors in that span.

This is all a really long way of saying you should probably be asking for a list of the best hitting 1st basemen, because you can probably easily add 9 outs worth of offense over most of the super elite 1st basemen and probably for less PP as well.

Thank you for the advice. This is a real eye opener. Bye bye Brandon Belt.