I'm no expert and there are better people to answer this but, I don't worry myself too much with defense. Other than Shortstop and Catcher,it doesn't really matter. I try to avoid "D" rated defense at every position, but a "C" doesn't worry me. I like range. Other than 3rd and 1st, Atleast a "B" is what I look for. Bad range at SS, 2B, and OF will give the opponent a lot more hits. And this might not be true, but I feel like +,- plays happen a little bit more than errors over the season (unless you have a bad defending SS and/or Catcher)

Also, the "Celebrating the Best of SLB" is pretty up to date. It has good info on this stuff

Good defense saves pitchers and allows for you to prevent hits. It's really a balancing act as good defense tends to cost more than poor defense. But first you have to understand how WIS does defense. Defense is broken out into 2 components on the site: Fielding and Range.

Fielding is always the simplest for me to understand, as it is essentially fielding percentage - or roughly the number of errors that you can expect your guy to make. Since errors are a known stat, you can easily see the difference of an A rated fielder with few errors and a high fielding percentage as compared to a D rated fielder with many errors and a lower fielding percentage.

Range is a whole different animal. WIS used a relative range factor system to determine range. This relative range factor determines whether or not the fielder will reach the ball. NOTE: Speed or SB numbers DO NOT factor into this...it is solely the range of the fielder.

The way it works is when a ball is put into play, WIS determines where it is hit...as an example, lets say it is a fly ball to CF. WIS then uses the Relative Range Factor of the player to determine if that player can reach the ball to make an out. If you CF has a high relative range factor then he will get to more balls than a CF with a lower RRF. Each player's RRF can be found by in the player search by choosing the RRF - OF stat category - FYI the letter grades give you an estimate, but not all A+ (or D- for that matter) are created equally). Once the sim determines if he can get to the ball or not, his fielding percentage comes into play to see if an error is made or not.

In my example, let's say your CF is 1984 Kirby Puckett. His RRF is listed as 3.49, one of the highest on the site for OF. Kirby will get to more balls and thus turn more would be hits into outs (+ plays in the game). If your CF were 1992 Rickey Henderson, he would make far fewer + plays as his RRF is only 2.18 even though his speed is higher than Kirby's. That makes sense you say because Kirby has an A+ range and Rickey has a C+ range and you are correct, but note that all letter grades are not equal, as 1980 Rickey Henderson is rates A+, but his RRF is only 2.87, so by the way WIS does defense, 1980 Rickey will not be as good defensively in CF as 1984 Kirby.

The other aspect of defense is that WIS normalizes it to the era of the pitcher on the mound. So pitchers from older eras where the fielding percentages are lower will make your whole team play worse defensively compared to pitchers of the modern era where fielding percentages are higher. I'll admit I'm not 100% sure how this works, but is another thing to keep in mind.

There is much debate as to truly how important defense is. Some swear all the + plays and the lack of - plays helps you to be able to draft less good pitchers or fewer IP. Some say it doesn't matter how bad of a defender a player is when he has a 1.15 OPS and hits 45 HRs. It is a big debate. My advice is to determine which strategy you want to use. Also, I would try to avoid any D- fielding or range, as these players tend to perform very poorly defensively in the sim. Also, playing players out of position tends to be a terrible idea as well as WIS uses a defensive spectrum to determine just how bad a player would be playing out of position.

Hope it helps...and good luck.

I agree with frazzman80's comments and analysis here, and his factual information is of course correct. 

There is a good deal of debate on the WIS site about how important defense is, and I think it might be one of the topics on which there is least consensus. 

Maybe two years ago (?) contrarian23 experimented with a highly skilled defensive team as a strategy, with, if I remember correctly, good results, though I think he decided more experimentation was needed before any conclusions could be definitively drawn. I may be remembering incorrectly or have missed subsequent results. 

Our old, deceased friend pfattkatt, on the other hand, who never tired of tinkering with winning strategies, wrote me many times that he was convinced that defense was of very little importance. 

But you are asking great questions here kiznev1 and refreshing some of our memories. It is good to have you and other new owners on the site and keep asking please. 

Posted by frazzman80 on 11/3/2015 9:17:00 AM (view original):
Good defense saves pitchers and allows for you to prevent hits. It's really a balancing act as good defense tends to cost more than poor defense. But first you have to understand how WIS does defense. Defense is broken out into 2 components on the site: Fielding and Range.

