Directional Hitting Guide

[The Chef]

Re: Directional Hitting Guide

Ahh the dreaded teamwide power drought, I know it well. It's a big reason why I ensured my team had speed. Power can dry up at any moment, but speed will always be there for you.

I would argue that it's only been 5 games, and you should stick with the process, but I know how frustrating that can be. You're pressing. You know you're pressing. I'm guessing when you try to be patient you're letting good pitches go. It becomes this vicious cycle of self doubt. Is it me? Is it my team? Do I need to change some settings? Or is this just the sim getting things right?

I have two tips. The first is strategy based (and I suggest you try first) and the second is settings based.

The solution to pressing is sometimes thinking outside the box. Most of the time it's to get more patient, but sometimes you miss your pitch, and when you've been struggling at that plate missing your pitch is INFURIATING. What I suggest is that, for a game, you give yourself permission to swing whenever you want. Set caution to the wind. The goal here is to get yourself out of your own head and back into the game.

My second tip is to turn down the difficulty, or boost yourself with sliders. I know it feels humiliating, and feels like cheating, I've been there, but sometimes you need to see a few positive results just to get yourself out of the funk. You can always turn it back when your bat returns.

So no, I wouldn't start adding the up swing more often in an attempt to add more power. Reducing your vision is rarely a good idea (I think you know why by now), and the up swing should stay reserved for situational hitting, when you predict the low ball, and those killer sinking pitches. I know the 5 game drought is frustrating but it doesn't warrant a shift in strategy (yet).

You are on the start of a trend though, so if problems continue, you can add the hybrid Pull/up swing when ahead in counts with power hitters for sure. I just had a game where I was humiliated at the plate so I can't help but feel a little sympathy for you. Good luck!

You described my thought process to a tee lol, it's almost like the game gets in your head and you start pressing and next thing you know you're making things worse. Over that same 5 game span my team has gone 48/170 (.282) but with the lack of HR's my team has struggled at times to score runs (15 runs in those 5 games combined). Needless to say I'm 2-3 in those 5 games and I can see the season slipping away which is another reason I'm pressing I'm sure. I went into the first game of my series with KC thinking I'd win 3 of 4, which is still doable, but after dropping the first one 3-1 it makes it that much tougher to accomplish that goal.

I think my biggest issue is there are times I get too patient and let pitches go that I should have swung at. Typically when those AB's happen I end up getting something on the first pitch I should have swung at, then I chase a change low in the zone on the second and next thing you know I'm battling just to work the pitch count. That last game was horrible, I only had 5 hits and was thrown out trying to stretch a double into a triple, the offense was nowhere to be found and Cody Martin pitched extremely well for me but an Eric Hosmer HR was the difference in the game. I can tell I'm pressing so I gotta get back into the mentality of swinging when something looks good regardless if it's the first pitch or not. Thanks for the tips, will for sure be more aggressive next game against Danny Duffy, last time I faced him I knocked him around for 6 ER over 4.2 IP and walked 4 times so hoping for more of the same.

[ruxpinke]

Re: Directional Hitting Guide

Highly recommend it. I don't talk about it in this thread because, you know, hitting, but having CPU solid hits up makes you fear the zone a little more, especially when the middle of their order comes to bat. My fear of the middle of the zone is real, and there are many situations now where I am ok with giving up the walk.

Played two games so far and happy with the results. First game of course i put up 20 hits and score 9 runs, weirdly only one homer and one double out of the twenty hits. So i'm thinking ok, this is way too much, now i'm a hitting machine. CPU only manages one run.

Second game i face Sonny Gray and only manage 4 hits (2 HR and one 2B) and the CPU puts up 8 runs on me. They crushed my mistakes in the middle of the zone.

Going to stay with this set up for now.

[TheWarmWind]

Re: Directional Hitting Guide

Ok I've flip-flopped on settings again. So much for being slow and methodical. My biggest issue is that, while I'm ok with rarely spotting the changeup, I'm not ok with never spotting it, and on all-star the pitches are just too deceptive to me. Veteran is much more my level in terms of how the pitch looks.

As such, I'm determined to try and make Veteran harder, as opposed to making All-Star easier. Bumped Solid hits back down to 6 and pushed CPU strike frequency even further down to 1.

I tend to flail like this when I'm getting close to locking in on settings, so if people are interested I can make a post in the sliders sub-forums in the next two weeks or so. I still firmly believe that people should make their own sliders but I can talk about what I did, the feel that I'm going for and why there.

