Is batting harder or is it just me?

[CaseIH]

Re: Is batting harder or is it just me?

Does anybody feel like hitting is more difficult this year?

I carried my MLB 14 RTTS save across yesterday and continued on from roughly halfway through my first full season as an MLB starting SS for the Mariners. My overall has grown enormously this season, from 76 or something to 89 and I'd previously been playing with TNK's 2014 sliders. My batting average was bouncing around between .280 and .295 for the month or so before MLB 15 came out, which seemed to be a direct result of the fact that I'd hit my skill ceiling and Dynamic difficulty was ebbing back and forth between All-Star and All-Star plus. I should mention I use zone hitting too.

Continuing on from my save on MLB 15 my average is down to .266 and apart from a six game streak last night I've been totally inconsistent and at times embarrassingly bad.

I really don't want to put the difficulty down, and I really enjoyed the balance I found last year! But I'm struggling.

I thought after my 1st couple games it was actually easier, but now I do think it might be harder. The late break on pitches can really fool you.Hard for me to tell if its easier or harder anyway, since I have struggled to hit anyway the last few years. Probably should play dynamic with all the pain meds Im on but just cant bring myself to do even try it out. Might end up having to try it out, just always been afraid stats wouldn't be realistic with it.

[Syce]

Re: Is batting harder or is it just me?

the pitch that completely fools me right now is the changeup, i just can never get proper reads on it and i early swing all the time against it.

[Smallville102001]

Re: Is batting harder or is it just me?

the pitch that completely fools me right now is the changeup, i just can never get proper reads on it and i early swing all the time against it.

I have always had a hard time hitting both changeups and curveballs in these games and slider to lol. I have only had a changes to play a few games but I am finding it easier to not chase sliders this year and to pick up curveballs to. In the past sliders looked like fastball to me only with very very late movement. So because of that a lot of times I would end up swinging at sliders thinking they where going to be a good pitch to it only to end up swinging over the pitch by a little bit or it would end up like a inch or 2 out of the strike zone when it looked like it would be a strike. With curveballs in the past a lot of times when the CPU looked like it was going to be hanging curveball I would swinging and then it would end up at the knees or I would think it was a strike only to swing at one in the dirt. I fell like changeups I am seeing better to but I still cant time them while even when I try to want longer on them I am early like all the time.

[CanOfCornCobb]

Re: Is batting harder or is it just me?

I've been pretty awful at batting this year, but I think some of it comes naturally with getting accustomed to the new game. For instance, I'm waaaay out in front of change-ups now. Can't explain it, they just look different coming across the plate.

Theres too much of a speed difference between fastballs and changeups this year. The average speed difference seems to be about 15mph which is absolutely ridiculous. It makes it darn near impossible to hit at a pitch speed any higher than 7 or 8

[therewillbechud]

Re: Is batting harder or is it just me?

I've had more success hitting this year. Through 9 games with my Cubs franchise I'm hitting .290 as a team with 15 homeruns. The problem is only 16 walks, which is very low. The last two games I've taken about 60% of the pitches I saw, which is the highest I've ever seen in any of my games, still hard to get a walk. And only about 50 strikeouts in 9 games, the CPU just doesn't want to walk me even after messing with sliders.

[lv2bll]

Re: Is batting harder or is it just me?

I feel like the PCI changed for the worse too. It's crazy when I track a ball perfectly through the zone only to make contact and got a pop up. Then at the next at bat to review my swing it shows my PCI drastically lower/higher than I placed it. This is sucking fun out of the game for me when I didn't have issues in 14. My rtts hitter with 96 contact can barely break .200 avg now. I don't feel this is right.

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[BL8001]

Re: Is batting harder or is it just me?

I agree lv2,

I watched a replay of miggy hitting a pop up to 2nd over and over last night. I would swear I hit it flush and it was a touch up in the zone bordering on a meat ball pitch and I timed it perfectly.

