What if SCEA showed up at your door...

[nemesis04]

Re: What if SCEA showed up at your door...

Meatball pitch slider.

Did it use to have one, or is that 2K I'm thinking of?

For the most part, Veteran hitting works for me, but I'd love to tone down the number of meatball pitches.

There is an issue with meatball pitches this year in general imo. Pitches with missed release points tend to get sucked to the center of the zone. We saw this trend at community day but it appeared we were not convincing enough that there was an issue. There is an issue! I have been seeing it a lot online.

[Bobhead]

Re: What if SCEA showed up at your door...

There is an issue with meatball pitches this year in general imo. Pitches with missed release points tend to get sucked to the center of the zone. We saw this trend at community day but it appeared we were not convincing enough that there was an issue. There is an issue! I have been seeing it a lot online.

I saw this last year also tbh and I said something about it here. But not everyone sees it, as I think it was Jgainsey that disagreed with me. I know the issue is most obvious on Analog pitching, where in my opinion the middle of the zone sucks just about everything up.

Maybe next community day you guys can put together a serenade. Songs are generally more convincing than just words alone

[Heroesandvillains]

Re: What if SCEA showed up at your door...

There is an issue with meatball pitches this year in general imo. Pitches with missed release points tend to get sucked to the center of the zone. We saw this trend at community day but it appeared we were not convincing enough that there was an issue. There is an issue! I have been seeing it a lot online.

When you guys pointed this out, what did you suggest the alternative be?

In your opinion, would you rather more of these pitches be obvious balls? Or just further from the meatball zone? Because if the latter, I could see it negatively impacting BA and as a result, making hitting harder (or in other words, consequently and unintentionally rewarding the pitcher on the black when they make release timing mistakes).

I've been posting about this a lot lately, but I'd like to see pitchers with low Control and BB/9 ratings throw more obvious balls (and walk consecutive hitters more often) when they get their pitch and overall confidence down. Currently, it becomes meatball central, which just shouldn't happen when BB/9 gets below a certain threshold.

Would that be a fair assessment, or were you thinking something else?

[seanjeezy]

Re: What if SCEA showed up at your door...

When you guys pointed this out, what did you suggest the alternative be?

In your opinion, would you rather more of these pitches be obvious balls? Or just further from the meatball zone? Because if the latter, I could see it negatively impacting BA and as a result, making hitting harder (or in other words, consequently and unintentionally rewarding the pitcher on the black when they make release timing mistakes).

I've been posting about this a lot lately, but I'd like to see pitchers with low Control and BB/9 ratings throw more obvious balls (and walk consecutive hitters more often) when they get their pitch and overall confidence down. Currently, it becomes meatball central, which just shouldn't happen when BB/9 gets below a certain threshold.

Would that be a fair assessment, or were you thinking something else?

How about this: If your intention is to throw a ball, i.e. aiming off the plate to begin with, poor release should end up as a poorly thrown ball

If your intention is to throw a strike, poor release ends up as a meatball, but only if the release is really poor, like a giant circle on pulse.

The way it is now, I can aim in the other batters box with a 2-seam and it will still find it's way over the plate if my pulse circle was medium sized. I play on Legend pitching so maybe that factors in somewhat.

[Bobhead]

Re: What if SCEA showed up at your door...

When you guys pointed this out, what did you suggest the alternative be?

In your opinion, would you rather more of these pitches be obvious balls? Or just further from the meatball zone? Because if the latter, I could see it negatively impacting BA and as a result, making hitting harder (or in other words, consequently and unintentionally rewarding the pitcher on the black when they make release timing mistakes).

I've been posting about this a lot lately, but I'd like to see pitchers with low Control and BB/9 ratings throw more obvious balls (and walk consecutive hitters more often) when they get their pitch and overall confidence down. Currently, it becomes meatball central, which just shouldn't happen when BB/9 gets below a certain threshold.

Would that be a fair assessment, or were you thinking something else?

I think even the high BB/9 guys should occasionally have meltdowns and throw some obvious balls. I mean even Vlad draws walks sometimes, clearly there must be quite a few easy ones in real life.

[Heroesandvillains]

Re: What if SCEA showed up at your door...

I think even the high BB/9 guys should occasionally have meltdowns and throw some obvious balls. I mean even Vlad draws walks sometimes, clearly there must be quite a few easy ones in real life.

Yes. Absolutely.

That's essentially what I was saying. Were you agreeing with me or were your countering me? I couldn't tell by your response. Either way, I think you and I have pretty identical opinions on this.

[Heroesandvillains]

Re: What if SCEA showed up at your door...

I think even the high BB/9 guys should occasionally have meltdowns and throw some obvious balls. I mean even Vlad draws walks sometimes, clearly there must be quite a few easy ones in real life.

Oooohhhhh...

Gothcha. I missed the high BB/9 part. Yes, I agree with that too. But even if it was only possible to program with lower BB/9 pitchers (without having to completely redefine the hitter/batter experience, which I think is currently quite incredible), I think that would be a perfectly fine compromise.

[nemesis04]

Re: What if SCEA showed up at your door...

When you guys pointed this out, what did you suggest the alternative be?

In your opinion, would you rather more of these pitches be obvious balls? Or just further from the meatball zone? Because if the latter, I could see it negatively impacting BA and as a result, making hitting harder (or in other words, consequently and unintentionally rewarding the pitcher on the black when they make release timing mistakes).

I've been posting about this a lot lately, but I'd like to see pitchers with low Control and BB/9 ratings throw more obvious balls (and walk consecutive hitters more often) when they get their pitch and overall confidence down. Currently, it becomes meatball central, which just shouldn't happen when BB/9 gets below a certain threshold.