[Tomasson84]

Re: Directional Hitting Guide

What strategy/tips would you suggest when hitting with a player who aren't really good at anything? Im mainly a RTTS player, so i spend alot of time with players who are bad at contact, power, speed etc(vision is usually good due to equipment) but i legit cant hit, i even bumped up sliders a bit, solid, power and timing i think +1, its so bad im stuck at low rookie+ in dynamic diff. I can see the ball pretty good tho.

What hitting strategy would you suggest? Thanks.

[TheWarmWind]

Re: Directional Hitting Guide

What strategy/tips would you suggest when hitting with a player who aren't really good at anything? Im mainly a RTTS player, so i spend alot of time with players who are bad at contact, power, speed etc(vision is usually good due to equipment) but i legit cant hit, i even bumped up sliders a bit, solid, power and timing i think +1, its so bad im stuck at low rookie+ in dynamic diff. I can see the ball pretty good tho.

What hitting strategy would you suggest? Thanks.

In terms of strategy, I'd suggest favouring the downward influence, with some push swings when ahead. Power is somewhat useless when your player can't get their bat squared up on the ball, so you will get little to no value out of pull and upwards influences.

I am assuming that your hitter is a balanced hitter in this scenario.

Dynamic difficulty can be a bit of a double edged sword, especially at the beginner/rookie levels. Pitchers are in the zone way too often early in the count, and this can lead to more early swings. However, directional works best when you are disciplined and work the count. The pitching strategy at low levels is obviously targeted at zone hitters, and can actually work against directional hitters and hold them back. I've batted all the way up to HoF before in previous versions of the show yet when I've attempted to use dynamic difficulty I've never made it past rookie.

I would suggest either ditching dynamic difficulty and setting your own difficulty (start at veteran), turning down the CPU strike frequency slider, or both.

Hopefully one of these two things will help you out. Good luck at the plate and happy hitting!

[Tomasson84]

Re: Directional Hitting Guide

In terms of strategy, I'd suggest favouring the downward influence, with some push swings when ahead. Power is somewhat useless when your player can't get their bat squared up on the ball, so you will get little to no value out of pull and upwards influences.

I am assuming that your hitter is a balanced hitter in this scenario.

Dynamic difficulty can be a bit of a double edged sword, especially at the beginner/rookie levels. Pitchers are in the zone way too often early in the count, and this can lead to more early swings. However, directional works best when you are disciplined and work the count. The pitching strategy at low levels is obviously targeted at zone hitters, and can actually work against directional hitters and hold them back. I've batted all the way up to HoF before in previous versions of the show yet when I've attempted to use dynamic difficulty I've never made it past rookie.

I would suggest either ditching dynamic difficulty and setting your own difficulty (start at veteran), turning down the CPU strike frequency slider, or both.

Hopefully one of these two things will help you out. Good luck at the plate and happy hitting!

Thanks ill try going to veteran, i hit early in the count because like you said rookie tends to hit the zone early and it looks so good so you just wanna hit it.

Follow up question, like at what ratings/attributes should you change to what? Like at what power rating should i start changing to the power hitter strategy etc? Thanks alot again!

Also i get these training oppurtunitys in RTTS where they want me to hit to specific places, LF, CF, RF etc, how exactly do i hit toa specific area?

[TheWarmWind]

Re: Directional Hitting Guide

Thanks ill try going to veteran, i hit early in the count because like you said rookie tends to hit the zone early and it looks so good so you just wanna hit it.

Follow up question, like at what ratings/attributes should you change to what? Like at what power rating should i start changing to the power hitter strategy etc? Thanks alot again!

Also i get these training oppurtunitys in RTTS where they want me to hit to specific places, LF, CF, RF etc, how exactly do i hit toa specific area?

Be careful even with veteran I still have to knock down the strike frequency slider a ton to see a reasonable amount of balls. I'd suggest starting at 3, then knocking it down to 2 or 1 once you get used to seeing more balls on the corners and laying off them.

You should consider adding in pull swings once you hit the 45 power range. There are other factors, like your swing animation, speed, pitching matchup and height to consider but this is a good starting point to try and start to "get the feel" for power hitting.

As for hitting to a specific area, while choosing a direction does have an impact on where a ball goes, timing is by far the greater factor. So if you're right handed, you want to be earlier to pull the ball into LF and later to push the ball into RF. I'd recommend using the down influence, possibly combined with either the push or pull influence, for that drill. The downward influence really is the best for "precision" type baseball.

