I can't get through 7th 8th or 9th?

[1Rose]

Re: I can't get through 7th 8th or 9th?

-Use your full Bull pen. Get favorable match-ups (lefty vs lefty, righty vs righty)

-Make defensive subs. If you have the lead, put in a better glove than bat in the infield. Put in the faster outfielder who can get to balls in the gap

-Mix up pitches, throw a few more balls to start out an AB if you feel they are jumping on first pitch strikes. Usually when a reliever comes in he is trying to throw strikes and get out of there, so teams are keying more on first pitch stirkes.

-Sounds like you are using the Cubs so, lastly is this really a surprise to you that your pen is blowing leads?

Low blow man, low blow lol

[Brian SCEA]

Re: I can't get through 7th 8th or 9th?

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.

[nomo17k]

Re: I can't get through 7th 8th or 9th?

Did I just see a god?

Damn that's quite some info!!

[brett the jet favre]

Re: I can't get through 7th 8th or 9th?

Im the same. I seem to give up most of my runs in the 1st 2nd and 3rd.

Sounds like King Felix, after the 3rd, its OVER!

[bcruise]

Re: I can't get through 7th 8th or 9th?

Uh oh, someone let B-Ma out again.

Thanks for the great info Brian.

[miamikb2001]

Great info thanks Brian

[Se7enth_Sinn]

I've played probably 60-70 games since release. I've probably won 25 of those. But i've lead before the 7th in probably 50.

Why is it, whenever I get to the 7th or 8th innings, my pitchers hit a wall(doesn't matter if energy his full or low, or confidence is high or low) and I lose the lead. It just feels like everything hits a hole or I'll make errors I can't control (pop ups to the infield dropped)

Any tips?

I've noticed that too, just get someone ready and take him out. In real life its the same, the 3rd and 4th time seeing the same pitcher is always an advantage for the hitter.

[stealyerface]

Re: I can't get through 7th 8th or 9th?

Wow.. Great info, and thanks for the insight into the behind-the-scenes coding and AI goodies.

This is not a "Hey Developer" thread question but more of a "Let me bouce this off you please" type of question.

With API set to the ON position, is there additional coding, tweaks, or adjustments made by the AI on the second, or third time through a lineup?

Meaning, if I am rolling with Josh Beckett and I get him into the 6th inning, does the aforementioned AI concepts you outlined, give a bump in the cursor, or the PCI for the computer, based on my selection of pitches throughout the game?

I know this is complicated, and maybe you cannot answer it, but when I was pitching competitively, I sometimes knew in warm ups that I had a very nasty split finger working on that day. But the truth is, I may not run it out in front of a hitter until the 4th inning, or halfway through the second time through a line up, and certainly for fastball hitters, I would wait til the tank was getting dry, and then start to throw that in the mix.

My question is that for the AI hitters, if I do not use a certain pitch at all through 3 innings, the confidence meter is pretty much gone to zero. So I might warm up with 5 curveballs and dial it in, but not use it at all in the game. Can I "fool" or have a better percentage of a dice roll against the AI if I "save" a pitch for later innings, that the AI has yet to be able to recognize in the API, and therefore, give my starter an advantage on the size of the batter's PCI, as well as his algorithmic advantage over a Guess-pitching AI batter?

Phew.. Hope that made any sense.

If you are able to shed some info without divulging anything proprietary, that would be great.

~syf

[stealyerface]

Re: I can't get through 7th 8th or 9th?

Also, you brought up a great point, and an even better reason that I have gone back to the Analog Pitching.

One of the things that I feel The Show has really gotten very good at, is the difference between pitchers, with regards to their wind up, and more importantly, out of the stretch.

After pitching with a guy like Lester, you can see that from the stretch, his yellow line on the Analog Meter is fairly close to the top line. This means, as a shorter guy, and with a compact pitching motion, the timing between the initial pull-back, and having to bring the stick forward is fairly short. This also keeps runners on base from stealing him wild, as his delivery timing to the plate is quite quick.

Micheal Bowden on the other hand, has a very long stride from the stretch, and as a result, you have to make an adjustment on his motion, and this makes pitching with different guys totally different.

You do not get this awesome difference with Classic or Pulse pitching.

Very well done.

~syf

[econoodle]

Re: I can't get through 7th 8th or 9th?

