infield v. outfield defense

[frog17]

Which do you think is more important as far as keepig your runs against average low?

More specifically, would you rather have 1's at 1b and 3b and 3's in the corner outfield spots or vice versa?

[Mean Dean]

Definitely much more important to have the defense at corner OF than corner IF, because bad-range OF give up lots of extra base hits. This is doubly true if the bad-range corner IF have good e-ratings, as e-ratings are a relatively more important aspect of defense at those positions. However, even if that isn't the case, it's still true.

[frog17]

I asked this question because of a comment that Joe Morgan made during the Mets game the other night. He said infield defense makes great teams (or something along those lines) and is much more important than OF defense. I wondered if this were true, because Joe Morgan says some crazy stuff sometimes, and if it was true, was it also true for Strat?

[Mean Dean]

Defense at 2B and SS is extremely important in SOM. It's defense at 1B and 3B that, relatively speaking, is not nearly as important. (And again, a bad range rating at 1B/3B can be softened by a good e-rating -- this is not true at 2B/SS, where range far outweighs errors.)

If you want to see this quantified, you can check out [url=http://andrew-stevens.tripod.com/index/stratfield.html]this article[/url]. It tells you how to figure out the "defensive OPS against" of a player, which you can then subtract from his offensive OPS to get his total worth.

[frog17]

The article sounds good. After I've got some coffee in my, I will sit down and try to get through the math.

Thinking really isn't my strong suit. :D

Same goes for good hygiene. :P

[zonachoke]

I'd rather have the 1s in LF & RF... but how would I obtain them? You couldn't tell corner OF defense was important by its availability, especially in conjunction with offense & injury protection.

I've been playing SOM 20 years and this is the first year in my memory in which all the OF rated as 1s in a corner OF position also play CF (at a 1 or 2). In other words, there are NO exclusively-corner OF rated as 1s. In the 80s and 90s, there were tons of them... Dave Parker, Dwight Evans, Jesse Barfield... even a young Pittsburgh Pirate named Barry Bonds. SOM doesn't grade on a curve. If MLB managers insist on playing a whole lot of 3s and 4s in the corner OF positions, SOM will continue to rate them accordingly.

There's even a shortage of 2s. Look at all the LF in SOMO 2007. Put them in descending order of OPS and you'll find only 2 of the top 34 are 2s. #35 is Crawford (who'll play CF as often as he plays LF in SOMO). And apart from Crawford, the only LF-1/LF-2 with 600 AB+BB injury protection is Randy Winn. Only a few RF-1/RF-2 had 600 or more AB+BB: Ichiro (also a CF-1), Winn, Austin Kearns, Gary Matthews Jr (also a 2 in CF), and Jeff Francoeur. Ugh!

Compare this to 3B. Six 1s at 3B. Half are injury protected. All are exclusively 3B, except Beltre, whose 4e41 rating at 2B makes 3B his only rational position. Most hit .280+ and SLG .460+.

Bottom line... LF/RF defense is important, but I'm not going to give away umpteen loads of offense to get it. This season, my LF/RF starters are rated 4/3... and I use a 2 as a late-game sub in LF. I'm sure lots of owners will be using that setup in SOM 2007.

[JdEarly]

The set up with 3's and 4's in the corner outfield positions will probably be a popular approach for this set. I'm starting my first team with a premium put on defense all over the diamond - my starting outfielders are Endy Chavez (lf-1e1), Chris Duffy (cf-1e?) and Ryan Freel (rf-2e9). We'll see how this goes. Offense isn't going to be insane with this club, as most of it is built around speed, doubles, and reasonable OBP.

I, too, was surprised at the relative lack of defensive studs at the corner outfield positions, but it makes sense when you look at the current Major League rosters. A lot of teams are playing would-be DH's in the field (Barry Bonds, Carlos Lee, for example) and SOM absolutely should not grade on a curve. That would throw their goal of realistic replay ability right out the window.