For those that are curious, I estimate the amount that influence changes the trajectory of the ball is between 5 and 25 degrees, averaging in the low teens. So it might be enough to push/pull it to a different field, or perhaps make fair balls go foul/visa versa, but very little impact overall.

[The Chef]

Re: Directional Hitting Guide

I love swing influencing down with certain guys with minimal power. I have started to hit better with trash like Carlos Ruiz doing this. Jarrod Dyson is top 5 in the AL in average simply because I influence down and away and try and rip pitches at the 3B who is drawn in covering for a drag bunt which works pretty well. I'll influence down and pull side with Leonys Martin. The perfect setup is when Dyson gets on and Segura is at the plate as he's a natural push hitter so hitting into that hole between 1st and 2nd works wonders and can spark big innings when I'm able to get Dyson on and then slap it through that hole with Segura.

[hock0413]

Re: Directional Hitting Guide

This is great guide and my hitting has improved significantly. Now all I need is a guide to stop me from automatically swinging at raising fastballs...

[d4rkn1ghtcrawler]

Re: Directional Hitting Guide

I have a MLB The Show 16 franchise that I ported over to this year.

How do you suggest I hit with Justin Upton who player card says he is balanced but his power is in the 90s for lefties and righties but his contact rating is 69 for righties and in the 70s for lefties. I'm 30 games in and I am hitting between .215-220 with him. I've tried influencing down, pulling, pushing nothing works lol. Should I always pull with him and when I get to 2 strikes influence down/push?

[Tomasson84]

Re: Directional Hitting Guide

Are you guys using guess pitch or are you just guessing in your head? Im trying to guess in my head, made it more fun imo

[MannybeingManny]

Re: Directional Hitting Guide

Does anyone use directional hitting as if it was zone hitting? I.e. Move the left
stick as the pitch is being pitched to the zone where the pitch is being delivered to? Like it was the pci you were moving? Reacting to the pitch? Hit it where its pitched ? I have just been pretending I'm still using zone.

[TheWarmWind]

Re: Directional Hitting Guide

I have a MLB The Show 16 franchise that I ported over to this year.

How do you suggest I hit with Justin Upton who player card says he is balanced but his power is in the 90s for lefties and righties but his contact rating is 69 for righties and in the 70s for lefties. I'm 30 games in and I am hitting between .215-220 with him. I've tried influencing down, pulling, pushing nothing works lol. Should I always pull with him and when I get to 2 strikes influence down/push?

What's his vision at? As I've said before vision is the most important attribute when it comes to Directional hitting.

I'm going to assume it's low considering you've tried shifting strategies and you're still batting around the mendoza line.

If you've tried pulling, pushing and downwards influences there isn't really much more to do at this point directional wise. You can try using contact swing (circle) earlier in the count or sinking him to the bottom half of the lineup to take the pressure off.

You might also want to consider trading him. His bat may have just had a bad month and he's about to turn it around, but sometimes certain players just don't work out no matter their attributes. Accepting that fact and moving on is part of being a good GM.

[TheWarmWind]

Re: Directional Hitting Guide

Does anyone use directional hitting as if it was zone hitting? I.e. Move the left
stick as the pitch is being pitched to the zone where the pitch is being delivered to? Like it was the pci you were moving? Reacting to the pitch? Hit it where its pitched ? I have just been pretending I'm still using zone.

Like I say in the Fallacy of Following the pitch section, this is a mistake. The job of following the pitch has been handed off to your batter's vision attribute when you select directional.

It's better to think of the various swing types as granular adjustments between your power (square), Normal (x), and Contact (circle) swings.

If you prefer the idea of following the pitch in to make contact, then I would suggest a switch to zone. Directional is kind of like a game of poker, where you are making bets based on the information you have. The only true reactive element to it is timing. Whereas zone is a little more reactive.

I suggest you check out the Vision vs Contact expanded and The Fallacy of Following the pitch sections in the OP for more info. They are two sections from the bottom.

[ruxpinke]

Re: Directional Hitting Guide

Crazy power outage - 5 straight games without a homer using the Yanks, only one homer in my last 9 games.

Is it possible with SH at 7 i'm hitting the ball too hard? What would you think about going back down SH 6, and bumping up Power to 6 instead.

Not sure how much one power click will change things, but going from SH6 to SH7 seemed significant.

If anything my offense feels right on the cusp of being too potent, but with no home run capability. Right now i'm on AS, with contact at 6, sh at 7, power at 5. liking what i have overall offensively, if I could add a homer here and there it would be very nice.