I remember reading a thread which asserted that catcher's range ratings have no bearing on the catcher's performance...or ? Opinions, please? I couldn't find the original thread. Thank you for your input.

Catcher range is almost meaningless. I once did a study and found one catcher plus play in 5 leagues. The only way I see it meaning much is if you plan to play your catcher out of position.

even further, how importat is catchers fielding? I usually look over the first two letters and look at the catchers arm.

Posted by chisox378 on 11/13/2011 7:53:00 PM (view original):
even further, how importat is catchers fielding? I usually look over the first two letters and look at the catchers arm.

As long as it isn't D-, it's almost as meaningless as a 1B fielding.

If you play the wrong Catcher you'll have a lot of passed balls.

Posted by chisox378 on 11/13/2011 7:53:00 PM (view original):
even further, how importat is catchers fielding? I usually look over the first two letters and look at the catchers arm.

I haven't really researched it, but I am guessing if you are using dead ball pitching, you should probably get a catcher with at least a c- fielding rating.

Posted by rbow923 on 11/13/2011 10:32:00 PM (view original):
If you play the wrong Catcher you'll have a lot of passed balls.

Any idea how many passed balls a D- glove will cause per season?

It depends on the catcher, but I couldn't tell you how to differentiate them. The random features of the game also come into play. But, the different letter ratings have varying significance. I look at baseball reference to get the actual numbers, and that gives a reasonable guesstimate. Keep in mind that PA numbers are prorated for 162 games, but all other numbers are raw numbers. I always proportion them out to 162 games, and guess from there. It is always a guess, performance histories also help. Generally they get less PBs than you might expect, but not always. I use dead ball era Cs quite frequently, those that normalize hitting well. Even those that have the appearance of good PB and E ratings might not have done as well as you might expect, based on the ratings. Get out your shovel and dig, dig, dig!!!