Pitcher confidence

[BigOscar]

Anyone else find it utterly ridiculous that pitcher confidence is the single biggest influence on hitting? More so that PCI placement, timing, player ratings, it's this weird over powered mechanic that decides whether you'll get a hit or not. Get a pitchers confidence down and then pretty much any swing you put on the ball will be a success.

I'm not against the idea of pitchers having confidence, but why on earth does it affect the hitter, or how hard the ball is hit? Surely if a pitcher isn't throwing well then he loses accuracy, maybe even velocity or break as he struggles to control his pitches, but it doesn't make the hitter more powerful or make it easier to time swings, it just means they are more likely to throw pitches in bad areas? (which when they do, are more likely to be crushed) Surely it would be the hitters confidence that effects the hitter? If he does manage to overcome his confidence and throw to his spot, why on earth would that be easier for the hitter to hit than if he threw it exactly the same while confident?

At the moment, you could have the worst pitcher on the game with full confidence throw a pitch and have the best hitter on the game square it up perfectly and I'd wager the result is far less likely to be positive for the hitter than if some rank average player got anywhere near a ball thrown by a zero confidence Clayton Kershaw. It's just far too overpowered at the moment.

[nomo17k]

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/forums/showpost.php?p=2043493906&postcount=17

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.

[BigOscar]

Re: Pitcher confidence

Sorry, I don't buy that at all based on playing the game. As soon as a pitchers confidence goes down, every ball is hit far harder, with far less regard of PCI placement. Anyone who's played the game knows that. The ball also finds gaps far more often when the confidence is down, that's how you end up with giant innings against the computer when they don't take pitchers out. They aren't tired, it's not because they are just throwing changeups down the middle, the game just decides to let you smash the ball and find gaps when the confidence is down.

[nomo17k]

Re: Pitcher confidence

Just so you know, Brian SCEA is one of the devs who code up the part of the game... I don't know how it makes sense to not buy the bits of facts that he has provided.

[squashbuggie]

very good, Nomo.

[countryboy]

Pitcher confidence

Just so you know, Brian SCEA is one of the devs who code up the part of the game... I don't know how it makes sense to not buy the bits of facts that he has provided.

Because the facts of how the game works gets in the way of baseless ranting.





Sent from my iPhone using Operation Sports

[BigOscar]

Re: Pitcher confidence

Because the facts of how the game works gets in the way of baseless ranting.



Sent from my iPhone using Operation Sports

So it's baseless? You don't think pitcher confidence being low leads to the ball being hit harder and finding more gaps? Genuine question as I don't know how anyone who's played the game could come to that conclusion. You've never got a pitchers confidence to zero and then had every ball start flying out of the park, finding gaps and people who have no business normally hitting homers suddenly find their power?

I honestly wouldn't trust an SDS developer to even know fully how their game works anyway tbh, let alone tell the truth about it. Maybe he thinks what he said is true but it doesn't seem to match up with the results. Whether it's an unintended consequence of something they put in or he's just not telling the truth, pitcher confidence absolutely does affect your ability to hit the ball

[countryboy]

Re: Pitcher confidence

So it's baseless? You don't think pitcher confidence being low leads to the ball being hit harder and finding more gaps? Genuine question as I don't know how anyone who's played the game could come to that conclusion. You've never got a pitchers confidence to zero and then had every ball start flying out of the park, finding gaps and people who have no business normally hitting homers suddenly find their power?

I honestly wouldn't trust an SDS developer to even know fully how their game works anyway tbh, let alone tell the truth about it. Maybe he thinks what he said is true but it doesn't seem to match up with the results. Whether it's an unintended consequence of something they put in or he's just not telling the truth, pitcher confidence absolutely does affect your ability to hit the ball

Not how you portray it to be working, no I don't.

Low pitch confidence leads to more mistake pitches which in turn result in harder hit balls.

And the comment about the devs is all anyone needs to know about your "views" of the game.


