Quote:
Originally Posted by Syd Thrift
- Conversely it feels like sometimes OF range in particular doesn't get correlated well enough with speed. Like, sure, there are times when a guy who doesn't steal much and isn't really a terror on the basepaths can become a league average CF (Dave Henderson from the 1980s comes to mind) but conversely I think it's very, very rare that a very fast player doesn't have the *range* to be a good CF. There may be other reasons why you don't want to put a Rickey Henderson or a Brian Hunter in CF - the lack of a quality arm (which I think is what kept Henderson in left) or bad, bad hands (that was Hunter's issue IIRC) - but not range.
|
This and I'll take it a step further and say that this applies at SS as well. I'd say almost all really good defensive SS's have at least above average MLB level speed. Like your example above, someone like Andrelton Simmons is a great fielding SS who doesn't have big time speed, but he can do everything else on the defensive side of the ball as to make him essentially elite. Too often (and I'd say this is almost exclusively a fictional thing), I'll see a SS carrying a range of 8, and a speed of 3 (1 to 10 scale).
Along with this I'll continue my feeling that there needs to be some type of "athleticism" rating. To try and find a way to determine if a player can/should be a candidate to learn new positions. For every Mookie, who could certainly play an acceptable level at any IF position, there is a Trout who would look to have all the necessary tools, but almost certainly couldn't play MLB level SS or 2B (IMO). I do think this is a fictional issue mostly and just something I'd like to see in some form.