I just can't judge balls/strikes in this game :(

[vinny_77]

Re: I just can't judge balls/strikes in this game

My best advice is to go into batting practice and DO NOT SWING. Just put a good pitcher on the mound and watch each pitch come in. If you couldn't tell if the majority of the pitches were strikes or balls, KEEP WATCHING. Watch 100 pitches if you have to. I like to play in wide view. Focus on the pitchers release point, but not at the expense of peripheral view~~~watch the ball out of the pitcher's hand, but keep the strike zone in mind. I caught myself focusing on the ball all the way into the zone and couldn't decide fast enough to swing. Being aggressive doesn't mean hacking at everything; instead it means being more selective. Find a zone that you can hammer and wait for the ball to come. Dead center is always a good place to start. Better to be down a strike than to become a 1 pitch out.

[JoeRyan33]

Re: I just can't judge balls/strikes in this game

Are you out in front on most pitches? Watch the pitch coming out of the pitcher's hand, keep your eyes on the ball coming in, but think in your head how you would as a hitter: go through your progressions. Almost think a toe tap or a loading up in your head as you prepare for it. For me this seriously does work.

The key to hitting in this game is letting the ball get deep in the zone, otherwise you'll be out on your front foot on pitches you make contact on, and you'll get caught swinging over the top of sliders and curveballs.

Think like a hitter using timing mechanisms. Like real baseball, patience can be developed if you train your brain to think a certain way about hitting.

I swear this works for me.

[bcruise]

Re: I just can't judge balls/strikes in this game

What I try to do is get an idea of how fast the pitcher's fastball is (the select menu +square helps with this too), and actively work to foul it off or go opposite field with it unless I'm in a hitter's count. This gives me the time I need to watch the pitch and determine ball or strike.

However, when I'm not playing with guess pitch on I do zero the pitch speed slider. It still works - I just have more time to watch - time that I desperately need. And you'd better believe I still get fastballs snuck by me, especially high or when I'm looking for offspeed stuff.

At these settings, if I wanted to, I could probably turn on nearly any fastball thrown for a strike. But that's not how I play, and besides I'd a:be so far out in front of everything else that I'd probably K 2 or 3 times a game anyway, and b: NEVER walk.

[stormshadow1]

Re: I just can't judge balls/strikes in this game

This works pretty well... Specifically lowering the CPU Pitching Consistency slider, because pitches outside the zone will more often be further outside the zone.

Another thing I would suggest is to only swing at pitches you're looking for and can hit, unless of course you have two strikes. If a pitcher paints the black with a pitch early on in the count, just give him credit... No need to swing at a his pitch anyways.

Has anyone been able to verify that lowering the CPU Pitching Consistency slider forces balls more outside the zone. Also, does lowering control force more strikes? I have raised the strike slider to have the cpu pitch more strikes but I have not test the other pitcheing sliders. I am batting in wide view right now but I am thinking about going back to catcher. It seems to me that the pitcher paints the corner way too often. I am trying to reduce this to get more in the zone.

[rudyjuly2]

Re: I just can't judge balls/strikes in this game

Love so many things about this game, but even with pitch speed all the way down I can't judge balls and strikes worth a darn. Basically everything looks like a strike to me coming in and I've tried all the batting views. I wish you could turn the pitch speed down more.

I'm doing fairly well with pitch speed at 0 but still don't draw a ton of walks. The pitch speed being too fast was a major frustration for me in '08 and thankfully is fine for me at 0 in '09. This was the one make or break thing for me with '09 as I wasn't going to frustrate myself like last year.

Still, they need to make the slider work better. If some grown men struggle with this, how about the 10 year old kid that wants to play a game? Even on rookie the ball still comes in fast. If we want that ball coming in freaking slow motion we should be able to adjust it. We shouldn't just tell people who struggle to get better at it when some can't or don't want to put hours and hours into a game to improve.

I don't know if this is a frame rate issue or not because there is no good reason for the slider to not work better otherwise.

[stormshadow1]

Re: I just can't judge balls/strikes in this game

The other I thing I noticed is low pitches are generally impossible to get good hits. If it is low I usually ground out no matter if I chose the swing influence for a fly ball.