The replay showed the bat hitting the ball squarely like it felt in real time but the next frame the ball moved almost directly up to start the animation for the pop up.

I then watched a replay of a HR CPU machado hit off of a sinker I almost threw in the dirt. He squared it up too (with the barrel angled down for the low ball) just like the miggy replay but the ball just lept forward off his bat with the HR trajectory immediately.

This is where I am losing my mind. I know, a blind squirrel blah blah blah. But Miggy and a meatball is a pop up and manny and a sinker is a homer?

I would easily accept Miggy hitting a liner to CF and Manny hitting a grounder or low liner towards RF.

[BL8001]

Re: Is batting harder or is it just me?

So far this to me seems to be the best approach to batting in this version of the show.

This is using directional hitting, strikezone off, pci off, camera move on.

Never, never, never never never never...swing at the first pitch. Even if it is right down the middle. For some reason I am finding that the success rate of hitting the first pitch even if it is a gift pitch is crazy low this year.

It's better to go 0-1 than to pop out or ground out. So pitch one is just a coin flip, ball or strike. Sometimes I will even sit the controller down first pitch so I don't have any possible inclination to swing at it.

Now for pitch 2 pick a plate location. inside middle or out. 85% of the time you can pick middle and be ok. If you choose nothing (middle) and you are sitting on a fastball and the pitcher throws anything middle in/middle/middle out and a neutral height you can get a hit off of it the majority of the time.

That works for every pitch for the remainder of the at bat.

What you will see is if you get fooled, say you are a righty, if the pitcher slings one down the middle and it slides to the right of you towards the outside of the plate and you swing this could be a weak grounder or a pop out. BUT if you had moved the left stick to the right (before the pitch) so you were looking outside, that pitch would be a hit if timed right.

Same idea for an inside pitch.

Basically just think of inside middle or outside as pitch framing as a batter.

Next thing is contact works really well this year, particularly for good batters. I have hit liners to the gap and even HR's with a contact swing.
Again, you have to pick one of the framing zones and time it right.

What I am seeing is that with directional hitting we now have to cover these 3 zones, you have to time the pitch and you must select a pitch that is hittable.

Compared to last years timing where you just had to time and pick a pitch.

As far as hitting an intentional fly ball by holding up or ground ball by holding down? This is flat out wonky. I have hit grounders to fly balls at a 50/50 rate holding LS up. And I have hit HR's and flew out holding LS down.
It's not reversed or anything, it just seems to be another coin flip.

I wish it at least worked as ground ball to line drive holding down and line drive to fly ball holding up. It should have almost an 80% guaranteed chance of influencing that type of flight. The result is a whole different thing, but you should be able to go up to bat, look to elevate and do so if you get the right pitch. Instead it's 50/50 ground or fly.

[Nomah5]

Re: Is batting harder or is it just me?

I'm a mess. I have played 4 season games and am batting .111 as a team. Scored ZERO runs. Brutal.

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[vrtkolman]

Re: Is batting harder or is it just me?

I'm having a great time with it this year. The only issue I have is like others have posted, I'm having a super hard time drawing walks. I like to work counts but there is an awful lot of at bats where the AI pitcher has an 0-2 count on me. Even garbage pitchers can throw their breaking pitches for strikes more often than not. Altering sliders helps but they seem to have the magic touch when they get up to a 3-1 or 3-2 count and I almost never see pitches out of the strike zone.

[bigdaddykraven]

Re: Is batting harder or is it just me?

Last year was tough but I felt like after you got used to it it was fair. In the past few years I've always been a hot and cold hitter (almost like it was programed for me to hit hot for a 10 game span then have a 12 game cold streak).

This year I'm really having trouble having fun even fighting to get hits. I'm either early or "good" on the timing yet I still miss the ball with timing/directional all the time even when it says "good" timing. When I do finally hit the ball it either goes 10 feet (got the trophy for that probably 30 times now), foul or a HR. I almost never get anything to the gaps so the new variety of hits is lost on me. I've seen others play and get some great hits though.

