Highly rated pitchers that you just can't pitch with

[dragon4ever]

Derek Lowe.

It might be his selection of pitches, but I always give up a lot of runs with him. Lowe's sinker is his best pitch, yet it's always either a ball or hit for a base. I think I might have to trade him for perhaps a prospect.

[tril]

Re: Highly rated pitchers that you just can't pitch with

Josh Beckett.
his era is 7.0 and I havent won a game with him in a while

[jkra0512]

Re: Highly rated pitchers that you just can't pitch with

Mariano Rivera is the hardest pitcher for me to pitch with. His cutter gets smashed all over the yard and his fastball doesn't have the giddy-up in this game to blow by hitters, at least not for me.

Chein-Ming- Wang is another pitcher I can't pitch with...He's a sinkerballer like Lowe is and I get the same results as you do, his best pitch gets rocked. He hasn't really developed his other pitches so I'm left with a 80+ sinker with a few 50- and 60-rated pitches.

[CRoman513]

Re: Highly rated pitchers that you just can't pitch with

Where are you all trying to spot these sinkers? Its a tricky pitch that even in real life, if not spotted well, will just turn into a BP fastball

[JBH3]

Re: Highly rated pitchers that you just can't pitch with

For whatever reason I CANNOT get Brad Lidge's slider over when I need to, and it's his best pitch. I would say it's an issue w/ my sliders, the gesture slider in particular, but I can get other pitchers sliders over w/ ease.

So why is it so hard to get his slider to be a slider instead of a curveball?

It HAS GOT to be his delivery that messes up the actual pitch, and for that reason I cannot pitch to full effectiveness w/ Brad Lidge.

Thankfully he has a plethora of other pitches:

A smoking 4-seam
2-seam
cutter
Curve

But because of his delivery I can't get his damn slider over, and it ends up being a curveball that will 50% of the time hit the batter.

[haze56]

Re: Highly rated pitchers that you just can't pitch with

Justin Verlander for me...I can usually get through the order without much the 1st time around, but usually the 2nd time around I get crushed.

[cubsfan203]

Re: Highly rated pitchers that you just can't pitch with

The Rangers don't have any highly rated pitchers.

[boxcarracer2552]

Re: Highly rated pitchers that you just can't pitch with

For whatever reason I CANNOT get Brad Lidge's slider over when I need to, and it's his best pitch. I would say it's an issue w/ my sliders, the gesture slider in particular, but I can get other pitchers sliders over w/ ease.

So why is it so hard to get his slider to be a slider instead of a curveball?

It HAS GOT to be his delivery that messes up the actual pitch, and for that reason I cannot pitch to full effectiveness w/ Brad Lidge.

Thankfully he has a plethora of other pitches:

A smoking 4-seam
2-seam
cutter
Curve

But because of his delivery I can't get his damn slider over, and it ends up being a curveball that will 50% of the time hit the batter.

How the hell could an animation mess up a control scheme? A slider is the same for every pitcher regardless of how they throw it. Don't follow through so much, make sure you don't go past more than the 9 o'clock mark on the analog stick on the follow through. And also make sure you start it at 3 o'clock

And about Beckett...just throw curveballs and fastballs. His curveball is damn near unhittable. I probably pitch the best with him.

[bryan_05]

Re: Highly rated pitchers that you just can't pitch with

I'm terrible with Lowe and Harden.

However, I am awesome with Luke Hochevar.

[Wavebird99]

Re: Highly rated pitchers that you just can't pitch with

Ching Ming Wang is impossible to use. I get lit up everytime I pitch with him. A Sinker is such a hard pitch to get used to throwing.

On the Rockies, Jeff Francis was hard to use. He has 3 pitches ranked in the 70s, but theyre really not that great. His fastball tops out at 84 mph.. and his slider, which is one of my favorite pitches to use in this game, is only ranked like a 41 or so and therefore it stays flat and gets hit a lot.

Btw those of you saying Derek Lowe, thats actually pretty funny. The only time I faced him in my franchise I knocked him out in the 1st inning :wink:

[JBH3]

Re: Highly rated pitchers that you just can't pitch with

How the hell could an animation mess up a control scheme? A slider is the same for every pitcher regardless of how they throw it. Don't follow through so much, make sure you don't go past more than the 9 o'clock mark on the analog stick on the follow through. And also make sure you start it at 3 o'clock

And about Beckett...just throw curveballs and fastballs. His curveball is damn near unhittable. I probably pitch the best with him.

Not IMO. Every pitchers windup is different, and thus creates a different amount of time it takes each gesture to go around.

So then know-it-all, how do you explain the CLEAR FACT that w/ say Brett Myers I get my slider over everytime w/ ease, control, and location BUT w/ Lidge I do the same exact motion, repeat EXACT MOTION, and it ends up being a curve.

...That consequently ends up hitting the batter because I put it in the location where a slider would break towards the corner, but since it's a curve it cuts inside and down hitting the batter on the leg/thigh.

The motion of a pitcher plays into the gesture, I can't stress that enough. There's no other explanation if I can throw a slider w/ ease using a pitcher w/ a completely different windup.

[trick02]

Re: Highly rated pitchers that you just can't pitch with

Rivera and Wang for me. Rivera either strikes out the lefty or allows a HR. Only reason Wang is hard is because his sinker is hard to get over 88mph ive thrown sinkers with other pitchers that hit 90^ and get much better results.

[Ckhoss29]

Re: Highly rated pitchers that you just can't pitch with

This goes the other way but Anthony Reyes is a beast for Cleveland. I consistently get a quality start out of him and usually around 7 or 8 k's in about 7 innings. His slurve is just nasty as is his change up

[brsak720]

Re: Highly rated pitchers that you just can't pitch with

Everytime i pitch with Matsuzaka i get bombed. And about every other time i bring papelbon in to close he blows the save.

[RandomHero67]

Re: Highly rated pitchers that you just can't pitch with

Man I can't pitch with Zambrano to save my life. I had to trade him from my Cubs franchise, his ERA was like 11.