Pitch recognition tips/advice

[dbekoscke]

All you MLBTS pros.... Are you actually able to pick up spin on the baseball for recognizing pitches?

Just wondering if there is any super great way to discern pitches better.

Or maybe there is something else that you look at/for the discern pitches.

Please share!

Sent from my GM1917 using Operation Sports mobile app

[AUTiger1]

Re: Pitch recognition tips/advice

All you MLBTS pros.... Are you actually able to pick up spin on the baseball for recognizing pitches?

Just wondering if there is any super great way to discern pitches better.

Or maybe there is something else that you look at/for the discern pitches.

Please share!

Sent from my GM1917 using Operation Sports mobile app

One of the key's to having good at-bats is accepting that sometimes you're gonna get caught looking. That happens in real life too so I'm not upset about that aspect of it.


If the pitch starts out low then try not to swing at it because more times than not it's gonna be low for a ball. Some pitches are easy to recognize out of the pitcher's hand because it's a clear ball that is never in the strike zone. So don't swing at those.


If you're facing a pitcher of the opposite hand and the pitch starts out inside try not to swing at it because most times it's gonna be inside off the plate.


You've just got to learn how to judge the difference between fastballs and breaking pitches. That's the biggest key to having success hitting. It takes some practice but with enough experience you'll be able to tell the difference between the two out of the pitcher's hand to give you a chance to try not to chase balls.



The other biggest key to having success hitting is learning to try to pick up on patterns. Just like in real life pitcher's in the show tend to fall into pitching patterns. If you are seen chasing a lot of pitches low and out of the zone then pretty soon that's all you're gonna be getting. If you've got an 0-2 you can almost guarantee that the next pitch or two will be balls or extremely borderline strikes.

[Caulfield]

Re: Pitch recognition tips/advice

I'll admit I'm a terrible hitter to emulate but I'm not really trying to think too much at the plate, or even recognize what pitch is coming down the way. I'm just trying to react and recognize if its something thats going to wind up in the zone and if its something I can put into play, preferably into the outfield

[S_pierce10]

Re: Pitch recognition tips/advice

Just keep it simple. When you’re ahead in the count look for one pitch in one spot, protect with two strikes. I can’t see seams myself so I just go by seeing the path the pitch might take depending on the pitcher’s repertoire. Scout the pitcher before hand and see what he is good at. Look at velocities, quirks and how much break his pitches have. That can sometimes give you an idea of how you should go about your at bats. I know I said keep it simple and then listed all this information but it is possible to take a simple approach while keeping all this information in mind. It’s a battle between hitter and pitcher, and is one of my favorite things about the beautiful game of baseball!

[bacon96]

Re: Pitch recognition tips/advice

Camera angle and zoom are both major factors for me in pitch recognition. I use an edited camera offline that's very low. This makes a lot of the high pitches look really high and a lot of the low pitches seem very low so I tend to swing at more strikes. This, however, isn't helpful online because you still can't use edited cameras online for whatever reason SDS has.

[jawgee]

Re: Pitch recognition tips/advice

In real life, a good hitter can pick up the rotation of a pitch on its way to the plate. A slider can form a dot pattern from its rotation. A 2-seam fastball has a different pattern than a 4-seamer (I usually can't see the rotation with a 4-seamer). A splitter usually has less tight rotation than other pitches (except for a knuckleball - sometimes a split-fingered fastball looks like a really fast knuckler).

A pitcher with a really tight curveball rotation can fool more hitters as its rotation can't be picked up as easily as more lollipop curves or slurves.

This also depends on the experience of the hitter as well and how well they can adapt to pitches once/if he can recognize it.

Pitch rotation (and pitching in general) has fascinated me since I was a kid. Playing and pitching Wiffleball growing up also contributed to my fascination.

I thought it was Earl Weaver Baseball from the mid-80s that I saw first feature pitch spin, but I can't find any info now to back that up. Anyone remember that game?

Anyway, it would be cool if The Show brought VR back into the game (they had it briefly on the PS3 with the PSMove for a year or two) and incorporated pitch mechanics. So if you wanted to pitch a slider, you could the Move wand like a slider, etc. I wonder if that'll make it into the PS5 version as it sounds like VR is going to play a bigger role on the PS5.