Do pull hitters pull enough?

[Bobhead]

Re: Do pull hitters pull enough?

I can think of a couple things at least as a Timing hitter:

-Make left/right influence impactful on all swings, not just bunts

-Make physical timing the largest influence to hit direction. Seems like the timing slider means more than actually being early/late. The PCI location also have a lot of influence. The influencing should influence the PCI location more often. (i.e a RHB influencing to the right side should try to keep the PCI inside the ball instead of hooking it anyway or it being purely random)

-Make the spray chart the BASE for the user timing. I.e. the User using "perfect" timing will hit according to the spray chart. Then, hitting to various parts of the field would take more effort for some hitters, less for others and based on location. A pull hitter hitting off-speed on the inside should be able to easily pull that ball (greatest challenge would be keeping it fair), but trying to go the other way, the swing would almost have to be "too late". That would keep the user involved while considering player tendency as well.

The first two don't seem related to this thread, that is ensuring hitters match their pull/push tendencies without input from the user.

Does that third option really sound desireable to you? Imagine you're in a situation with a runner on third and a right handed pull hitter at the plate. You want some internal force to make it more difficult for you to go the other way and score the run "productively"?

That doesn't sound desirable to me at all. Keep in mind that there is no actual physical barrier stopping real life pull hitters from going the other way (or stopping push hitters from pulling). David Ortiz pulls all his pitches because he chooses to. Most of these guys are just too stubborn to change their approach, but it's only that: an approach. If someone decided tomorrow that they would no longer be a pull hitter, it's as simple as going to the cage and practicing a later swing, delaying your timing a bit, and getting it into muscle memory. Within a week, at the most, any pull hitter could become a balanced hitter, if they actually wanted to do that.

My preference is for no bias at all. But I recognize that that is not what the majority of players want. Either way though, the less overriding bias for human-controlled players, the better. I'd rather control my own destiny. That's why I'm playing the game and not just watching one.

[KBLover]

Re: Do pull hitters pull enough?

That doesn't sound desirable to me at all. Keep in mind that there is no actual physical barrier stopping real life pull hitters from going the other way (or stopping push hitters from pulling). David Ortiz pulls all his pitches because he chooses to. Most of these guys are just too stubborn to change their approach, but it's only that: an approach. If someone decided tomorrow that they would no longer be a pull hitter, it's as simple as going to the cage and practicing a later swing, delaying your timing a bit, and getting it into muscle memory. Within a week, at the most, any pull hitter could become a balanced hitter, if they actually wanted to do that.

While true, it's also far too difficult to have hitters behave as they do in the real game if that's my choice.

I don't want to make Ortiz a slap hitter (and in the game there's none of what you describe, I can just up and make him Ichiro-without-speed as if he was doing it his whole life).

If there's absolutely no bias - how can I at least have players act something like they do in the real game, instead of all ending up just feeling (and spraying) the same/randomly? I mean, I swing early/late to try to create the same tendency, but it doesn't happen nearly enough for the *approach* I'm using.

As far as the swing influence system - if the push/pull worked for all swings and moved the PCI to have that influence also "aimed" at the same hit direction, then my timing being on would have the ball pull/push more often. That's why I mentioned it (I know you're not Timing and I don't know how Zone works).

It could also tie into the CPU hitters. Ortiz could "influence pull" very often, then combined with early swing timing, he pulls it more. CPU hitters seem to do the Power/Contact swing so they could have them emulate using these options as well.