How important is fielding?

[ANDYCOCHRANE]

This is a question regarding fielding. How important do you feel it is? Is it better to have, say, Abreu, Manny and Ortiz on your team for the offensive value they bring, regardless of the defensive shortcomings they may have? Or should you really try and minimse the damage and only have, say one of those players, despite losing offensively? I just want to know the best balance between the two.

[bkoron]

I feel it's very important at most positions. I would never have more than one 4 in the OF, if that. However, a 4 at 1B is not very important; there I look for low errors.

8)

[Play By The Rules]

4 in the OF will kill you.

I agree, 1B (or maybe 3B) is the best place to "hide" it.

Defense is VERY important.

[ANDYCOCHRANE]

I always try to draft very good defensive players, but sometimes wonder if I have missed out on a great player because of his defence and filled my team with good defenders but not great players. Obviously a team can't be all defence or all offense. I guess I am just looking for that killer team, which I have yet to find.

[JASEDOANE]

Defense is very important and probably the most misunderstood aspect of the TSN online game. While Errors are easy to see on your stat pages, X % fielding chances are not (if I recall you can see this on the CD-ROM). I think many people would be amazed at the # of baserunners and extra bases a bad defender gives up.

E ratings are more important for inf than range and range is more important for OF. I don't have my notes in front of me, but you especially have to be careful of 4 range corner OF's. The number of extra base hits they give up on the defensive fielding charts are...off the charts!