Robinson Cano in OOTP 14

[RchW]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

That's possible. I don't think you're exactly right, but there's definitely something to what you say. It's a complicated question that we could discuss for a long time and I don't really have the time to get into it right now

I'm talking more from the perspective of how OOTP ratings work than exactly how rl works. Try going into the editor and changing Pedroia or Kinsler f.e. as currently rated to SS, giving them a 200 experience rating at SS. Even with their marshmallow arms, the game still rates them as 17 or 18 defensively at SS.

So according to OOTP, the arm doesn't keep them from being an elite SS. That's because a 160-190 range rating is just so darn high.

Do this too, check the batting ratings in game, then figure out how many guys have individual contact or power ratings in the 160-180 range. It's very few.

Then do the same check on fielding range. There's a ton of those guys. This just isn't right. Somehow there been an upward creep in the MLB rosters sets fielding ratings. That's probably because the fielding ratings are set by us manually, while the hitting ratings depend on PECOTA's projections, which are more objective.

The problem with this is that, as I discussed above, if too many guys have too high ratings, then the impact of the truly great defenders, Iglesias, Simmons etc. is severely blunted.

Very good point. I guess my post was a bit of a shot (not at you) about using numbers without context. For example via Fangraphs Ian Kinsler is not better defensively than Robinson Cano this year. Cano was better than Pedroia and Kinsler in 2012, and Pedroia was better than both Kinsler and Cano in 2011. Same if you use BR dWAR.

Since the ratings under discussion in this thread are based on 2012 results Cano should have the same or better defensive ratings than both of them. Am I missing something obvious?

Cano was the better defensive 2B in 2012. How can this be argued?

[X3NEIZE]

Originally Posted by RchW

Very good point. I guess my post was a bit of a shot (not at you) about using numbers without context. For example via Fangraphs Ian Kinsler is not better defensively than Robinson Cano this year. Cano was better than Pedroia and Kinsler in 2012, and Pedroia was better than both Kinsler and Cano in 2011. Same if you use BR dWAR.

Since the ratings under discussion in this thread are based on 2012 results Cano should have the same or better defensive ratings than both of them. Am I missing something obvious?

Cano was the better defensive 2B in 2012. How can this be argued?

Thank you! That's my point.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by The Game

Lukas what about players being rated too low, like Ken Griffey Jr. I have imported Junior from is rookie year and he was a 3 in CF. When you use entire career he is a 5 in CF a 3 in RF. RF was too high in my opinion CF still too low at 5. These are leagues where I use 100% scouting.
Why is it when one mixes historical and fictional players the real players tend top get benched for the fictional player defensively?
Why is is clones of legendary defensive wizards like Ozzie Smith and Luis Aparicio suck by their 5th year. Now yes these are clones and not the actual player so the recalc for them is different, but I have had to edit Ben arnold (Ozzie) twice so he has fielding ratings. At age 31 he is now retired after being a FA for teh last 2 seasons and being a 0 at all IF spots.
Nicky Lee (Little Louie) is still around but barely. He is at AAA for a team with the worst defensive SS in my league yet he is at AAA with a 3 for SS. Neither was ever over a 5. (1-10) scale.

Historical is a whole different kettle of fish. It's nothing I have anything to do with. I tinker with it, but I'm no expert. You'd need to ask Spritze or Gambo or even Markus about that.

And you aren't even just dealing with straight historical, sounds like you're mixing historical and fictional, which is even more problematic.

Remember, once you make a clone of a historical player, and import him into another league, then the game no longer knows who he is. He's just another player with high ratings to the ai and will be subject to the vagaries of the OOTP development engine just like any fictional player would be.

[struggles_mightily]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

I'm going to stop now. I get angry arguing with Luddites, people who believe in fairies, and those who value what their eyes see over actual hard facts, math and science.

Most advanced defensive metrics available to the public entail a degree of subjective assessment made by people (presumably using their eyes) -- I'm surprised that you would have any truck with that nonsense. As I'm sure you're aware, the "DWAR" that you mention earlier in this thread is not a statistic in the sense that DRS, UZR or PMR is. Rather, it is simply a heading that BaseballReference (and perhaps other websites, I'm not sure) uses to denote the defensive component of its WAR statistic. BBRef DWAR is actually composed of two statistics -- Total ZR for seasons before 2003, and DRS for later seasons. (In passing, it's interesting to note that defensive statistics have become somewhat more reliable since a subjective component was introduced -- does anyone really trust FRAA, or any other metric based only on box-score data?) There are ongoing debates about whether to prefer DRS or UZR, whilst I think most people would concede that the proprietary metrics used by MLB teams -- making use of FieldFX -- are considerably more advanced. Pleasingly, given the terms of the present discussion, the explanation of DRS' methodology on the Fielding Bible website describes the calculation of DRS as "part science and part art".

