Ken Griffey Jr. defensive ratings

[OntarioMikeW]

As a lifelong Mariners fan, in large part because of Griffey Jr., I find the defensive ratings for him very hard to handle.

He was a perennial Gold Glove winner, and while I know that's not everything there are highlights and plenty of scouting reports to back him up as at least a plus defender.

Going through different historical sims, I've seen him as low as 45 and never higher than 60.

I know I can edit this in the desktop game if I play as commissioner, but I'd like to have him as a plus defender in Challenge Mode and especially in OOTP Go (which doesn't allow ratings edits at the moment).

@LukasBerger, any chance this can be looked at?

Sorry if this isn't the correct forum. Please move if needed.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by OntarioMikeW

@LukasBerger, any chance this can be looked at?

The historical defensive ratings in the game are based on fielding stats, they aren't assigned manually by us.

So a player gets the ratings the algorithm assigns, based purely on the data, and it doesn't take into account reputation, just the actual numbers players put up.

So there's not really much of anything we can do here. Griffey Jr's defensive reputation is kind of at odds with his actual performance. Not just in OOTP but even looking at other sources, you'll see that for most of his career, just going by stats, he grades out as an average to below average defender.

He's not the only guy in the same boat, there are quite a few other players considered by reputation to be great defenders, but for whom the metrics just do not agree.

That's not to say there's no question the metrics are right and the reputations are wrong, obviously this is very much open to debate, but since we just use stats to generate historical ratings, that's what matters for our purposes.

[ezpkns34]

Now I'm curious about some of the other players who are woefully overrated or underrated in the field based on reputation

[Reed]

Jeter for one.

[Syd Thrift]

I'm a big Griffey fan but my memory of him was that he wasn't really an upper echelon CF a la Jim Edmonds or Devon White but instead was a good, solid, above average CF who was also one of the game's premier hitters. Bear in mind that "average center fielder" still puts you in the top 10-20% of all outfielders. He also stuck around for too long at the position and particularly in Cincinnati he kept playing well after he was below average.

Jeter is the best comp I can think of. Ernie Banks is a good historical example; the Cubs even moved him to first midway through his career but he still gets occasionally talked up like he was a great defender.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by ezpkns34

Now I'm curious about some of the other players who are woefully overrated or underrated in the field based on reputation

Roberto Alomar is another one that has a great reputation but that the game does not particularly 'like' based on the numbers. Jeter too, as mentioned above, but of course even his real-life reputation as a defender is pretty mixed.

Off the top of my head, Omar Vizquel, Jimmy Rollins, Bobby Richardson, Robin Ventura and Andre Dawson would be a few others where we tend to be lower on them than their reputations would indicate.

Like I said, that's just off the top of my head, so I'm sure I'm missing a few guys and might even be wrong about some of the above.

[OntarioMikeW]

@LukasBerger, thanks for the quick response. I'll stick to the desktop version for my Mariners franchises for now and expand my horizons a bit in OOTP GO.

I did notice the game loves Luis Gonzalez as a defensive left fielder.

[Hoiles]

I'm not sure what your settings are, but it's possible that Griffey's so-so fielding ratings are due to being based on career totals. Do you get similar results when you base fielding on 3-year or season totals?

Players with extra long careers like Griffey might have their ratings hurt a bit as it takes into account the 35+ declining part of their career, that isn't the case for inferior players with shorter careers. It's evident with Banks, where has pretty much no SS ratings as he played 1B almost exclusively in his 30's. I guess a suggestion to improve this in a future version would be to base "career totals" fielding ratings on, for e.g., peak years, their first 10 years, or just ignore 35+ years or something like that.

[Pdubya64]

My take on it is that we are all victims of what I call "Highlight Bias". Junior being a human highlight reel tends to (in our heads at least) make us think perennial gold glove outfielder at the highest levels.

The media tends to play the crazy catches over and over for obvious reasons. I can't believe that it doesn't end up having an effect on baseball fan notions of who is a top-notch fielder.

Here is another anomaly. How is it that infielder greats stick out (to me at least) so much more than outfielders do? Perhaps it is the required reaction time a IF needs to even get a shot at fielding the ball.

