I'm a bit confused why Adrian Taylor has played so much better at SS vs Cesas Tapies.

Taylor's Ratings: 91-87-89-96
Tapies' ratings: 91-90-96-89

Taylor has played 3538.1 innings at SS, and has made 34 errors, 60 plus plays, 1 negative play and 278 double plays. That works out to making an error every 112.79 innings, a plus play every 63.92 innings, and a double play every 13.79 innings. RF is 5.58, fld accuracy is .986.

Tapies has played 1398.2 innings at SS, and has made 18 errors, 15 plus plays, 0 negative plays and 87 double plays. That works out to him making an error every 77.67 innings, a plus play every 93.21 innings, and a double play every 16 innings. RF is 5.24 and fldg accuracy is .978.

I would have assumed glove would be more important than throwing accuracy, or is this a case of just small sample size for Tapies?

I'd be interested to know what other people think about the plusplay rate.  I was under the impression that this statistic was a function of range and range only. With the exact same ranges, I have no way of understanding such a drastic difference (50%) in plusplay rate. Is Taylor faster than Tapies???  I was under the impression that speed was ONLY a factor in baserunning and not in the field (even though that's definitely not how it is in real life, I thought I read that was the way the HBD engine functions).  So based on these stats, I hypothesize that Taylor is faster, and therefore plusplays are calculated as not simply range by itself but as a function of range multiplied by some factor of speed?

Personally, I'm surprised that Tapies' plus rate isn't as high as Taylor's.  That said, it's about a season's worth, right?  Maybe he catches up in his next 1500 innings or so.  I would guess their error rates would be about the same, but maybe I'm with you that I don't appreciate the importance of arm accuracy as well.

Speed is not a defensive stat.

Errors:  Glove and arm accuracy
+/- plays:  Range and arm strength

So why Is taylor making 50% more plus plays per inning than Tapies despite having equal range and worse arm strength? Shouldn't Tapies be making fewer errors too?

Because the game works that way.   The guy with 85 power doesn't always hit more homers than the guy with 75 power even if all other ratings are the same.

Posted by pjfoster13 on 2/5/2014 2:04:00 PM (view original):
I'd be interested to know what other people think about the plusplay rate.  I was under the impression that this statistic was a function of range and range only. With the exact same ranges, I have no way of understanding such a drastic difference (50%) in plusplay rate. Is Taylor faster than Tapies???  I was under the impression that speed was ONLY a factor in baserunning and not in the field (even though that's definitely not how it is in real life, I thought I read that was the way the HBD engine functions).  So based on these stats, I hypothesize that Taylor is faster, and therefore plusplays are calculated as not simply range by itself but as a function of range multiplied by some factor of speed?

Arm strength also factors into plus plays.

Amos Taylor used to play CF for me.  He had SS ratings, and he racked up a ton of plus plays in CF.  Examining boxscores one season, it seemed as though they could be attributed to arm rather than range, as most of them  were coming on singles.  His arm was preventing runners from going first to third, from second to home, or from trying to stretch a single into a double.  ADMIN confirmed that in a ticket (if they can be believed).

Posted by MikeT23 on 2/5/2014 2:47:00 PM (view original):
Because the game works that way.   The guy with 85 power doesn't always hit more homers than the guy with 75 power even if all other ratings are the same.

Yep.  Statistical variance.

Over time, it should normalize to expected results.