Fielding is always the simplest for me to understand, as it is essentially fielding percentage - or roughly the number of errors that you can expect your guy to make. Since errors are a known stat, you can easily see the difference of an A rated fielder with few errors and a high fielding percentage as compared to a D rated fielder with many errors and a lower fielding percentage.

Range is a whole different animal. WIS used a relative range factor system to determine range. This relative range factor determines whether or not the fielder will reach the ball. NOTE: Speed or SB numbers DO NOT factor into this...it is solely the range of the fielder.

The way it works is when a ball is put into play, WIS determines where it is hit...as an example, lets say it is a fly ball to CF. WIS then uses the Relative Range Factor of the player to determine if that player can reach the ball to make an out. If you CF has a high relative range factor then he will get to more balls than a CF with a lower RRF. Each player's RRF can be found by in the player search by choosing the RRF - OF stat category - FYI the letter grades give you an estimate, but not all A+ (or D- for that matter) are created equally). Once the sim determines if he can get to the ball or not, his fielding percentage comes into play to see if an error is made or not.

In my example, let's say your CF is 1984 Kirby Puckett. His RRF is listed as 3.49, one of the highest on the site for OF. Kirby will get to more balls and thus turn more would be hits into outs (+ plays in the game). If your CF were 1992 Rickey Henderson, he would make far fewer + plays as his RRF is only 2.18 even though his speed is higher than Kirby's. That makes sense you say because Kirby has an A+ range and Rickey has a C+ range and you are correct, but note that all letter grades are not equal, as 1980 Rickey Henderson is rates A+, but his RRF is only 2.87, so by the way WIS does defense, 1980 Rickey will not be as good defensively in CF as 1984 Kirby.

The other aspect of defense is that WIS normalizes it to the era of the pitcher on the mound. So pitchers from older eras where the fielding percentages are lower will make your whole team play worse defensively compared to pitchers of the modern era where fielding percentages are higher. I'll admit I'm not 100% sure how this works, but is another thing to keep in mind.

There is much debate as to truly how important defense is. Some swear all the + plays and the lack of - plays helps you to be able to draft less good pitchers or fewer IP. Some say it doesn't matter how bad of a defender a player is when he has a 1.15 OPS and hits 45 HRs. It is a big debate. My advice is to determine which strategy you want to use. Also, I would try to avoid any D- fielding or range, as these players tend to perform very poorly defensively in the sim. Also, playing players out of position tends to be a terrible idea as well as WIS uses a defensive spectrum to determine just how bad a player would be playing out of position.

Hope it helps...and good luck.

I believe the old-time "deadball" pitchers cause more errors because they strike out like 1-2 people per 9 innings vs the newer guys that strike out 6-9. But then again, the engine does say that the out is pre-determind

Outs are predetermined in that an out is declared before the type of out is declared.

However, in the process of resolving an out, the chance for an error or a (-) play still occurs and can remove the out, just as on a non-HR hit a (+) play can take away that hit.

Pitcher's year is still a factor in calculating defensive proficiency regardless. If you have deadball pitchers your fielders will field worse.

Wouldn't it be true then that all low K pitchers cause fielding to be worse, not just deadballers, due to more balls in play?

Deadballers had many poor defensive players on the field. Is that taken into account?

Thanks a lot for all the great information! I really appreciate it!

Have a great day!

From the knowledge base, article 765:

We also use Log5 normalization for fielding and determining errors. The 4 key pieces here are: fielder's fielding percentage (FPCT), the league average from the fielder's season at the position, the league average from the hitter's season at the position and the league average from the pitcher's season at the position. 

Deadball pitchers allow more errors precisely because they played in an era when fielding percentages were much worse than they are today.  It has nothing to do with the number with of strikeouts allowed.

https://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?TopicID=487301&ThreadID=10758817#l_10758817

I think frazzman presents a very good overview answer to the original question. The bottom line is that you can win with good defense, bad defense, good range, and bad range.

Posted by DoctorKz on 11/3/2015 11:07:00 PM (view original):
Wouldn't it be true then that all low K pitchers cause fielding to be worse, not just deadballers, due to more balls in play?

Yes, it would, in terms of errors/game, but not fielding percentage. Fewer Ks = more chances = more errors. Simple math. But deadballers are also directly causing worse fielding via the sim's calculations, as posted above.

It should definitely be stated that high-K pitchers are a decent way to hide bad defense. And indeed, unless my defense is awful I don't even look at a pitcher's strikeout rate.

Thanks, everyone!