Defensive ratings question(s).

[DougWyatt]

I've started a rather young league (15-18 year olds), and most all of my players have low ratings at their respected positions; despite some having solid numbers in the fielding ratings (range, arm, errors, etc.). After some looking around, I've found that this is because of experience - I assume due to their youth.

I'm afraid they won't develope, as my seasons are only 26 games, and the most a guy can play is 4 years - so; he's looking at playing only a max of 104 games total career - then he retires.

Questions ..

1) Will these kids gain enough experience in the short seasons to improve their experience & in effect earning higher position ratings ?

2) Is there any way for me to help this along ? (I see there is a batter and pitcher development speed option in the game options; but nothing for fielding).

3) Will the range, arm, and error be useful guides to evaluating - or are those potential numbers; and the lack of experience means the player doesn't know how to utilize these skills yet ?

4) How powerful is the experience ? As there are a *few* guys that have a little more, and their position ratings are around 2 to 3 times better than guys with the same R,A, & E ratings but minimal experience.

[Curtis]

1) If you have a spring training in that league, and it's around 24 games, there should be no problem. In my league, playing a guy for only a couple of innings in S.T. will gain him 3 experience, so everybody should pick up 72 if they don't get injured.

2) I don't know of any workarounds, which isn't to say that they don't exist. Edit: If you wanted to, you could keep track of how many games played at each position for each guy. At the end of the season add experience at those positions equal to maybe twice the number of games they played there. I have no idea how large your league is, and this is a labor-intensive 'fix'.

3) I guess you could say that they're potential numbers; I hadn't thought of them that way. Since they can rise through developmental bumps, I prefer to think of them as the actual numbers, which are them modified by the experience at each position and the ease of play and minimum requirements at each position. I find them to be a useful guide, but I'm playing longer seasons, so most of my players (and nearly all of my pitchers, which I find a little wierd) are maxed out at 200 experience.

4) You can easily check how important experience is by picking one of your players, turning off scouting, going into his player editor (Commissioner Mode) and setting his experience to 20, 40, 60, 80, etc. Jumping out to check the effect on his position rating between each change. Of course, you'll write down what his starting experience was before you begin this experiment, and re-enter it once you've satisfied your curiosity.

[DougWyatt]

Curtis,

Thank you sir. Some fine information there. I had Spring Training turned off, but I'll give that a try- if what you say in #1 is true; that'd be perfect .

[injury log]

Originally Posted by Curtis

4) You can easily check how important experience is by picking one of your players, turning off scouting, going into his player editor (Commissioner Mode) and setting his experience to 20, 40, 60, 80, etc. Jumping out to check the effect on his position rating between each change. Of course, you'll write down what his starting experience was before you begin this experiment, and re-enter it once you've satisfied your curiosity.

You actually don't need to jump out of the Editor to see the resulting Position rating- there's a column 'Resulting Rating' next to each position in the Editor window. The rating there is out of 200, though it is allowed to exceed the maximum. One advantage of looking at the rating in the Editor is that it ignores the minimum component ratings thresholds required to see a rating in the Player Profile view. So, if you have a 3B with an arm below 60/200 for example, you'll never see an overall 3B rating in the Profile, but you'll see one in the Editor.