So I have somewhat of a conundrum. I have the convenient circumstance of owning an A/A 1B, an A-/B- 1B, and a D/D+ 3B. Between them, I'd like them to play 1B, 3B and RF. My understanding based on this: http://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?topicID=376099 thread is that whoever I play out of position will gain a 2% penalty in awesomeness + 4% per step along the chain thingy. My vague estimation is that 3b will be the most important position, and as such intuitively I want to play the A/A 1B there, and play the D/D+ 3B at RF. That said, I'm playing an A/A+ OF at 3B in a different league and he is really terrible, and 1B being further along the chain I'd expect it to be even worse. Should I just play the D guy there and be done with it? Mostly I don't have a great intuitive understanding of how big a deal a 2% decrease in awesomeness actually is for a fielder in practice.

On a vaguely related note, given e.g. an A/B guy and a B/A guy, which one should play CF and which LF? I don't normally end up with multiple competent OFs so this is somewhat strange.

I think any of your 3 guys will be about the same at 3B. So I would play the A/A guy at 1B, since he might get a few + plays there, and then play the other 1B guy in RF.

CF is probably a toss-up. If the B/A is a high-A (RRF of like 2.7 or something) I would put him in CF. He'll get a few + plays that way, and it should cancel out a couple extra errors. Otherwise if he's a low-A, I'd put him in LF since the CF will get more chances and you want the A fielder there.

I currently have these four OF'ers in  a prog: A+/C (A Ethier), A/C (C Hart), C/A (Adam Jones), and B/D+ (Ichiro.)  Any reason NOT to have them aligned as so?:

A+/C:  CF
A/C: LF
C/A: RF 

B/D+: only in RF when he's not DHing.   I was considering Jones for CF because of his better range but afraid the C fielding will hurt him.

Id say play the a/a 1b in rf and the other 2 at their natural positions. Play the a/b of in cf and b/a in lf.

you can use this tool and the known penalties you referenced above to calculate the transition:

So, for example, your A/A 1B at assuming he's historical average and with historical average pitching would transition to 3B thusly:

(.989*.98)=.969 for out of position, and then transitioning to 3B (.96922*.96*.96)=.893 for the moves backwards on the scale. So, you'll have a .893 FLD 3B. If that's better than the FLD of your current D/D+ guy, then go with him, otherwise, keep the D/D+ guy there. Of course, don't forget to factor the normalization into it as well. If he's an .893 fielder from the modern era and your other guy is an .880 fielder from the deadball era, you might want to just stick with the D/D+ guy anyhow. The link above also allows you to run some scenarios to see how many errors each would likely make in different playing environments. I usually use the historic averages for the hitter and pitcher fields and the specific years for the fielders I'm comparing, but if you know more specifically what kind of environment of hitters and pitchers you'll be facing you could customize it better for your needs.

And you can use this tool to estimate chances (you have to half the chances as it counts both teams in this snapshot).

So, using the example above, your A/A 1B (assuming historical average) at 3B would become a .893 3B and commit 58 errors. Whereas an .880 FLD D/D fielding 3B from 1897 would become a .907 FLD 3B committing 51 errors.

Thanks everyone. I think I roughly understand it better now. I will leave the D/D+ guy at 3b.