I really thought it was just me until I found this post. I love this version of the Show but when my RTTS guy struggles to hit .200 a year after hitting .268 even though my HR numbers are the same, its really hard to have "fun" fighting for hits. Like everyone else, I'm struggling with offspeed stuff.

I'm hoping if I keep powering through this it'll just "click" for me at some point. I can see the potential there I just can't put it together.

[Baseball Purist]

Re: Is batting harder or is it just me?

Theres too much of a speed difference between fastballs and changeups this year. The average speed difference seems to be about 15mph which is absolutely ridiculous. It makes it darn near impossible to hit at a pitch speed any higher than 7 or 8

This is one of those things that I don't understand why it has changed. The changeup low and the fastball high has always been one of the hardest set of pitches to recognize in the show. This year changeups and sliders to a lesser degree, the visual speed differential is too great in my opinion. I'm not sure if pitch trajectories have changed in the game, they look the same to me as previous versions of the game, but it's harder to tell this year speed and where it's going to cross the plate or dirt.

[seafoamgreen]

Re: Is batting harder or is it just me?

This year I'm really having trouble having fun even fighting to get hits. I'm either early or "good" on the timing yet I still miss the ball with timing/directional all the time even when it says "good" timing. When I do finally hit the ball it either goes 10 feet (got the trophy for that probably 30 times now), foul or a HR. I almost never get anything to the gaps so the new variety of hits is lost on me. I've seen others play and get some great hits though.

I really thought it was just me until I found this post. I love this version of the Show but when my RTTS guy struggles to hit .200 a year after hitting .268 even though my HR numbers are the same, its really hard to have "fun" fighting for hits. Like everyone else, I'm struggling with offspeed stuff.

I'm hoping if I keep powering through this it'll just "click" for me at some point. I can see the potential there I just can't put it together.

I'm in this boat. I've worked my way to a solid Veteran+ on RTTS hitting (yes, I realize I'm not very good) using Directional w/ Pitch Guess on (in an effort to be able to even remotely compete in online Diamond Dynasty which is locked on All-Star) but it's super infuriating to square up with Good timing on a meatball and hit a dribbler to short. Happens maybe 50% of the time. I'm flailing at the occasional changeup or slider, of course, and I accept that I need to get better at seeing pitches but when I'm expecting a fastball in and get good timing/placement on it, I expect a hard line drive. If it's caught for the SS, fair enough, but a weak grounder is not an accurate response to what should be solid contact.

Should note that I'm really enjoying the game but hitting has been a frustration for me- loving Dynamic Difficulty though. Great feature for those of us who don't want to microtweak sliders (which seems to be a lot of peoples' favorite pastime).

[Shuckman]

Re: Is batting harder or is it just me?

Theres too much of a speed difference between fastballs and changeups this year. The average speed difference seems to be about 15mph which is absolutely ridiculous. It makes it darn near impossible to hit at a pitch speed any higher than 7 or 8

Yeah the speed of the change-up is off on the players I have looked at. Which makes it crazy hard for Directional "Timing" hitting.

For example I am facing the Rockies and Tyler Matzek in the game throws a 93-94 MPH fastball and a 78 MPH change-up which is around 15 mph like you said. I looked up his pitch velocity's on fangraphs and found his Avg. fastball was thrown at 92.2 MPH so that is pretty accurate. But his avg. change-up speed was 87.0 mph which is 5-6 mph difference.

[Bondsfan]

Re: Is batting harder or is it just me?

I was struggling mightily with zone hitting on All Star. I used to get 10 hits a game easily in past years with zone. I switched to directional and wasnt much better. Then I switched the camera to offset (not catcher offset) and I had a much easier time timing my swing. Scored 6 runs the first inning with offset / directional.

Hopefully, thats a sign of good things to come.