You bring up another suggestion that low appearances at a position should automatically mean a low defensive rating.

I don't understand the logic in that.

If Andruw Jones had to play LF for a few games, would he start dropping the ball, lose all of his speed, and have an arm of jelly all of a sudden? Of course not, but that's what you are suggestion should happen.

If Rey Ordonez was forced to move to 2B for a few innings, would he have sucked at the position and forgotten how to field a grounder? Highly unlikely. His defensive numbers would have been similar to his stats as a SS and if a PB manager needed him to play 2B full time, he should be given that opportunity.

This goes back to a point I brought up several months ago. These are professional athletes we are talking about here. Many of whom have played a variety of different defensive position throughout their baseball life (little league, HS, college, minors, MLB, etc). If forced, most could shift to a different position and be servicable if the manager needed them to play there. That is why we have defensive ratings downgrades whenever you play someone out of position (ie. a primary SS playing 2B will be pretty close to his SS defensive ratings..assuming he's not already rated there. Or a CF can easily shift to LF/RF without hurting his defensive rating too much.)

Those downgrades are there to give us added flexibility to our rosters, just like in real life. The reason why some of these guys have only a few innings at different positions here or there is usually due to a real manager having a defensive emergency and had to play someone out of position...then that player gets a defensive rating out of it).

Jon