Can someone tell me why the year the bloomin' pitcher pitched should have anything to do with how well the fielder fields?

Well, you can try....

The ballpark, I can understand.

(The answer to how to normalize fielding statistically is obvious and I have campaigned for it before, but... hey....)

Well, just because you asked so nicely....

Pitchers are (at least partially) dependent on the fielders behind them to make routine plays. One can argue that pitchers in crappy fielding eras with lousy ranges are shortchanged in the Sim because their fielders didn't get to many balls, thus creating hits that players in later eras would have fielded (Derek Jeter notwithstanding).

So, a pitcher from 1886 might have an high OAV simply because he had fat, slow fielders playing on rocky, uneven infields behind him. The "normalization" tries to fix that by depressing the fielding capabilities of whomever is behind the 1886 pitcher.

Check with Trot Nixon on the Derek Jeter crack.

because deadball pitchers dont give up enough homeruns. Instead of making a HR adjustment they just added some other penalty to even the score. at least that's how I interpret the explanation. but salaries were lowered so much and errors dont seem to be all that plentiful so deadballers stil look like bargains.