Originally Posted by kq76
I thought this was an interesting question so I tested it.
I created a small fictional league then I had OOTP generate a young (16 y-o) catcher. I edited his handedness to lefty and then his catcher experience to 50 (out of 200 in the editor, 25/80) to make it the lowest it could while still showing up on the profile page. I made sure to put him on a rookie team (he wasn't at first) and I set him to force start at catcher.
I simmed a year and the game changed him to a RF and mainly played him in the OF (I hadn't taken over the team as I wanted to see if force starting him alone would work, and he had better ratings in the OF to start). His catcher rating did not change (he only played 3 games there so I'm not surprised), but his batting ratings improved (some be a good amount).
So I took over the team, forced him to start at catcher again, and simmed another year. By the end of that year his rating at catcher had jumped to 102 (/200, 35/80). That right there might answer your question. His batting ratings also improved some, except for contact.
I simmed another year and while he improved a bit more at C, it wasn't much. Considering his base catcher ratings (blocking, framing, arm), I kind of expected he would plateau sooner or later however. So I unlocked his position from C (he hadn't moved from Rookie ball and I figured that might be why and I was only in charge of the rookie team, not the parent club) and jacked his base catcher ratings all to 200 (/250).
I simmed to the next year and the AI moved him up a level (so maybe I was right, it held him back because I had him locked?), so I quit my job and took on that team and locked him at C again and simmed the remainder of the year. And this time he improved at C by a lot (75/80!), got promoted to AA, stayed as a catcher, and his batting ratings improved by a lot as well.
Whether they perform just as well as a righty is a difficult question to answer (I mean, other than if we were a dev, I don't think we could answer that question), but as for developing at catcher, they most certainly can.
And really, it's not impossible for a lefty to play catcher IRL, it's just a bit more difficult to cover home plate and to throw to the 2B and 3B when a RHB is there. I doubt OOTP would go through the trouble of penalizing them on those plays. IMO the real reason why we don't see them much IRL is simply because coaches just funnel them to other positions out of the thought that righties have a natural advantage there, it's not because they can't play decently enough there. But just imagine if you had a great hitting lefty who played a decent C, that'd be quite the advantage over a poor hitting righty at C!
The attachments are: before simming, after simming year 2, and after simming year 4. Notice the catcher rating improve.
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