[rudyjuly2]

This was the best preview I've read on the game so far. 2K's strength has been the fun of its analog pitching and it got some nice upgrades here.

First, the breakpoint changes on the pitches are nice. It's very true that the amount of break on the ball should be different depending on where you throw it. This will make each pitch more interesting as well as more realistic than last year.

I love the fact that you can't spam the same pitch or the same location. I always try to mix it up even if I know the game wouldn't necessarily punish me for it. Now they do. How they penalize you for doing this is something we'll have to see for ourselves but I do like the intent.

Individual pitch confidence is something I like. It will now be in both baseball games and it helps to create a different game every time you go out there. Often times in real life a pitcher will find a pitch not working well so he has to adjust. Each outing will now be more dynamic. Again, how this is accomplished has always bothered me a little. Giving up bloop singles is something that can be argued. Same goes for intentionally throwing a ball on an 0-2 pitch. If I hit my target why am I penalized? This will always be an issue for both baseball games but I accept it because it's probably very hard to do different.

The one area I didn't understand was the author's claim that the throwing system last year resulted in all of these over throws. What game was he playing? I'd crank throwing errors to 100 and unless you hit the red you never made an error. My complaint was the exact opposite. I made one throwing error every 50 games once you got used to the system. Throws in the green resulted in 0% errors which was very wrong. There should always be a small chance for error.