Defense at premium positions

[GoDeacs]

No matter what I do, I seem to have players at shortstop and center field regress defensively almost immediately upon being called up to the MLB.

22 year old shortstop with 111 (1-100) rating at SS drops to 99 in two years
23 year old CF with 66 rating at CF drops to 58 in one year
23 year old CF with 67 rating at CF drops to 58 in two years
22 year old CF with 54 rating at CF drops to 35 in three years
23 year old SS with 106 rating at SS drops to 102 in three months
21 year old CF with 76 rating at CF drops to 71 in two years

Anyone else have this problem? Is there some sort of defensive coaching ability I'm unaware of? It's just frustrating to see them improve throughout the minors and immediately regress when I call them up. All of these have been the primary starter at the listed position in the MLB before they regressed.

[BirdWatcher]

There could be at least a few different reasons for this. Here are two possibilities:

1) If you have scouting turned on in your save and the ratings you are referring to are not the behind the scenes ratings in the editor, then this could simply be a matter of more and more accuracy in the view your scouting staff has of this player now that they are on the major league squad.

2) And I think this one might even be more likely- defensive abilities, especially at these premium, very demanding, positions are much like the values of brand new automobiles, and this is true in real life as it is in OOTP. Which is to say, depreciation starts almost immediately. Unlike other baseball skills, which might not peak in a player until around 25-28 years old, defense peaks extremely early. The drop offs you describe here are not significant, even if they are happening quickly (and, not surprisingly, the biggest drop off is for the center fielder who was only just slightly above average at that position to begin with). The reality is that a gifted fielder will often remain well above average into their early 30's at least, but in OOTP, as IRL, it is pretty unheard of for any player, no matter how great, to have anywhere near the range at age 28-30 that they had at age 19-23. (Other aspects of defense might develop to mitigate this a bit- with experience a player is likely less error prone and they will perhaps also get better at positioning, approach to a hit ball, etc. which the OOTP positional experience ratings speak to. But on whole, what you are describing here just sounds like how baseball works in reality.)

[BBGiovanni]

This also will change between versions too, if you import from an older version all your guys will suddenly be re-rated.



Also, note that in some cases the ratings are going to reflect reality/results; I traded for Carson Kelly for my Mets franchise and he had a rotten defensive year, so I entirely expect that in the offseason his defensive ratings will go down. There must be a statistical term for this, I don't think it's exactly regression to the mean, but it's the same as a batter getting lower ratings the next year because he has a terrible year at the plate in the game. Not saying that's the case for all these guys but it certainly could be for one at least.