Wolf, my Forum Conversations Enhanced (FCE) metric puts you at a woeful -27 for this season. Given that this is a number, and therefore data, and was created With Science (tm), I presume that you accept this finding as fact. I therefore hope that you will confine yourself in future to flaccid polemics against RBIs, through which it's hard to add much value or do much damage.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by RchW

Very good point. I guess my post was a bit of a shot (not at you) about using numbers without context. For example via Fangraphs Ian Kinsler is not better defensively than Robinson Cano this year. Cano was better than Pedroia and Kinsler in 2012, and Pedroia was better than both Kinsler and Cano in 2011. Same if you use BR dWAR.

Since the ratings under discussion in this thread are based on 2012 results Cano should have the same or better defensive ratings than both of them. Am I missing something obvious?

Cano was the better defensive 2B in 2012. How can this be argued?

Excellent points, yourself. I agree. Your points are even more pertinent when you consider the extreme volatility from year to year of most current defensive metrics. Most systems really require that you look at three to fours years of data before being able to draw any accurate conclusions.

Kinsler especially is being overrated by some of the folks on this thread, and I'd agree that Cano is being underrated by many posters. After looking at the metrics for the last few years, I think Kinsler actually needs to have his ratings cut more. I don't see any objective evidence at all that he's better defensively than Cano. Pedroia does seem to be the pick of the litter defensively among second basemen.

But regarding Cano, again I want to reiterate, his ratings now are actually very good. He comes out rated 63 at 2B. That's very good.

The reason it appears he's underrated is that too many other guys have gotten overrated, for one reason or another, which has conditioned OOTP players to think that really, really high defensive ratings are actually normal. They shouldn't be.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by struggles_mightily

Most advanced defensive metrics available to the public entail a degree of subjective assessment made by people (presumably using their eyes) -- I'm surprised that you would have any truck with that subjective nonsense. As I'm sure you're aware, the "DWAR" that you mention earlier in this thread is not a statistic in the sense that DRS, UZR or PMR is. Rather, it is simply a heading that BaseballReference (and perhaps other websites, I'm not sure) uses to denote the defensive component of its WAR statistic. BBRef DWAR is actually composed of two statistics -- Total ZR for seasons before 2003, and DRS for later seasons. (In passing, it's interesting to note that defensive statistics have become somewhat more reliable since a subjective component was introduced -- does anyone really trust FRAA, or any other metric based only box-score data?) There are ongoing debates about whether to prefer DRS or UZR, whilst I think most people would concede that the proprietary metrics used by MLB teams -- making use of FieldFX -- are considerably more advanced. Pleasingly, given the terms of the present discussion, the explanation of DRS' methodology on the Fielding Bible website describes the calculation of DRS as "part science and part art".

TheWolf, my Forum Conversations Enhanced (FCE) metric puts you at a woeful -27 for this season. Given that this is a number, and therefore data, and was created With Science (tm), I presume that you accept this finding as fact. I therefore hope that you will confine yourself in future to flaccid polemics against RBIs, through which it's hard to add much value or do much damage.

Yes, absolutely! This is excellent.

It's what I was trying to say in several posts, but didn't do nearly as accurately or concisely as you have.

[struggles_mightily]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

Yes, absolutely! This is excellent.

Thank you. And, I mean, I'm faaaaar from an expert on defensive metrics. I've read a handful of articles and did some Googling just now to support things I wasn't sure about in making that post. It doesn't take much effort to get at the specifics of these methods if you're interested in them, and I think it's far better to do that than just snootily dismiss other posters as "fools" whilst shouting non-specific stuff about "facts" and "science".

[X3NEIZE]

Originally Posted by struggles_mightily

Thank you. And, I mean, I'm faaaaar from an expert on defensive metrics. I've read a handful of articles and did some Googling just now to support things I wasn't sure about in making that post. It doesn't take much effort to get at the specifics of these methods if you're interested in them, and I think it's far better to do that than just snootily dismiss other posters as "fools" whilst shouting non-specific stuff about "facts" and "science".

