This makes no sense to me, Changing Position

[Bobfather]

Why is it that if you play someone at a new position, they gain experience points at a quick rate, sometimes becoming decent to good at that position during spring training? But there seems to be no way to improve a player at any rate, at his current position? I can take an average 3B and make him a pretty good 1B, but I can not take my meh 1B and make him better. To me, the Labs don't count (correct me if I am wrong). I can not choose what specific position I can assign to a player to improve upon.

[LansdowneSt]

So, for positions, in its simplest form, there are skills and experience.

The skills are the skills. Development can move them or TCR or age, etc. but those are what they are in your example. Overlaying that is experience. Your 1B is already maxed at experience so more play there has no effect. His skills + experience already equals what it equals. But your 3B has skills that are good enough to play across the diamond and they too are what they are. His 1B math is those skills plus 0 experience which is a poor overall 1B rating. But you CAN move his experience variable up in the equation and he gets better overall at the position. Once he gets to the max experience, he will stop advancing too. At max experience, the only way to change the equations that yields the overall fielding rating are the skills.

You can see the skills and experience numbers in the Player editor.

[RyMACtizzle]

That might be one of the best, most straightforward answers, and it makes sense. Thank you Lansdowne

[Pelican]

Agreed. One mystery unlocked for me was finding many players with untapped skills at positions where they had zero experience - in the most recent year. Come to find the skills were based on past experience at that position. [The labels are a bit counter-intuitive, as the player with 0/100 at 1B only has that 100 skill rating due to past, uh, experience at first base.] Each year's rating is based on what positions the guy played in the previous year, and how often he played there. To me it is useful to be able to see - in the Editor - that a player has those untapped skills at a defensive position he did not play the previous year. That could - and has - lead me to try him in Spring Training at that new/old position. Mookie Betts!

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by LansdowneSt

So, for positions, in its simplest form, there are skills and experience.

The skills are the skills. Development can move them or TCR or age, etc. but those are what they are in your example. Overlaying that is experience. Your 1B is already maxed at experience so more play there has no effect. His skills + experience already equals what it equals.

That's how the game works, but that's not how real-life works.

Players move to new positions and improve fielding skills all of the time.

Craig Biggio was a catcher his entire baseball career until the Astros moved him to 2B at age 26. Then years later he moved to CF.

He was never a gold glover at those positions, but he could play 2B at least at league average within a couple of seasons.

Pete Rose is another good example of moving around.

Manny Sanguillen was an MLB catcher his entire career but he never put on a mitt until he was 19 or 20.

There's just lots and lots of examples of players moving between C-IF-OF positions in their careers, but the OOTP fielding skill ratings don't really accommodate that. It would be nice to be able to train players (or attempt to) at completely new positions.

[kidd_05_u2]

Originally Posted by uruguru

There's just lots and lots of examples of players moving between C-IF-OF positions in their careers, but the OOTP fielding skill ratings don't really accommodate that.

I would say OOTP accommodates that pretty well. I know I've had several catchers with the fielding ratings of an average IF or OF fielder, and I bet that the new training labs would allow a catcher to develop new fielding skills too (I don't use training labs, so don't know for sure).

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by kidd_05_u2

I would say OOTP accommodates that pretty well. I know I've had several catchers with the fielding ratings of an average IF or OF fielder, and I bet that the new training labs would allow a catcher to develop new fielding skills too (I don't use training labs, so don't know for sure).

I definitely think the dev lab is the tool for this, but the last time I used it (in fairness it was OOTP 25) it was still very difficult to train players in new positions.

It would be nice if somehow players were coded internally to be capable of learning to catch, play IF (2B-3B-SS) or OF even if their current ratings don't support it.

Obviously learning to catch would be the rarest thing to learn late, but it does happen (Phil Nevin started C at 25). And developing the range to play SS or CF when you've never even been an IF (or an OF) would be very rare, too. But not impossible.