06-15-2017, 11:47 AM
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#2
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Permanently Banned
OVR: 38
Join Date: Feb 2011
Posts: 5,740
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Re: Pitcher confidence
Confidence only affects pitch command, and pitcher energy has more effect in the effectiveness of pitcher than confidence does.
http://forums.operationsports.com/fo...6&postcount=17
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Originally Posted by Brian SCEA |
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The two keys to succeeding in late game are knowing when to pull your starter, and transitioning to relief pitchers.
Starters
As a starter gets tired, he loses control of pitch location more than anything else. In fact, some pitchers gain velocity late innings while very few lose more than 1mph (there's even a hidden attribute that handles this). Keeping this in mind, when a starter is tired you want to pitch around a bit more. This is because it's much more important to avoid throwing easy pitches down the middle than to avoid throwing balls.
How does that work? For simplicity, imagine a normal pitcher misses in a circle of 6 inches radius. Let's say in the 7th inning, he misses in a 6.5 inch radius. By moving all his pitches out .5 inch (for example), as far as deep strikes are concerned he's no worse off than before. The drawbacks are the batter can get ahead on the count more, you might bean or wild pitch by accident (which isn't that common all things considered), and you throw more pitches per batter faced. But since this strategy overall can keep a pitcher in the game you'd otherwise pull, it's a way of coping with a loss of control. This is especially more important for mid to low tier starters than for top starters.
Most starters can pitch 100, even 110 pitches until they hit 25% energy. It all depends on their stamina attribute. Below 25% energy, starters start losing control more rapidly. In a close game and a #5 starter, you might want to pull him at that point. But with a #1 starter or in a game you've sealed the deal you can certainly keep going. You'll underperform on average, but it won't matter because a win is a win.
It's worth noting that aside from pitcher attributes (HPer9, BBPer9, KPer9), energy is the second most important factor in pitching. I'd even say that in a typical game attributes are roughly 70% importance, energy is 20%, and confidence is 10%. The problem here is that if you drain every starter to 0 energy as an extreme, instead of being only 20% important it easily become 40% or 50% important. Don't let that happen in a game that matters - only run energy down to 0% because you don't care.
The penalties ramp up as you go below 25% energy. Likewise, from 100% down to 25% energy it's not a huge difference.
Relievers
Collectively speaking, mid relief pitchers are much worse than starters. In fact, the average mid reliever is a step worse than even the average 5th starter. And considering this is based on relievers pitching 1 inning each, they're even worse than their stats say. The main saving grace is that you use the above average relievers much more than the below average ones whenever possible.
With that in mind, in an important game you want to limit relievers to 1 inning each. A reliever with full energy is comparable to a bad starter with low energy - which is also why you don't just keep a starter in forever (he'll eventually cross the point of being worse than your relievers).
The closer is the exception, and that's why you only use him when it matters and save him otherwise. If you're going to lose, who cares if you lose by 5 runs or 10 after all? They're both the same as far as the season looks at it. Let the bad relievers handle the blowouts.
Relievers have to pitch, knowing that they're not as good. When the game is close, they have to pitch carefully rather than always to the batter like some top starter can. A good starter can miss the ball right down the middle and it'll still be un-hittable at 98mph. A reliever certainly can't, otherwise he'd be slated to start games himself.
The last issue is that as a video game, switching between any two pitchers can be jarring and takes some pitches to get used to. This applies to something as simple as jumping into an exhibition game, playing for 1 inning, and jumping into another with a different team. This was for me the hardest part about getting effective with relief pitching.
With all that said, even though relief pitchers are overall worse than starters this is only borne out in the long run. In any given game, it wouldn't be a surprise to see relievers shut out the side while the starter did poorly. It's just a matter of probability and how you manage that risk.
I used to have the same problems as far as relief pitching, but I found the above two keys to be the solution.
Other Notes
By the way, I do want to add that as far as the game plays and hits are determined, the hitting engine has no idea which team is AI or human controlled. The concept doesn't exist in the hitting engine, and it doesn't treat AI vs AI games any differently than human vs human games.
If it wasn't for the fact that the Show is a team-built video game with competitors, I'd publish the logic for hit determination and it wouldn't be that long. The rules are mainly the physical interaction between timing, pitch location, bat aim location and size, and player attributes. When you use a mode like timing-only, all the missing components are determined automatically using the AI code without any modification.
Take a look at the Swing Analysis for the AI after a pitch. Whatever hit or miss resulted, it would have been the same for you had you made the same inputs. Keep in mind player attribute and the difficulty setting both play a role here as well in scaling how big or small your batting cursor is.
This means the AI is responsible for picking the right timing and right batting cursor aim, then deciding if he should swing or not. The way the AI does this, it doesn't know where the ball is exactly or what the result of his swing will be. The AI wears "beer goggles" so even if the pitch is inside the AI might think it's down the middle. This is exactly why the AI will take strikes or chase balls, and (less trivially) why pitch break fools the AI correctly. A slider that lands outside might get the AI to swing, whereas a backwards slider on the inside might get the AI to take the pitch. A canned system is incapable of getting this to work correctly and naturally in every aspect. And that in summary is exactly why the system is double-blind. The AI doesn't know where the ball is and what the hitting engine will spit out, and the hitting engine has no idea who's controlling the bat.
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