Would that be a fair assessment, or were you thinking something else?

I want them to be obvious balls especially when I am nowhere near the center of the zone. A perfect example was in my last league game, I had the batter 0-2 and wanted to throw a high fastball above the zone. I missed my timing slightly and the pitch went dead center of the strike zone that got crushed for a home run. Obviously Some meatball pitches need to occur but when you are far away from the center of the zone the pitch should not magically appear dead red.

When it was brought up they felt that it was not occurring frequently enough were it was widespread issue.

[Heroesandvillains]

Re: What if SCEA showed up at your door...

I want them to be obvious balls especially when I am nowhere near the center of the zone. A perfect example was in my last league game, I had the batter 0-2 and wanted to throw a high fastball above the zone. I missed my timing slightly and the pitch went dead center of the strike zone that got crushed for a home run. Obviously Some meatball pitches need to occur but when you are far away from the center of the zone the pitch should not magically appear dead red.

When it was brought up they felt that it was not occurring frequently enough were it was widespread issue.

Thanks. I actually assumed you were talking about Human and CPU meatballs.

Care to offer any opinions on the CPU side of poor release timing? I'd love to hear it. You always have remarkable suggestions and input, Nemesis.

[nemesis04]

Re: What if SCEA showed up at your door...

Thanks. I actually assumed you were talking about Human and CPU meatballs.

Care to offer any opinions on the CPU side of poor release timing? I'd love to hear it. You always have remarkable suggestions and input, Nemesis.

It comes down to programming and why a meatball pitch is favored when a release is not perfect. I know Brian looks at the numbers aspect of the game by running lots of stat tests. In my opinion under the hood the numbers may be correct but on the side we see (which is playing the game) the results may get there but at times they are not achieved in the most practical way. The human element is a tough thing to program especially trying to mimic pitching tendencies and imperfections. Right now the system is weighing heavily that poorly timed pitches should be extremely hittable instead of allowing the CPU pitcher to get deeper into counts by turning more of these pitches into obvious balls.

[Heroesandvillains]

Re: What if SCEA showed up at your door...

It comes down to programming and why a meatball pitch is favored when a release is not perfect. I know Brian looks at the numbers aspect of the game by running lots of stat tests. In my opinion under the hood the numbers may be correct but on the side we see (which is playing the game) the results may get there but at times they are not achieved in the most practical way. The human element is a tough thing to program especially trying to mimic pitching tendencies and imperfections. Right now the system is weighing heavily that poorly timed pitches should be extremely hittable instead of allowing the CPU pitcher to get deeper into counts by turning more of these pitches into obvious balls.

There is nothing about this post that I do not fully agree with.

I see it in played games, and I see it in CPU vs CPU games (both on Defaults).

This is why I wonder if the BB/9 attribute could be more powerful in the placement of poorly timed pitches as balls (over meatballs)? I understand the debate could go on for decades on OS about what to do when Cliff Lee misses his release point. But guys like Carlos Marmol, AJ Burnett (to a lesser extent) and Johnathan Sanchez shouldn't miss in a hittable part of the zone as OFTEN as they do (especially on the CPU side of things).

Their confidence would still be rattled, and meatballs would still occur. But I'd like to see them occur with much less frequency concerning pitchers with poor walks ratings.

I'm sure you know more about the algorithm of how poor release timing impacts Control vs BB/9 than I do. So I can't begin to pretend I know whether or not the BB/9 rating factors into meat pitches. But I wonder if it did, if it could be tweaked to play more of an obvious ball factor?

Sorry, Nemesis. Just thinking out loud. I just never really wonder why guys like CC pound the zone, even on bad days. It's guys like the three I mentioned above that perplex me.

[tbbucsfan001]

Re: What if SCEA showed up at your door...

Swing frequency.

[Bobhead]

Re: What if SCEA showed up at your door...

I completely agree with both of you guys, on every level.

Yep that's all I have to say...

[nomo17k]

Re: What if SCEA showed up at your door...

I agree that BB/9 and individual pitch control ratings should affect much more the particular pitcher's ability to issue less/more walks. I really would like to see this...... (and Ks as well...)

But I don't really see that low BB/9 or pitch control leads to more meat pitches but not necessarily balls... As usual in this sort of discussion, I'm talking about the case in which HUM factors are mostly removed. I just did a quick experiment with throwing down and away with 4SFB with Classic interface. One with Halladay as in the original roster, and modified Halladay with BB/9 and 4SFB control all the way down to zero. With the latter you see more wildness, but the distribution of pitch locations are kinda roughly symmetric around the intended target. I don't see that those pitches "prefer" to be closer to down the middle.

Now, this *might* be complicated by the choice of the pitching difficulty and interface; I could imagine with lower difficulty level the game might be tuned to produce more meat pitches, to inflate offense a bit (needed since most HUM players aren't very good). But that's a pure speculation though...

[Bobhead]

Re: What if SCEA showed up at your door...

Did you get your confidence low first? We aren't just talking exclusively about regular misses here. Although your post makes me want to just edit every single pitcher in the game and give them a bb/9 of 0...

And I've never used classic pitching so I don't know if that has something to do with it, but then again heroes uses it and he agrees with me? So who knows...

I use Analog, and I'm constantly tempted to stop using Analog altogether, because I feel like this black hole thing shows its face with Analog pitching more than any other interface.

And I think it's 1000x more prevalent with breaking balls and offspeed stuff. Instead of bouncing in the dirt for a wild pitch, *poof*, hung curve ball down the middle. I can't really say I've seen too many fastballs forced towards the middle.