Should I dump Brett Wallace?

[rink23]

I am in the 2012 season as the St. Louis Cardinals.
I just finished the first week of June and have a record of 35-22 and own a 1 game lead over the Cubs in the NL Central.
My dilemma is this, one of my top prospects, third baseman Brett Wallace, has been horrendous.
Ever since the 2010 season, I've been trying to develop him into one of my core players.
He had some OK numbers in 2010 and 2011, hitting between .260 and .280 but with limited power and was almost useless against LHP.
Also, he always had the bad smiley face and is whining about not having certain teammates around or that St. Louis is too cold or he wants to go to a winning team. (I even traded for one of his friends, a crappy RHP reliever and it didn't change anything).
I made the playoffs in 2009 and 2010 before losing in the NLCS and my 2011 team was not eliminated from playoff contention until the final weekend.
His ratings are solid. He's settled in as an 89 with a 95 (contact), 84 (power), 58 (speed) and 73 (eye) as his offensive ratings.
He starts every game against right-handers and 2 of every 3 against lefties and for that I am getting an .185 average (.201 RHP/.100 LHP), to go with a .243 OBP, and a .317 slug.
And defensively he isn't any better. His overall defensive rating is 95 but he has committed eight errors in 46 games.
So should I dump this guy or can someone think of a way I can get him turned around -- in real life, he's one of the team's top prospects, so I'd like to see him get into the mix -- I need to make a call on him in the next few weeks before the pennant race starts to heat up.
BTW, I have put together a fairly deep team with other options at third base so to move him, probably would not hurt that much. He just has so much potential, you hate to do so.

[Lex Logan]

I don't keep whiners. They seem like bad apples -- pretty soon everyone is complaining about something. Randy Johnson was one of the worst, half my previously very happy team was angry before I dumped him.

Forget the ratings, trade the bum for some prospects. You'll probably see the whole team play better. And don't sweat it if he goes on a tear elsewhere. That's baseball.

[End of the Road]

I have BBM09 and ALL third baseman are lousy fielders. My current one's defense rating is 87 and if I let the game do him in he would have 10-15 errors at least every year. Naturally this bug or whatever doesn't effect the computer opponents. I tried different players at third base and they all fielded the same. That said he hits well. Last year was .287/15 homers/72 rbi's/56 runs/.342 OBP/.456 Slug. So being as Brett isn't hitting I would look at dumping him.

[HoustonGM]

10-15 errors is par for the course for a third basemen, who make a lot of errors. Of the 21 third basemen in 2008 that had enough innings to qualify, only 4 did not have at least 10 errors - Chone Figgins, Troy Glaus, Pedro Feliz and Jack Hannahan. 7 had more than 15.

[dps]

Fielding, to the extent that you can go by fielding percentage,has improved dramatically throughout baseball history, but for some reason 3rd base seems to have become an exception in the last 50 years or so. For all positions, the rate of improvement has slowed (primarily because there's a lot less room for improvement than there was in the past), but at 3rd it's become almost stagnant, and may have regressed a bit (I don't think it's actually gotten worse, but I haven't checked that closely).

[asianinvasion]

Watching Adrian Beltre, arguably one of the best defensive third basemen in the league, most of his errors seems to come from bad throws or one hoppers that the first baseman can't pick.

[BINGLEBOP]

Also, he always had the bad smiley face and is whining about not having certain teammates around or that St. Louis is too cold or he wants to go to a winning team. (I even traded for one of his friends, a crappy RHP reliever and it didn't change anything).

You never want to go by those items where they want to be traded to X team to be with X player, or how it's too hot/cold in your city. The only thing that will have any effect is their happiness... and you can turn that factor all the way down.

You can have a player with a happiness of 100, and his card can still say he hates your city and wants to be traded. On the other end of the spectrum, you could have a player with a happiness of 20 and the card could say he wants to spend the rest of his career with your team.

You can just change the personality characteristics slightly, if you want, because they're randomly generated anyway. If you're a rebuilding or expansion team, look for guys with low ambition scores (or just lower them yourself), and then look for high community ratings as well.