Well said sir!

[injury log]

Originally Posted by RchW

Since the ratings under discussion in this thread are based on 2012 results Cano should have the same or better defensive ratings than both of them. Am I missing something obvious?

Yes.

The roster set isn't supposed to recreate the 2012 season. If it were, PECOTA projections wouldn't be used to rate players; 2012 stats would be instead. The roster set is supposed to be rated so that players are most likely to perform how they will (did?) in 2013.

In the sabermetric community, I think it's accepted that you need about 3 years worth of defensive stats to say anything reliable about someone's glove. So it would be a mistake to rate a defender very highly only because of a stellar 2012 season. It's only if that season were consistent with previous seasons (or with scouting reports in the case of a younger player) that high ratings would make sense.

[RchW]

Originally Posted by injury log

Yes.

The roster set isn't supposed to recreate the 2012 season. If it were, PECOTA projections wouldn't be used to rate players; 2012 stats would be instead. The roster set is supposed to be rated so that players are most likely to perform how they will (did?) in 2013.

In the sabermetric community, I think it's accepted that you need about 3 years worth of defensive stats to say anything reliable about someone's glove. So it would be a mistake to rate a defender very highly only because of a stellar 2012 season. It's only if that season were consistent with previous seasons (or with scouting reports in the case of a younger player) that high ratings would make sense.

That's why I asked the question. I suspected that may be the case. Even given that, the difference in defensive ratings seems higher than I'd expect. Thanks for clearing that up.

[injury log]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

Yep, you caught another one of the weird range ratings. I found that last night and modified it too. Beltre also has crazy high range at 3B. He's a great, great defender, but even he's not that great. And Longoria certainly isn't even as good as Beltre, never mind Brendan Ryan!

There are several reasons to be careful about lowering defensive ratings here:

• It's not correct to compare, say, IF Range ratings with Contact ratings. Markus hasn't designed them to be on the same kind of scale. For most batting ratings, 50/100 is intended to be around average. For fielding ratings, that is not the case (for better or worse). I'm just going by memory here, but I have a table of median component fielding ratings by position somewhere on my computer that I can dig up. But I think you'll find in a default fictional league that the median IF Range rating of a big league 2B is around 67/100. So while a green batting rating is a really good thing to see, a green fielding rating is just around average, at least at some positions. This makes sense in a way at a position like SS; to play SS at all, a player needs a 40/100 Range rating, so a 40/100 IF Range rating is a lot like a 0/100 Power rating, say. And that means IF Range for SS only spans the values from 40-100, meaning it makes some sense for the average to be around 70/100. I'd prefer a different model where all ratings were more comparable to each other, but that's not what we have to work with.
  
• So if you want any appreciable differentiation among defenders, you essentially need to give some very high-looking ratings - ratings well above 67/100. Since IF Range is, by far, the most important rating in determining the overall position rating at 2B/SS/3B, it may need to be set very high if you want to create a truly elite defender at one of those positions. That is, if you want Beltre to be an elite 3B, or Mark Ellis to be an elite 2B, those guys will need very high IF Range ratings.
  
• Comparing Adrian Beltre's IF Range with Brendan Ryan's IF Range is a bit of an academic comparison, because Beltre's Turn DP rating is so low he can't play SS at all. Since he can't play SS, his Range rating really only determines how many balls he can get to at the IF positions he can play, which are 3B and 1B. OOTP's is not an ideal model, because range at 3B is based on different attributes (where first-step quickness is more important) than range at SS (where pure speed is more important). I think that's confusing, because it makes it appear that it would be meaningful to compare the IF Range rating of a pure 3B with the IF Range rating of a pure SS, but I don't think that comparison makes sense. If you're comparing Beltre and Ryan's IF Range ratings, I think the correct question to ask is whether Ryan, playing 3B, would get to more balls than Beltre playing 3B. I have no idea what the answer to that question is, but I suspect they wouldn't be too different.
  
• The most important reasons to maintain high component fielding ratings in the roster set: as users sim forward, a league will gradually become fictional. The highest IF component ratings for the best fictional OOTP players at 2B and 3B are very high - well into the blue range. I don't think there's any legitimate reason to think that current MLB players should be worse defenders than future MLB players, so the highest fielding component ratings in the current roster set should be comparable to the highest ratings you see in a fictional draft class.
  
