a few that come to mind are -

1. clemente fielding...i always heard he was a great right fielder.....not according to sim.
2. bill russell. - basketball - he gets 70s for defense most seasons.....70 is very good but he is behind a lot of centers who get 90 - 100...it defies the history of basketball.

im sure there are many more of these anomalies.

3 that come to mind for me due to my familiarity with them are Omar Vizquel, Roberto Alomar, and Ken Griffey, Jr. Here are 3 guys that collectively have 31 gold gloves, and routinely made difficult plays look easy, yet their ratings are weird. You'll have something like A/C or B/B, even in gold glove years. What is more puzzling to me, is how can a guy be an A fielder but have a C range? If a guy fields at an A level, to me that is saying he's making plays left and right, which would include having the range to make the difficult plays. All 3 of these guys had the range in their primes.
The basketball sim is just horrible, I stopped playing that. You have nonsense like James Harden having a higher defensive rating than Bill Russell lol.

Fielding is how well they field the ball. Range is the balls they get to. Jeter is a perfect example. He always made the plays on balls hit right too him, but struggled massively to get to anything hit to his left or right. Hence the nickname Derek "Past a Diving" Jeter.

Alomar is a guy that has always baffled me. Just from watching him, especially early in his career with the Jays, he seemed to have great range, yet he has a couple D-'s in the SIM.

larry bowa also seems to get short thrift on range..

Reggie Jackson is Mister Spring Training

IIRC, Range is based on range factor per 9 from baseball-reference. And for a lot of his seasons,his range factor was below league average. So that’s why he has a lot of “C” or below range seasons

Yes, range in the SIM has nothing at all to do with how much ground a guy could cover in real life, or how fast he was. When the ball is hit to a fielder and he turns that batted ball into a defensive out, his range factor goes up. WIS calculates range using its own method, but it's generally close to what you'd see on BBR.

Using an extreme example, if Nolan Arenado plays this season and not one single ball is hit to him, his RRF will be 0.0 and he'd be rated D- for range in the SIM, even though in reality he's a tremendous 3B with very high range.

great stuff.......so a pitcher who throws fly balls and strikeouts could affect the RF of his infielders.

Yes, I explain how range works and why it's not really what we ask of it in this thread of mine (also found as a link in the FAQ thread): https://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?TopicID=490521&TopicsTimeframe=30

No argument about the SIM from me. But in terms of the real life abilities - Vin Scully once said of Clemente that he could catch a ball in New York and throw the guy out going to second in Pennsylvania. That was my impression watching him play. Only right fielder I ever saw who was as good was Dwight Evans.

Posted by italyprof on 3/23/2019 5:49:00 AM (view original):
No argument about the SIM from me. But in terms of the real life abilities - Vin Scully once said of Clemente that he could catch a ball in New York and throw the guy out going to second in Pennsylvania. That was my impression watching him play. Only right fielder I ever saw who was as good was Dwight Evans.

This raises the question of where outfield arm factors in, if anywhere.

In the SIM? OF arm doesn't factor in anywhere. Whether a runner is thrown out at any base on any event is weighted by the runner's Speed score and some other factor(s) to randomize the result. I don't know if this is 100% true, but I believe I remember a developer chat or something where it was stated a RF will have a smaller chance of throwing out a runner at 3B than a LF would, for example. The OF arm is not influential in the outcome.

Posted by skunk206 on 3/23/2019 7:00:00 PM (view original):
In the SIM? OF arm doesn't factor in anywhere. Whether a runner is thrown out at any base on any event is weighted by the runner's Speed score and some other factor(s) to randomize the result. I don't know if this is 100% true, but I believe I remember a developer chat or something where it was stated a RF will have a smaller chance of throwing out a runner at 3B than a LF would, for example. The OF arm is not influential in the outcome.

Seems like something they might have tried a little harder to get right ...

he said some other factors

None of which, apparently, is the actual ability of the outfielder in question to throw the ball.