[BigWilly]

Re: I just can't judge balls/strikes in this game

To be honest, I still can't really tell balls from strikes. If it is way off coming out of the pitcher's hand, then sometimes I clue in quick enough and lay off. But I probably take only about 8 balls a game on a pitcher throwing a lot of strikes. And a pitcher who throws a lot of balls, I often take the first pitch of every at bat and hope he grooves an 1-0 fastball. But fundamentally, the problem is most pitchers throw 50% or more of their pitches as fastballs, so my philosophy is to always sit on fastball. If it looks as though it's coming over the plate, I swing. Offspeed pitches I'm almost always way early on. Sliders often start their break at or after I've begun my swing, meaning I'm early or "too early", not to mention some of those break outside the plate. I still do believe they've made it too hard to distinguish the pitches in time to do anything about it.

And because of that, and knowing the pitchers usually throw fastballs 50-60% of the time, even if they have 5 pitches, means I sit dead red each pitch, swing at most of them, and average 11-12 hits on Veteran difficulty in Season Mode. It also means I swing badly on a lot of offspeed and curveballs, and I don't seem to be getting any better at picking those pitches up.

[rudyjuly2]

Re: I just can't judge balls/strikes in this game

But fundamentally, the problem is most pitchers throw 50% or more of their pitches as fastballs, so my philosophy is to always sit on fastball.

Its not a problem. It's how pitchers actually pitch in baseball. The average pitcher throws his fastball 59% of the time. Power hitters tend to see less fastballs than the other guys.

Here is a chart showing how often a fastball is thrown based on count as well:

Cnt | FB% | SL% | CB% | CU% |
+------+------+------+------+------+
| 3-0 | 0.84 | 0.05 | 0.03 | 0.08 |
| 3-1 | 0.80 | 0.10 | 0.03 | 0.07 |
| 2-0 | 0.75 | 0.11 | 0.04 | 0.10 |
| 3-2 | 0.66 | 0.17 | 0.08 | 0.09 |
| 1-0 | 0.63 | 0.15 | 0.08 | 0.13 |
| 2-1 | 0.64 | 0.16 | 0.08 | 0.13 |
| 0-0 | 0.63 | 0.15 | 0.12 | 0.09 |
| 1-1 | 0.53 | 0.19 | 0.13 | 0.14 |
| 0-1 | 0.52 | 0.20 | 0.15 | 0.12 |
| 2-2 | 0.51 | 0.21 | 0.16 | 0.12 |
| 1-2 | 0.48 | 0.22 | 0.19 | 0.11 |
| 0-2 | 0.51 | 0.21 | 0.18 | 0.09 |

Other interesting stuff in the article linked below:
What have we learned?

I don't know about you, but I've learned a lot researching this article. I didn't realize the averge fastball was thrown comfortably above 90 mph. I can remember, not all that long ago, when 90 mph was considered throwing hard; now it's below average.

The change-up, despite was you sometimes read, is not the slowest pitch thrown (the curveball is). I read recently a claim that somebody's change-up was 20 mph slower than his fastball—no way! The average difference between fastball and change-up is 9 mph. I haven't checked, but I'm confident that nobody has a 20 mph difference between the two pitches.
Pitchers throw the change-up three times more often when facing an opposite-hand batter, but throw the fastball equally as often, regardless of the handedness of the batter. This is not a good stategy, as you will see when you read my article on platoon splits for different pitch types in the Hardball Times Basebll Annual 2008 (plug!).

Fastballs appear to have the worst BABIP and sliders the best, although a rigorous link between BABIP and pitch type needs more study. A quick look at batted-ball types, though, reveals that a larger proportion of line drives come off rising fastballs.

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/fastball-slider-changeup-curveball-an-analysis/

[Ktulu]

Re: I just can't judge balls/strikes in this game

It might seem counter intuitive, but try turning the strike zone indicator off.

When it's on it kinda looks like everything is going to be a strike, but with it off you can focus on the ball and where it's going rather than where the ball is in relation to the strike zone indicator.

Practicing with the plate coverage indicator on also helps.

[BigWilly]

Re: I just can't judge balls/strikes in this game

Sorry, what I meant was the problem with seeing fastballs 50-60% of the pitches is not that it's unrealistic, but that I feel I can sit on it almost every pitch because if I'm wrong on pitch 1, I'll likely whiff or foul off a pitch. Guess fastball again on pitch 2 and I'm likely right, and I've got a good chance to score a hit.