• Further, the OOTP aging model can attack players too aggressively when you let OOTP 'step in' to an established league. This happens when you start a brand new fictional league, and when you let OOTP start in on the roster set. I think we need to make OOTP smarter about aging, especially since OOTP can look back over a player's statistical record to determine just how badly he is being affected by age. But if a slightly older player in the roster set has component fielding ratings very close to the minimum thresholds required to play a position, it is likely he will become unable to play that position within a couple of seasons. I don't think that's desirable in most cases. That means there's a bit of a balancing act needed in rating certain players - we need to strike a balance between ensuring correct performance in the short-term, and ensuring a player can continue to perform correctly in the longer term. That is, unless we can make OOTP smarter about this kind of stuff.
  

[Le Grande Orange]

Every time I see this thread's title I think it says, "Robinson Crusoe in OOTP 14".

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by injury log

There are several reasons to be careful about lowering defensive ratings here:

• So if you want any appreciable differentiation among defenders, you essentially need to give some very high-looking ratings - ratings well above 67/100. Since IF Range is, by far, the most important rating in determining the overall position rating at 2B/SS/3B, it may need to be set very high if you want to create a truly elite defender at one of those positions. That is, if you want Beltre to be an elite 3B, or Mark Ellis to be an elite 2B, those guys will need very high IF Range ratings.
• Comparing Adrian Beltre's IF Range with Brendan Ryan's IF Range is a bit of an academic comparison, because Beltre's Turn DP rating is so low he can't play SS at all. Since he can't play SS, his Range rating really only determines how many balls he can get to at the IF positions he can play, which are 3B and 1B. OOTP's is not an ideal model, because range at 3B is based on different attributes (where first-step quickness is more important) than range at SS (where pure speed is more important). I think that's confusing, because it makes it appear that it would be meaningful to compare the IF Range rating of a pure 3B with the IF Range rating of a pure SS, but I don't think that comparison makes sense. If you're comparing Beltre and Ryan's IF Range ratings, I think the correct question to ask is whether Ryan, playing 3B, would get to more balls than Beltre playing 3B. I have no idea what the answer to that question is, but I suspect they wouldn't be too different.

Some good stuff as always. I can't get to much of this today, but want to address some of this.

Even when I'm lowering some of the ratings here, I'm not lowering them a lot if the guys' a great defender. Beltre, for example went down to a 160 range. That's still high, however you figure it.

You make a good case for keeping him at 190 by putting the SS question in reverse. You're probably right on that.

Even if Beltre's debatable, I can't see how there could be much debate that Utley or Longoria having a 190 range is just plain wrong.

As to the second point. While Beltre's range might be academic compared to Ryan, that of the 2Bmen isn't. They all have decent to great dp ratings and as you can see by tinkering with the position ratings, that even giving them very, very, weak arms does not keep them from having overall positional ratings at SS very much comparable to the elite SS's. Which I think we'll all agree shouldn't be the case.

I'm hardly undertaking a comprehensive overhaul of defensive ratings on my own. I just made some adjustments to a few ratings that really appeared to be out of whack. Even if there's a good case for Beltre to have a 190 range rating, which I could definitely see, in fact I changed him back just now, I can't see any similar argument for Longoria and Utley f.e. Can you?

We'll have to talk more about this, getting Howard and hopefully Markus involved too. Your list of median defensive ratings would be a great help if you can dig it up.

[VanillaGorilla]

Originally Posted by injury log

[*] Further, the OOTP aging model can attack players too aggressively when you let OOTP 'step in' to an established league. This happens when you start a brand new fictional league, and when you let OOTP start in on the roster set. I think we need to make OOTP smarter about aging, especially since OOTP can look back over a player's statistical record to determine just how badly he is being affected by age. But if a slightly older player in the roster set has component fielding ratings very close to the minimum thresholds required to play a position, it is likely he will become unable to play that position within a couple of seasons. I don't think that's desirable in most cases. That means there's a bit of a balancing act needed in rating certain players - we need to strike a balance between ensuring correct performance in the short-term, and ensuring a player can continue to perform correctly in the longer term. That is, unless we can make OOTP smarter about this kind of stuff.
[/list]

Outstanding post, thank you.

