How to handle changeup velocity gaps

[JayhawkerStL]

Re: How to handle changeup velocity gaps

Not sure who you're addressing but I'll speak for myself, I don't think pitches are or should be true to life with the time they take to reach the batter. What I'm asking for is true to life velocity differentials between pitchers' fastballs and changeups. So in the example of Aaron Bummer, his velo gap is 11 mph in this year's game, while it was 5.6 mph in real life.

To me, the way it is now, too many pitchers have such a gap between changeup and fastball that it makes hitting artificially hard. You're late on fastballs or way early on changeups (the animation is comical when you swing and miss out in front).

I've edited pitch types/velocities to match real life repertoires in franchises in the past and the game plays more true to life. You can still be fooled by changeups but not every pitcher is Alex Claudio throwing a Bugs Bunny change.

Once you accept that the speed of the pitch you are seeing is not authentic, then it really no longer matters what the differentials are. Then, all that matters is if the differential has the same effect on video game players as real life hitters, and from my experience, they do. Gameplay is more important than realism in this regard. The ability to see an read a pitch in a game is really nothing like real life, at all.

I don't think a single person would be complaining if the the numbers SDS used for the pitches were more accurate, but the actual speed of the pitches stayed the same in the game. The speed of the pitches changes with difficulty, so the differential would change, too.

Expecting the average gamer to see the difference between pitches that are only change in speed by a few mph is asking a lot. And all we have to do is press a button. So they enlarged the difference so that a change up would have there same effect on a gamer as they do in real life.

[Smallville102001]

Re: How to handle changeup velocity gaps

Ever since we got pitch speed sliders for fastball and off-speed instead of just over all pitch speed slider back in I think 15 I play with off-speed 2 points higher then fast ball. Its not just the like 12-15 difference you can some times see but also I fell like the difference in speed between a like 90 mph fastball and 80 mph changeup just fells like more then 10.

[trackstar121388]

Re: How to handle changeup velocity gaps

I end up doing something similar to you in terms of editing pitch speeds from pitchers before getting into my franchise mode.

[JPCaveman13]

Re: How to handle changeup velocity gaps

I'm working a combination of a few different strategies to get it all worked out.

1. I'm bumping the sliders to close the gap between fastball and off-speed. It's right around 1-2 notches different and can cover about 80% or so.

2. I'm editing the velocities of the changeups to be closer to the stats from Pitch-F/X. Most of these changeups fall within the range available in the game.

Doing these two gets me to about 90% or more for realistic changeup velocities.

3. When I get in the situations of CAPs or the odd 98+ fastball with 90-92 changeup, I'll edit the repertoire to match the changeup style to a pitch of similar speed and break. For the straight changeup, I'll use the splitter. The circle change becomes a sinker. The vulcan change becomes the forkball. Using that idea for CAPs at least lets me get a semi-realistic velocity split with a similar movement on the pitch.

If I end up with a pitcher still outside of all of this and is a RL pitcher, then I sit changeup, react to fastball, and hope for the best...otherwise, new name, new look, new repertoire.