There's no incentive as far as I'm concerned to expect any other pitch other than fastball for best results. Even if you swing at every pitch, you're likely to do one of two things - foul off non-fastballs, or hit a fastball hard. It takes away some of the importance of being able to recognize all the other pitches (which in a way is good as hitting is hard enough as it is).

Btw, I'm going to print off those pitch count/pitch stats. Nice work. Have you noticed if the CPU tends to follow similar patterns in this game?

[rudyjuly2]

Re: I just can't judge balls/strikes in this game

Sorry, what I meant was the problem with seeing fastballs 50-60% of the pitches is not that it's unrealistic, but that I feel I can sit on it almost every pitch because if I'm wrong on pitch 1, I'll likely whiff or foul off a pitch. Guess fastball again on pitch 2 and I'm likely right, and I've got a good chance to score a hit.

There's no incentive as far as I'm concerned to expect any other pitch other than fastball for best results. Even if you swing at every pitch, you're likely to do one of two things - foul off non-fastballs, or hit a fastball hard. It takes away some of the importance of being able to recognize all the other pitches (which in a way is good as hitting is hard enough as it is).

Btw, I'm going to print off those pitch count/pitch stats. Nice work. Have you noticed if the CPU tends to follow similar patterns in this game?

I haven't paid enough attention to the cpu to see how accurate their trends are. I think they are pretty good but I'm not sure.

I agree with what you said about guessing fastball which is why I think the "Guess Pitch" feature ruins the strategy of pitching. The entire fastball-change up combo really suffers when you guess fastball all the time. You can just guess fastball and then sit on off speed if you are wrong. I know a lot of guys like it but I don't. I prefer to slow down pitch speed to help me identify the pitch and not use it. Personal preference though.

[BigWilly]

Re: I just can't judge balls/strikes in this game

We're on the same page. I don't use the guess pitch feature, what I mean is I assume every pitch coming is a fastball. That's why I'm not good at all hitting offspeed pitches. I have the pitch speed turned all the way down, and I still rarely pick up on the offspeed pitch. More often than not I'm swinging way early and/or fouling the offspeed.

[boblight24]

Re: I just can't judge balls/strikes in this game

We're on the same page. I don't use the guess pitch feature, what I mean is I assume every pitch coming is a fastball. That's why I'm not good at all hitting offspeed pitches. I have the pitch speed turned all the way down, and I still rarely pick up on the offspeed pitch. More often than not I'm swinging way early and/or fouling the offspeed.

One thing you might try is looking at the pitcher's ratings. For guys like Lowe and Webb their #1 pitch is their sinker so that's something they're going to rely heavily on to either get ahead or to put you away. Most pitchers will try and get ahead of you in a count with most likely a fastball, don't be afraid to start a count 0-1, and if it's 0-1 that doesn't mean you have to swing at the next pitch either. It's sometimes like trying to catch lightning in a bottle, but it comes down to baseball sense. If he's got me 0-2, he's not going to let me off the hook with a fastball in the middle of the plate.

[davewins]

Re: I just can't judge balls/strikes in this game

Yeah you can't just watch the release point like a robot the whole game and try to just swing at the ball. You have to look at the count ALWAYS and have some sort of educated guess on what's going to be coming. Doesn't mean you completley sit on that pitch but just look for it and then react. This will help you work the count better.

When I am down 0-1 and the first pitch was a fastball then I am not expecting another fastball so I am pretty much just sitting on off speed (curve, change, slider, etc). If he throws another fastball I pretty much take it unless I am feeling confident enough that I can react and move the stick and make good contact in time.

It's all about not being afraid to take a strike. Baseball is 100% strategy. It's not like you strike out if you only get 1 strike on you. You have 3 strikes to play with so the ultimate objective is to try to get the "fattest" strike (or strike that takes up most of the plate) to swing at. If you work the count your batting numbers will go up because on 2-0, 2-1, 3-1 and even 3-2 the pitcher has to come in with a strike. Still see the ball though because when guys are tired they might still miss on these counts but just be ready for a strike. That's what it's all about.

[JoeRyan33]

Re: I just can't judge balls/strikes in this game

I'm shocked at how many lower pitch speeds. I've raised them by 3 notches and having a blast with the game.

Unlike last year, the ball actually feels like it's traveling to the plate, so you can judge it coming in. Biggest improvement in the game.

Take a lot of BP. You'll feel the benefits in this game.