I have this young player:
Vic Dunston
His defensive ratings are almost good enough to play short full time: 86/84/85/73(!)
Because his bat is also pretty decent, I've been willing to take a chance and give him innings at short, expecting him to get a fair amount of throwing errors. And the errors certainly are pilling up (13 in 370 innings at SS, 2 in 200 innings at 2nd) but almost all of them are errors fielding the ball. Only two of the 15 errors are throwing errors.
Before anyone screams small sample size, this was the case last year also (his glove was less developed so it wasn't as surprising). But I am open to the possibility that this is just a freak occurrence over 65 games that could balance out over the course of a full season or two.
Putting the small sample size issue aside for now, my two part question:
Is the 84 glove really bad enough to cause significant fielding errors? If it is you can stop reading.
If it isn't, is there some sort of cumulative response in the game code regarding fielding. As if the code sees his below average arm accuracy and imposes a penalty on his defense in general?
I had always imagined the game engine was a step by step python (or php or whatever) code that, after determining a ball was in play at a certain fielder, essentially dice rolled the play, with outcomes weighted by the individual ratings (1. does he get to it, 2. does he field it, 3. etc). This could still be the case, but Dunston's situation makes me think that the impact the defensive ratings have is cumulative and that a shortstop with 100 range and 100 glove and a 60/60 arm would make a ton of errors fielding the ball before he even gets a chance to throw it away.
Maybe this is something you all already know and I didn't get until now. Thoughts?
2/19/2016 5:48 PM (edited)