(OR WHY THE F*CK DOES JJ MCQUADE HAVE 16 ERRORS THIS SEASON)
A CALM AND POLITE INVESTIGATION
From the manual:
With Brieuc Becker being my primary SS since I came into the league, I've always kind of put up with what I thought was a high number of errors, and I accepted it as an OK trade off for his excellent range. Becker's infield error rating is currently 6, and as best as I can remember that's about what it's always been.Infield / Outfield Error
Error is a measure of how likely a defensive player is to commit an error. This rating includes both fielding errors (dropping or misplaying the ball) and throwing errors (pulling the first baseman off the bag, throwing inaccurately). The Error rating is inversely related to errors. That is, players with high Error ratings are less likely to commit errors. Players have separate ratings for infield and outfield error. These values can be fairly different, based on the player's experience.
Now, as you know I've recently acquired J.J. McQuade, he of the 11 infield error rating. "Finally, a SS who won't make errors!" I thought, naively. The errors came. And then more errors. And then last sim my team gave up 9 unearned runs. And so now I'm mad and confused! I should be working on HOF stuff for Ron, but no, McQuade and his 16 errors despite an 11 infield error rating has me all worked up.
*deep breath*
Here's everyone listed as a 2B, 3B or SS who has a minimum of 200 chances this season, INF ERR rating on the X and Fielding % on the Y.
Hmmm. Ok, maybe I need to up the minimum. 400 chances this time.
Huh. Oh! There's a couple first basemen in there. Ok, let's use a minimum of 300 assists.
Some numbers...small sample size yada yada yada...
INF ERR | FLD % |
---|---|
7 | .980 |
8 | .979 |
9 | .981 |
10 | .988 |
11 | .982 |
Despite the small sample size here, I'm really confused by the numbers. Now, it's not like I expect the guys with the 11 rating to never make errors. But I would expect to see a different trend here, since the manual is pretty clear about exactly what the INF ERR rating is supposed to do.
If we ignore the first basemen, it kind of looks like there's a decent trend from 5 through 10. But what makes me think there's something wonky is when we get to 11. The average drops down and there's no improvement on the top end...there's a nice neat cap at .990 for the 9s, 10s and 11s (but there's an 8 there above .990?).
I really don't know what do say, except maybe it's small sample size stuff. Because otherwise I guess there could be something wonky in the coding that isn't properly managing guys with INF ERR above max. (This would be in contrast to how it's handling guys with, say, STEAL > max).
That's all for now. I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on this.