Unless there is a keystroke error in entering a player's rating, I think it is best to not be hasty in knocking down/bumping up player ratings, especially in light of the fact that OOTP IS using a new aging model in v14.

I have data for just one league (but 99 years worth) and in that league the playing time for shortstops and second basemen over a career was greatly reduced in comparison to version 13.

Different from RL, I have a large number of 3B in my HOF (my standards, not OOTP's) but very few SS/2Bmen where I define the position of entry as the most appearances at an IF position if IF appearances > OF appearances. In version 13, I had many more SS/2B enter the HOF.

On this limited data, I am inclined to believe that the aging modifier may be too harsh on reducing IF skills. If that is the case, then arbitrarily reducing IF ratings due to an eyeball catch will exacerbate an effect which has been newly introduced to the game.

[GMLoophole]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

Every time I see this thread's title I think it says, "Robinson Crusoe in OOTP 14".

Ha, kind of like the Yanks' lineup most nights this year

[injury log]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

Even if Beltre's debatable, I can't see how there could be much debate that Utley or Longoria having a 190 range is just plain wrong.

If these ratings are holdovers from when I adjusted fielding ratings a couple of years ago, then they would have been based on 2009-2011 fielding stats, along with other data (Fielding Bible rankings, for example). If you look at that time period on FanGraphs, and rank players by total Range Runs (runs saved solely because of range), the top infielders (1B/2B/SS/3B) are:

1. Evan Longoria
2. Adrian Beltre
3. Chase Utley
4. Elvis Andrus
5. Ian Kinsler
6. Ryan Zimmerman
7. Dustin Pedroia
8. Brendan Ryan
9. Chone Figgins
10. Alexei Ramirez

If you do the same ranking for just the 2013 season, the top infielders are:

1. Manny Machado
2. Andrelton Simmons
3. Nolan Arenado
4. Evan Longoria
5. Dustin Pedroia
6. Josh Donaldson
7. Alcides Escobar
8. Mike Moustakas
9. Mike Napoli
10. Todd Frazier

though Ben Zobrist and Chase Utley, two names who have shown up in this thread, are 11th and 12th.

Range Runs is not a rate stat, so (above average) players with more playing time have an advantage. I understand all the caveats about sabermetric fielding stats, so I mention this just to point out that there is at least some evidence that these guys should be rated as elite defenders.

There are a few difficulties we run into when assigning fielding ratings. Fielding ratings are different from, say, batting ratings in that no one understands just what statistical output to expect from a given rating. A player with 50/100 Power is a guy we know will hit about 16 HR in a year. I think only Markus knows just what the difference is between a 100/100 IF Range shortstop and a 60/100 shortstop. I think we also need to make it harder to play shortstop to begin with - that is, the IF Arm threshold needs to be higher (or perhaps the influence of IF Arm on the SS rating needs to be higher). We made very small progress with those thresholds this year, but because of league conversion issues, it's not easy to persuade Markus to make any significant changes. But the current model allows most elite-fielding 2B to become elite-fielding SS, and that's just clearly wrong.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by injury log

There are several reasons to be careful about lowering defensive ratings here:

• It's not correct to compare, say, IF Range ratings with Contact ratings. Markus hasn't designed them to be on the same kind of scale. For most batting ratings, 50/100 is intended to be around average. For fielding ratings, that is not the case (for better or worse). I'm just going by memory here, but I have a table of median component fielding ratings by position somewhere on my computer that I can dig up. But I think you'll find in a default fictional league that the median IF Range rating of a big league 2B is around 67/100. So while a green batting rating is a really good thing to see, a green fielding rating is just around average, at least at some positions. This makes sense in a way at a position like SS; to play SS at all, a player needs a 40/100 Range rating, so a 40/100 IF Range rating is a lot like a 0/100 Power rating, say. And that means IF Range for SS only spans the values from 40-100, meaning it makes some sense for the average to be around 70/100. I'd prefer a different model where all ratings were more comparable to each other, but that's not what we have to work with.

Good stuff again. Somehow I'd completely missed Utley being high when looking at fielding metrics. Maybe I just figured he wouldn't be given his injury issues and then proceeded to mentally filter him out to match my preconceived misconception

To further discuss the first point in your original post, which seems to be most important:

I think it's unlikely that fielding ratings are actually designed on a different scale than batting ratings, as you hypothesize. At any rate, I'd need some documentary evidence to be convinced of it.

