I was looking at some fielding stats in a Champ's league and saw both leagues' Gold Glovee 2B was 1887 King Kelly. One of them had 50 "+" plays. I clicked on his profile and saw his real life D-/A+ rating and figured oh, he must make a boatload of errors with a real life fielding % of .920. But nope, this one made only 25 errors starting 162 games at 2B.

His sim fielding % was .972. Other 2B in this league who finished with .972 fielding included 2017 Cesar Hernandez (real life .981%, B) and 2019 Whit Merrifield (real life .979%, B-).

There are three other 1887 King Kellys in this league, not quite as good defensively as the one above but still with impressive fielding relative to that real life .920:

.966
.960
.955

I've never used him, probably never even had him come up in a search because I usually exclude D- fielders.

What am I missing? What's the explanation here?

P.S. We're into the second round of the playoffs. Mine is the only team out of four without 1887 Kelly.

Don’t know - but in contrarian’s new progressive that’s been fielding players from 1899-1905 so far, we’ve seen lower error rates than you’d expect as well.

I would guess the one with the best fielding percentage was behind a modern pitching staff, but yeah, that's way fewer errors than I'd expect a D- fielder to make at second base. Perhaps I need to rethink some things about 19th century players.

He’s one of my faves. But man, the secret’s out.

Modern pitchers make a big difference. With deadballers pitching in front of him he’ll make errors around his RL error rate (maybe better, maybe worse depending on the year they’re from relative to 1887), but with modern pitchers, he’ll perform significantly better defensively. To the tune of twice as many + plays as errors. This is true for all deadball fielders.

1897 Bill Joyce, 1889 Lou Bierbauer, and 1888 Walt Wilmot are some of my favorites for this reason.

Yeah, the best King Kelly from my post above played with an all-21st century pitching staff. But the other three (who also fielded way better than their real life numbers) played on teams with only deadball starting pitchers.

It looks like his rating is wrong. He's rated as a D-, but his FLD% at 2B is .920, average NL 2B in 1887 was .908. So it looks like he should be around a D+/C- rated fielder.

Compare his RL FLD% to other NL fielders from 1887:

Ezra Sutton with a D rating has a RL .888 FLD%
Buck Ewing with a D rating has a RL .885%
Fred Pfeffer with a D+ has a .917%
Pop Smith with a D+ has a .914%
Jerry Denny with a D- has an .847%
Tom Daly with a D- has an .832%
Ed Andrews with the highest FLD% of any D- rated fielder not named Kelly has a .875%
Danny Richards is the only C- rated NL 2B from 1887 and he has a RL .928%

I've also copied this info into a ticket

Posted by just4me on 12/11/2020 12:47:00 PM (view original):
It looks like his rating is wrong. He's rated as a D-, but his FLD% at 2B is .920, average NL 2B in 1887 was .908. So it looks like he should be around a D+/C- rated fielder.

Compare his RL FLD% to other NL fielders from 1887:

Ezra Sutton with a D rating has a RL .888 FLD%
Buck Ewing with a D rating has a RL .885%
Fred Pfeffer with a D+ has a .917%
Pop Smith with a D+ has a .914%
Jerry Denny with a D- has an .847%
Tom Daly with a D- has an .832%
Ed Andrews with the highest FLD% of any D- rated fielder not named Kelly has a .875%
Danny Richards is the only C- rated NL 2B from 1887 and he has a RL .928%

I've also copied this info into a ticket

8.5.5

Historical Average 2B is .968%

Using the normalization tool, Kelly's FLD2B# is .958, but when you search the draft center, his FLD2B# is .916%. A .916 would translate to a D-, but a .958 would be a D+/C- (right on the border and I'm not quite sure where that line is drawn).

So, the error appears to be in his normalized stat, which is driving the rating.

Give 'em all a break. They were wearing glorified mittens. It's a miracle they caught anything.

https://blog.library.si.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/spalding-baseball-1916-page-25-703x1024.jpg