After the new release, I decided to enter a team into an open league for only the third time ever. I wanted to quickly see what kind of an effect the new fielding rules would have. Based on how admin described the changes, I determined it would be advantageous to draft modern pitchers and deadball hitters with really good fielding percentages relative to their era.

The idea was that my hitters would get a boost because the opposing fielders would get penalized because of my deadball hitters factoring in to their errors numbers.

Also, my B- and C fielders would get bumped up defensively because of normalization (they are better than their peers from their era) and because of my modern pitchers. So, if the salary of my shortstop reflects 80 errors but because of how I drafted, my shortstop commits only 40 errors, I am getting value. I applied this to virtually all my hitters.

Also, I decided to test the theory that an A+ range fielder will make about 25-30 "+" plays, regardless of position. I was also told that there are no more A+++ players (i.e., all A+'s are created equally). I'm still a little skeptical of this.

Below are the results:

My starting lineup, by position:

1B: 1885 Cap Anson (D/A+) Real Life Fielding% = .958 (82 errors)
2B: 1886 Bid McPhee (C/A+) Real Life Fielding% = .939 (76 errors)
3B: 1887 Jerry Denny (C/A+) Real Life Fielding% = .889 (75 errors)
SS: 1887 Jack Glasscock (C/A+) Real Life Fielding% = .906 (94 errors)
OF: 1888 Tommy McCarthy (C/A+) Real Life Fielding% = .932 (25 errors)
OF: 1887 Harry Stovey (D+/A+) Real Life Fielding% = .902 (28 errors)
OF: 1890 Eddie Burke (D-/A+) Real Life Fielding% = .906 (40 errors)

My catcher was 1971 Thurman Munson (A+ arm) as I didn't want teams to steal alot of bases off of me.

Here are their regular season sim stats...

1B: 1885 Cap Anson - Fielding% = .992 (13 errors, 28 + plays)
2B: 1886 Bid McPhee - Fielding% = .986 (12 errors, 25 + plays, 1 - play)
3B: 1887 Jerry Denny - Fielding% = .953 (25 errors, 21 + plays, 1 - play)
SS: 1887 Jack Glasscock - Fielding% = .950 (42 errors, 15 + plays, 1 - play)
CF: 1888 Tommy McCarthy - Fielding% = .970 (11 errors, 20 + plays)
RF/LF: 1887 Harry Stovey - Fielding% = .985 (5 errors, 14 + plays)
LF: 1890 Eddie Burke - Fielding% = .980 (4 errors*, 15 + plays)

* Burke only played 111 games b/c I had a AAA outfielder who was significantly better than Burke offensively.

C: 1971 Thruman Munson threw out 36 of 56 runners (.643).

That's a total of 138 "+" plays and 3 "-" plays and 112 errors.

My starting rotation:

1994 Dennis Martinez (254 ip)
1998 Kenny Rogers (239 ip)
2006 Brandon Webb (235 ip)
1981 Bob Knepper (231 ip)

Bullpen

1977 Gene Garber (104 ip)
1959 Bobby Shantz (100 ip)
1998 Mike Maddux (56 ip)
1958 Hoyt Wilhelm (44 ip)

The rest of my team consisted of 200K players.

What was your record? I mean, it's a great control test for fielding, but did the value gained translate into wins?

My team played in the Astrodome. We spent $42.7 million on offense (7th most in the league) and $37.3 million on pitching.

We finished 8th in runs scored, 7.4% above average.

We finished 2nd in fewest runs allowed, 22% above average

Our team fielding percentage was .978 (average was .979).

Our team made 152 "+" playes compared to 9 "-" plays (although 6 of these 9 "-" plays were by my AAA outfielder).

The team finished 99-63 as we head into the playoffs.

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	RL	RL	RL	RL		Sim	Sim	Sim	Sim		Diff
Player	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS		AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS		OPS
Anson, Cap	0.310	0.357	0.461	0.819		0.339	0.389	0.495	0.884		0.065
Burke, Eddie	0.263	0.349	0.379	0.728		0.262	0.322	0.340	0.662		-0.066
Denny, Jerry	0.324	0.344	0.502	0.846		0.335	0.350	0.486	0.836		-0.010
Glasscock, Jack	0.294	0.361	0.360	0.722		0.303	0.351	0.365	0.716		-0.006
McCarthy, Tommy	0.274	0.328	0.331	0.659		0.277	0.319	0.346	0.664		0.005
McPhee, Bid	0.268	0.343	0.395	0.738		0.289	0.341	0.414	0.754		0.016
Munson, Thurman	0.251	0.335	0.368	0.703		0.246	0.336	0.349	0.686		-0.017
Stovey, Harry	0.286	0.366	0.421	0.787		0.255	0.324	0.331	0.656		-0.131

The above table shows my hitters real life and sim stats.

It's not easy trying to determine how much affect my deadball hitters had on my oppponents' defense. I'd have to go through game by game and count the errors.

Overall, I'd say that my hitting did pretty well considering that I was playing in the Astrodome.

When I benched Burke, Stovey was hitting much better than he finished at (and Burke was much worse than he finished). And my AAA outfielder was over .300. Eventually, the AAA OF slumped and I re-inserted Burke back into the lineup, where he picked it up. It appears that I should have benched Stovey.

So did you come to any conclusions?

It certainly looks like they fielded better than they should have.

Thank you. Food for thought here.

Conclusion: Deadball hitters who are relatively good fielders are undervalued - if you draft modern pitchers.

That seems more than reasonable compared to what we had in the past.

I tried out a few deadballers: 156 game stats

RF 1888 Jimmy Ryan (D/B) sim stats: Fielding% = .943 (17 errors and 14 + plays)

1B 1890 Harry Stovey (D/D-) sim stats: Fielding% = .989 (18 errors, 2+ and 14- plays) ouch

2B 1894 Heinie Reitz (B/C+) sim stats: Fielding% = .986 (11 errors, 5+ and 4- plays) ok



I'm going to add this players stats because it was an improvement over real life:

3B 1965 Dick Allen (C/D+) sim stats: Fielding% = .946 (25 errors and 10- plays) lol



I'm in 1st place in my division with 83 wins... thanks to 95 Maddux and 96 Kevin Brown. But, my big suprise is Jimmy Ryan's offensive stats using AT&T Park: 54 2B, 30 HR, 144 RBI, .343 BA and 63 SB.

How badly does a deadball pitcher affect a team's performance?