This is a great thread, jfranco77 -- one of the best I've seen this year, and this is fascinating stuff.  I'm surprised at how uniform the distribution of + plays is, except for Douthit.  It will be interesting to see if his low number is just a function of statistical variation or somehow correlates to the LF position.  But it's also interesting to see how much more valuable the A+ IF's are from an AVG LW perspective than the A+ OF's.  That's logical, but it's still impressive to see the contrast -- quick back of the envelope, around 0.50-0.55 AVG LW for the OF's and about 0.85-0.90 AVG LW for the INF's.

The other thing that is striking is how really low the RC's are.  Assuming that SIM seems to price position players at around 20 RC=$1 MM for a full season, all other things being equal and fielding, steals and position versatility being mediocre/average (I always look for >20 RC/$1 MM as a "value pick" if I can survive their bad fielding), your RC levels are trending REALLY low, and that's probably one of the big reasons you haven't won more.

Keep up the great work.,  

another question (for another day) is if you need both MI to have high range to make DP more frequent

I love this thread jfranco77.  This thread should be shown to every noob that complains that his team is 40 games under .500.  You are an example of a guy that loves this so much that he is this dedicated to winning that he takes the time (and has the brain) to attempt this and scrutinize the data.  I am quite sure I have the brain for this, I just seemingly lack the patience.  
Perhaps you could write a "Sim Leagues for Dummies" book and sell it on Amazon, I would be first in line.

Posted by nonenone00 on 7/11/2010 6:28:00 AM (view original):
I'd like to see this experiment run in Coors, where I believe the +/- plays are exaggerated.  I'm currently using Matt Williams at 3B in Coors, and he has 34 + plays in 139 games, .245 per game.  Compared to your Latham's .141 per game.  OTH, I use lots of old school pitchers...

I actually made a pitching/defense Coors team a long time ago in an OL, it was well before the update changed fielding, though.  I got a random, cockamamie idea that maybe fielding and plus plays were impacted by the number of real life assists/outs that a player made, so I tried to find the guys with the best A/O per $ that I could find.  

The offense was pretty ugly but Coors helped me to the tune of the third most runs scored in the league and I was among the best third in runs allowed.  Since it was pre-update I'm not sure how useful the data was, but if anyone wants to gander at the spreadsheets, I uploaded them to google docs here tinyurl.com/2ct3kez

Great stuff jfranco77.  You're letting the cat out of the bag regarding infield and outfield range.  (I wish you could've include pitcher's range too - I think this is undervalued).

I've kind of know for a while that outfield range is a bit overrated (too many + plays not resulting in outs, compared to infielders).  Maybe I missed it, but next time you do an update, can you list the total + plays that result in outs vs non outs (by position).  From my last analysis, I remember that a high percentage of infield + plays are outs, but the oppposite is true for outfielders.

Good analysis on the DPs.  One thing I've noticed is having a good cather's throwing arm is important in accumulating high-DP totals.  Maybe something to factor in next time.

What are the grades for the first and third basemen to go along with Biggio and Jetes, since they contribute to DPs as well?  I'm also curious about the grades for the other teams at 9%+