I've got a prospect who I plan on calling up next season with no obvious defensive home. Ideally he'd be 2B or LF but I already have a young 2B. DH is filled with a bat only guy. I have a good defensive 3B that I can trade to open up a spot for him.

I'm basically looking at 3 guys for 3B/LF/RF as I have 2 guys I've been using in LF/RF that could possibly move to 3B. My question is who plays where...and is the prospect's arm too weak for 3B? The 3 players' fielding ratings are:
Range/Glove/Arm/Acc
Prospect: 79/71/55-57/65 (exact arm TBD after offseason)
COF1: 68/66/75/72
COF2: 62/65/69/67

Thanks in advance

And to clarify, the 2 COF are 24 and 25 pre-arb power bats. My 3 and 4 hitters. My existing 3B has underperformed offensively and will be in his 2nd arb year...which makes him the most obvious trade candidate.

All 3 will struggle defensively at 3B. The only one that you could somewhat justify it with is COF1, and that is if he can REALLY hit.

Agreed with strikeout, and yes the prospect's arm is too weak for 3B.

IMO, the prospect is stuck to LF/1B. I'd have a difficult time playing the 71 glove at 2B.

Great, thanks for the advice. Might look at alternative trade scenarios now.

Posted by strikeout26 on 7/8/2018 2:50:00 PM (view original):
IMO, the prospect is stuck to LF/1B. I'd have a difficult time playing the 71 glove at 2B.

2B don't make that many errors, 71 glove is close enough to the par of 75 where it barely makes any difference. 79 range gets an absence of plus plays but will barely ever get a minus

PJ, your logic seems to make sense to me about arm strength. Do you think it's is safe to assume that the average arm strength listed on the position assignment page (i.e. 75 for 3B) represents a guy who will wind up roughly neutral in the sim for what you refer to as hidden plus/minus plays? On an overall net basis, an 80 arm would then deliver hidden plus plays and 70 would deliver hidden minus plays.

I appreciate both sides of the discussion, so thanks to you both. Intuitively a lot of what PJ is saying makes sense, but it also wouldn't surprise me if the impact isn't that significant as bripat says. It's too bad we don't have more data to work with...range factor could be a partial indicator I suppose. Or remove putouts from range factor and calculate assists per 9. That would only be relevant if you were looking at 2 players with the same pitching staff though.

Actually, to go back to the original post (in a way), at one time my team had four COFs. The team wasn't very good, and I wanted them all in the lineup, so I put the one with the best arm/glove combo at 3B. He was only adequate, but the lesser amount of plays at 3B hid him a little, and he actually won a Silver Slugger 3B that season. Never did anything else for the rest of his career.