The main reason that it seems unlikely is how the fielding ratings actually show up in game. First that they show up using the same color coding for each value range as the hitting ratings. There's no difference at all. Second, the fielding ratings also show up as 1-10, 1-20 or 1-100 values using exactly the same conversions as the batting ratings.

If in fact if this quote is true "a green fielding rating is just around average, at least at some positions" then you're essentially saying that there's a contradiction between the fielding and hitting ratings.

Thus it would follow that the color displayed on fielding ratings is wrong. This could be either due to a bug, or maybe because Markus just didn't bother to fix the color coding. But if that's true then it seems to logically follow that you also have to assume that the fielding ratings as displayed are also incorrect since both for batting and fielding ratings. the in game conversion of the real 1-200 ratings consistently occurs on the exact same scale for both batting and fielding ratings.

So it could be true of course, that the fielding and batting ratings use different scales and the fielding ratings are simply displaying the incorrect color and overall rating, but I don't see any reason to assume that it's true.

Mostly because, if this was how things are supposed to work, it'd have been simple for Markus to adjust the conversion scale so that the fielding ratings displayed in game in on the same scale as the hitting ratings even if the 'real' ratings in the editor in fact needed to be significantly different for both batting and fielding. Clearly he didn't make any such adjustment, which leads me to understand that the fielding and batting rating scales in game are actually identical.

From what I can see the reason you're assuming the color coding and overall ratings for defense must then be wrong is that fictional leagues' median defensive ratings tend out to be fairly high.

Isn't it more likely that if the ratings generated in fictional leagues are that high they're simply being created too high by accident or due to old coding that hasn't been updated? My memory is hazy but wasn't there something this year where the game needed to downgrade contact ratings in league that had been created under 13?

I hope this post makes sense, I'm not feeling well and have had a long day. Reading it over again I feel like I may not be explaining my logic clearly enough. If that's true then I'm sorry, I'll try again tomorrow.

Of course it may just be faulty logic. If so feel free to pick holes in it

Either way, it seems that we may need Markus to weigh in on this at some point.

[VanillaGorilla]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

I hope this post makes sense, I'm not feeling well and have had a long day. Reading it over again I feel like I may not be explaining my logic clearly enough. If that's true then I'm sorry, I'll try again tomorrow.

This post does make sense, and I hope you are feeling better, quickly.

I think you are missing part of what IL is saying. I do not mean to speak for IL, but this is what I got from his post:

Since the IF ratings are not position specific, the ranges of the 2B/SS will have a higher median than 50. Because the median is higher this will result in much worse play for a corner IFer being converted to a MI position by the very nature of the OOTP structure which compares abilities of players to the league population and then introduces selected historical (or user selected) modifiers to produce resultant outcomes.

Since the IF ratings are not broken down as MI and corner IF (as HR power and gap power are for hitters), there is no way that a median range for a MI should be 50. If 2B/SS were graded as separate entity, then, ok.

As far as 2B playing SS too well, I think some modifier on how the poor armed SS handles balls to the 56 hole is where the adjustment should take place (if it is not taking place already). A competent 2B will make plays on balls in front of him and to his left much in the same way he would make plays on balls to his right at the 2B position.

I do think the hit of the new aging modifiers need to be examined and their effects fully understood before wholesale markdowns of IF range ratings are made in order to get what seems to "look right". The results are what need to look right.

Cano, Pedroia, and Kinsler are all damn good 2Bmen. I think Pedroia is slightly better. I also think Kinsler and Cano, though different in their fielding games, are approximately equal in defensive value.

[RchW]

I also suspect that some of Cano's lower and more variable defensive stats might be a result of him cheating up the middle to compensate for Jeter's low range at SS. Kinsler has no such need with Andrus and Pedroia has has a mixed bag but also had some good SS.

[injury log]

The game's attitude to ratings scales was something that preoccupied me a bit early in beta this year. I started a thread about it in beta, and I've just bumped that, so it should be at the top of the pile there if you're interested in reading it.

I don't think there really is a coherent design approach to ratings - or at least, there isn't any longer. It's possible there was ages ago, but the entire pitching models and fielding models have since been changed, as have the maps between ratings and performance. There didn't seem much interest on beta in discussing that issue, but I think the game would be a lot more intuitive if it was easier to understand, at a glance, what a '60/100' rating means. It probably should mean 'above average', but in many cases it doesn't.

And... get well soon buddy!