I hope someday personality characteristics are expanded upon, or at the very least, improved. Right now, you can sign or re-sign a player who will give a "hometown discount" to play on your team, and once he's signed, his card can still read that he hates the city and wants to leave. Somethings a little messed up with the two different settings, but again it doesn't impact their play at all.

[BINGLEBOP]

I did two quick examples to show this.

I changed Jeff Baker's Happiness rating to 100, and he hates Colorado and wants to leave. It's because of the ambition and community ratings.


And here's Brad Hawpe. I changed his Happiness rating to 0, and he likes living in Colorado.


Note that it's not their "total fit" into your team either as Hawpe is a worse overall fit (D- to D+).

Unfortunately, if you go into League Settings and turn up the section for the impact that a player's happiness has on negotiation and performance, Hawpe would likely play worse and Baker would likely play better, even though Baker "hates" it and Hawpe "loves" it in Colorado, because of their happiness ratings.

So don't go by what the card says (unless you want to use your imagination more), but instead by the ratings. If the dialogue bothers you (hates the city, wants to leave, it's too hot, it's too cold, wants to play with a bum that retired seven years ago, etc.), just go ahead and change the ambition and/or community ratings and leave the rest alone. Like I said, they're randomly generated anyway.

[OldYankFan]

It's sounds like you are only keeping this guy because he is a real life prospect. You could try platooning him so he hardly sees a lefty, but if it was me, I put him up on the trading block, see what other teams offer.

He's not happy, he doesn't hit, his fielding is suspect. You got other options at 3rd. Bye Bye.

[TheFifthDoctor]

Defensively there was once a guy in real life who played third base who had 20 or more errors in 6 seasons; actually had 30 in 1979. In my game he already has a pair of 21 error years, and a 29 one. So one would think he's not very good.
Not true. It's some dude named George Brett. He only had a career lifetime average of .305 and collected 3154 hits. In 1980 he flirted with .400 ( finished with .390 ) while leading his team to the 1980 AL pennant.

Bottom line, as HoustonGM already said, Wallace's defense seems pretty normal. Now will he hit like George Brett? Doubtful. Your team already gave him chances to develop, with unsatisfactory results to date. His rating is 89 at the moment, so I'd trade him for some prospects at positions you may be deficient at, or whatever you needs are.
Having the guy around to mess up the chemistry might be detrimental to the organization.

On a side note, my game's George Brett is a defending 4 time MVP, has 4 straight RBI titles, won the 1977 Triple Crown, won 3 batting titles in a row and was edged out of a fourth one in 1978 by Claudell Washington by just .002 ( Washington batted .377, Brett .375 ). Brett is a career .353 hitter and is only 25 years old! He only makes $800k per year, so God help the Royals when his contract is up. "Paging...George Steinbrenner."
He's not edited. My Orioles team can usually handle him but, man, is he a freak! Too bad I already a decent player in Doug DeCinces.

[Knegt1990]

are you guys saying that a fitting personality improves how players perform?

**** i didnt know that.

finally i know why my giants side is sucking bricks.

[HoustonGM]

Personality/happiness has a small effect, and in League Settings, there is a slider for you to control just how much it does effect. You can turn it down to -100% to remove it entirely.

[Knegt1990]

oh thanks HGM =D

[Jaja]

He makes good contact, but has below average eye... he swings at too many bad pitches, so he will never be a high average hitter. His power isn't enough to compensate, he's slow, and can't hit lefties. Yep, dump him while you can.

[rink23]

On July 15, the open date following the All-Star Break, I traded Brett Wallace to the Twins for RHP Bobby Lonigan.
Since that time, I've got 2-5 and as a team are 51-47 and in third place in the NL Central 2 games behind the Cubs.
Lanigan, who is a Triple-A pitcher with a rating of 91/85, is down in Memphis.
In his brief time with Minnesota, Wallace is batting .289 with one home run and seven RBIs in nine games.