[beepollen]

FWIW, Griffey Jr., during his Reds days, was one of the worst defensive CFs I have ever witnessed.

[Highlander]

Originally Posted by Lukas Berger

Roberto Alomar is another one that has a great reputation but that the game does not particularly 'like' based on the numbers. Jeter too, as mentioned above, but of course even his real-life reputation as a defender is pretty mixed.

Off the top of my head, Omar Vizquel, Jimmy Rollins, Bobby Richardson, Robin Ventura and Andre Dawson would be a few others where we tend to be lower on them than their reputations would indicate.

Like I said, that's just off the top of my head, so I'm sure I'm missing a few guys and might even be wrong about some of the above.

I'd add Dave Winfield to the list.....I never see him as being a better than average fielder. I might understand that, but his arm rating doesn't ever seem to be very good and he always had one of the best arms I have ever seen.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Lukas Berger

Off the top of my head, Omar Vizquel,

You shut that lying mouth!

[Brad K]

We see a CF run and run and leap and make a catch and crash into the wall and hold the ball. Cool. How do we know that he isn't just average and a good CF would have gotten to the spot and stood there waiting for the ball to come down.

[fredbeene]

Originally Posted by Brad K

We see a CF run and run and leap and make a catch and crash into the wall and hold the ball. Cool. How do we know that he isn't just average and a good CF would have gotten to the spot and stood there waiting for the ball to come down.

that doesn't make for good tv!!

perhaps there should be a consideration of adding a 'reputation' modifier for positions.

also a player can still have excellent skills, but perhaps was injured which could bring his ratings down. but if you do a sim and the injured player 'plays' his skills are diminshed because of the injury in real life

[ChrisJNelson]

Originally Posted by Reed

Jeter for one.

If you mean overrated, then yeah.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by fredbeene

that doesn't make for good tv!!

perhaps there should be a consideration of adding a 'reputation' modifier for positions.

also a player can still have excellent skills, but perhaps was injured which could bring his ratings down. but if you do a sim and the injured player 'plays' his skills are diminshed because of the injury in real life

We just passed 20,000 MLB players all time. No reputation modifier is possible.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by fredbeene

also a player can still have excellent skills, but perhaps was injured which could bring his ratings down. but if you do a sim and the injured player 'plays' his skills are diminshed because of the injury in real life

I don't think a guy should automatically be better because in RL he had an injury that made him worse. I've been quite happy with plausible variations from reality using 3 year with dev and 100 random talent

[Bobfather]

Originally Posted by Brad K

We see a CF run and run and leap and make a catch and crash into the wall and hold the ball. Cool. How do we know that he isn't just average and a good CF would have gotten to the spot and stood there waiting for the ball to come down.

Or he may have been out of position. Fred Lynn made all kinds of diving catches his rookie year. By his third year, he hardly made any. According to him, he learned to position himself better.

[The Game]

In one of my random debut leagues, Jr was a platoon player with Paul O'Neill (never sure if i spell that right) on the Cardinals. In that league through 8 seasons, Griffey never played more than 100 G. hit around .275 25 HR though. On a 1-10 scale he's a 5 CF 5 Arm, career fielding.

[beepollen]

Originally Posted by Lukas Berger

Roberto Alomar is another one that has a great reputation but that the game does not particularly 'like' based on the numbers. Jeter too, as mentioned above, but of course even his real-life reputation as a defender is pretty mixed.

Off the top of my head, Omar Vizquel, Jimmy Rollins, Bobby Richardson, Robin Ventura and Andre Dawson would be a few others where we tend to be lower on them than their reputations would indicate.

Like I said, that's just off the top of my head, so I'm sure I'm missing a few guys and might even be wrong about some of the above.

In my replay of the '75 season, Dave Parker's arm rating was a shocking 30/80. This, in a season where he led the league's RFs in Total Zone Outfield Arm Runs Above Avg. Consequently, his overall defensive rating was poor (40/80, IIRC) - again, despite leading the NL's RFs in Total Zone Runs (second among all OFs). After using my commish powers to fix Dave's arm (rating of 70/80), his overall rating increased as well.