Sent from my iPhone using Operation Sports

[BigOscar]

Re: Pitcher confidence

Not how you portray it to be working, no I don't.

Low pitch confidence leads to more mistake pitches which in turn result in harder hit balls.

And the comment about the devs is all anyone needs to know about your "views" of the game.


Sent from my iPhone using Operation Sports

That I don't blindly put my 100% trust in people trying to sell me something? Or I don't have 100% faith in people who make mistake after mistake? I wouldn't trust an EA developer as far as I could throw them, I know they constantly lie about things in the game so I don't really see why I should treat SDS any more generously.

We know that results of hitting have a huge random factor, you try and square a ball up and hope for the best, that's the hitting mechanics of the game. Yet when you do it when the pitchers confidence is low, the result is frequently far more favourable, regardless of how "good" the pitch is.

[underdog13]

Re: Pitcher confidence

So it's baseless? You don't think pitcher confidence being low leads to the ball being hit harder and finding more gaps? Genuine question as I don't know how anyone who's played the game could come to that conclusion. You've never got a pitchers confidence to zero and then had every ball start flying out of the park, finding gaps and people who have no business normally hitting homers suddenly find their power?

I honestly wouldn't trust an SDS developer to even know fully how their game works anyway tbh, let alone tell the truth about it. Maybe he thinks what he said is true but it doesn't seem to match up with the results. Whether it's an unintended consequence of something they put in or he's just not telling the truth, pitcher confidence absolutely does affect your ability to hit the ball

I've found my experience to be when there is a pitcher with low confidence, they miss their spots much more and the batter's pci increases. But no I don't have weak guys cranking homeruns out of nowhere.

In past years I used to think pitchers confidence was way to strong. But recent years I've come to like how it has been tuned.

[countryboy]

Re: Pitcher confidence

That I don't blindly put my 100% trust in people trying to sell me something? Or I don't have 100% faith in people who make mistake after mistake? I wouldn't trust an EA developer as far as I could throw them, I know they constantly lie about things in the game so I don't really see why I should treat SDS any more generously.



We know that results of hitting have a huge random factor, you try and square a ball up and hope for the best, that's the hitting mechanics of the game. Yet when you do it when the pitchers confidence is low, the result is frequently far more favourable, regardless of how "good" the pitch is.

I'm not going back and forth with you. It's pointless. Because no matter what anyone says , unless they agree with you, they will be wrong, facts be damned.

Have a good day


Sent from my iPhone using Operation Sports

[tessl]

Re: Pitcher confidence

There is a switch to turn pitcher confidence off but unfortunately it has been broken for years. It would be nice to see it get fixed. One line of code should do it, doesn't seem like a heavy lift for the devs.

[countryboy]

Re: Pitcher confidence

There is a switch to turn pitcher confidence off but unfortunately it has been broken for years. It would be nice to see it get fixed. One line of code should do it, doesn't seem like a heavy lift for the devs.

Confidence can't be turned off. The option you're referring to only turns off the display.


Sent from my iPhone using Operation Sports

[squashbuggie]

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

can these rule be applied to QM as well ?

[wellred]

Re: Pitcher confidence

In my experience with the game, I 100% agree with OP. Working down a pitchers confidence is by far the most effective way to sustain offense. I dont really care either if a dev has said confidence has no impact on getting hits, that's just demonstrably false. It's the single most important factor in the outcome of an individual game, period. After playing thousands of games over the years with the show, I just took that for granted and assumed it was common knowledge. I guess not.

Im just curious, are people just taking that snippet as the only possible answer, or you honestly believe it to be true based on observation? If it's the latter, that sounds highly dubious.

And **** I just glanced at that post and I can tell it's BS. A simple trip to batting practice will reveal that. In BP a pitchers energy doesnt go down at all. After a few rounds of scoring runs off the pitcher when his confidence is at 0 and his energy is at 100 still, tell me pitcher confidence accounts fot 10% of a pitchers effectiveness. Please lol, seriously do.