Juicy post Brian thanks.
I love those posts that go in depth about the Show.

[thaSLAB]

was one of my issues as well.
I use the yankees tho so its a bit more tolerable as the attributes override my incompetence.


I need to start using those warm up pitchers and get into the flow of the new pitchers motion.
My rhythm [or lack thereof] in those later innings i think is what does me in.

And the warmup pitches are actually important too, because they affect your pitcher confidence. Although confidence is a small portion of pitching success equation, you can gain a few percentage points in your favor by simply throwing strikes during warmups. That, and of course, the rhythm thing lol.


Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk 2 Beta-3

[Brian SCEA]

Re: I can't get through 7th 8th or 9th?

With API set to the ON position, is there additional coding, tweaks, or adjustments made by the AI on the second, or third time through a lineup?

Meaning, if I am rolling with Josh Beckett and I get him into the 6th inning, does the aforementioned AI concepts you outlined, give a bump in the cursor, or the PCI for the computer, based on my selection of pitches throughout the game?

To give you a simple answer, the API option only turns the OSD on or off visually.

AI hitters look for several types of patterns, including type, location, and "timing" (a combination of type and in/out location). When the AI picks up on a pattern, this affects his decision making only (where to put the PCI and how he times his swing). It does not give him a PCI bonus. One exception is explained in the next paragraph.

In addition to "pattern searching", both AI and human players get a small boost against a pitch that's been overused and a small penalty against a pitch that's been underused. An example of this in real life is there is a dramatic improvement in batting average from the 1st to 6th innings by batters against a starter as they start seeing all his pitches. This isn't explained by pitcher fatigue, and is more tied to simply the batters getting accustomed to every pitch they've seen.

Another example is to consider that if a pitcher threw his fastball 50 times in a row, it would underperform. On the other hand, if he only threw his fastball 1/3 of the time instead of 2/3, his fastball would overperform whenever thrown, but he'd underperform overall because of all the times he's not throwing his fastball! This is the equilibrium you try to achieve in light of the over/under used factors. That said, these factors are fairly minor in normal play, but ramp up quickly as you get to the extremes. There's nothing wrong with throwing 4 or 5 fastballs in a row, but as you keep going it's probably costing you statistically.

In summary, the AI can have a PCI location bonus, a timing bonus, or the shared AI/Human bonus for seeing a pitch the batters are getting accustomed to.

[stealyerface]

Re: I can't get through 7th 8th or 9th?

Wow.

Once again, thank you for taking the time to explain this.

I realize there is a fine line one must walk when explaining the intricacies of the AI, because we all want that line to be blurred between an adaptive artificial opponent, and coding based on inputs made by the same human who designs the offensive and defensive AI..

Fortunately, you gave us enough information (I think) to be smart about how you attack the CPU hitters, but so much as we would start to "cheat" the system by input control, rather than trying to pitch a game like you would in real life.

Here is what I love about his game:

When I "pitch" like I would actually pitch a game in real life, I get results that mimic what I feel ought to be very close to the results on the mound.

Honestly, what more could anyone ask for in a baseball game with regards to the nuances of what goes on between hitter and pitcher?

Thanks again,
~syf

[AUTiger1]

Re: I can't get through 7th 8th or 9th?

It is possible if you pitch using all your different pitches and all different orders to not give up any runs. I just pitched a complete game 3-hit shutout and my pitcher's energy bar was completely empty for the last 2 innings.

[stealyerface]

Re: I can't get through 7th 8th or 9th?

Last Question:

Now that we know that the API is only an OSD, is there any coding in which the suggestions made by the catcher are influenced by the aforementioned pitch selections, spots to aim for, or tendencies as recognized by the AI catcher on your team, to help you keep things mixed up, and or the offensive AI off balance?

Sometimes the catcher asks for the exact pitch and location that I would choose in that situation, based on what I believe to be baseball strategy. Other times, it would ask for something completely opposite, or something that I felt was not a prudent decision.

Is that because my catcher is picking up on what I am doing, and is attempting to help me by suggesting things it feels would keep the batters off balance, or is it simply making calls based on the stereotypical pitch call that would come in a situational at bat based on the hitter, men on base, pitch selection etc??

Again, I know this is a wacky way to look at it, but if the API is strictly a visual option, what makes the catcher call what he does, and is there any back-side programming to the calls he is making?

Thanks,
~syf