Re: mkharsh33 MLB 2K12 Sliders: Classic Hitting / Total Control Pitching
On average I try to throw like a realistic pitcher, so about 10% of my pitches I throw above the belt. Watch most pitchers work and they at least try to throw 85-90% of their pitches below the belt and use the other 10-15% higher then the belt to either take the hitter by surprise for a called strike or change their eye level to set up the next pitch. Also you want to try to only throw at the corners and the bottom of the zone, essentially every pitcher's number one goal should be to throw a ton of strikes without throwing any over the heart of the plate and throwing very few pitches high(also for the most part the only pitches that really work well high within the strike zone is the 4 seam fastball and a change up but only pitchers with super elite changes can survive throwing them high guys like Hamels, Buehrle and Shields, curves can work up in the zone but only when the hitter is sitting dead red fastball otherwise it's a bad pitch). Technically the high pitches I throw could count as glitch pitches, I don't think of them that way because by only throwing about 10 high per game even without the glitch I would probably get away with it because it would take them by surprise or make them miss squaring up the ball because they'd constantly be looking for low pitches. I don't throw 30 or 40 high and really take advantage of the glitch is what I'm saying since when you're throwing 30 or 40 you're not taking anyone by surprise.
Just watch most really good pitchers, they pound the bottom of the strike zone and very rarely throw any pitches above the knee level(Halladay, King Felix, Lee). Only pitches with 95mph fastballs or greater can survive consistantly throwing the ball high. Look at it from the hitters point of view any pitch above the belt that you square up is gonna be either a long homer, a double or a line drive right at someone, it's exceptionally hard to get more than a single on a pitch right at the knees, in other words as a pitcher your goal should be to throw everything down, pound the strike zone and force the other team to get 3 hits or more in a 5 batter span just to have to score 1 run. In my first 30 games in franchise I've hit 79 homers(I'm using Mk's settings except the pitch speed is at 90, I tried 100 and it was to fast for me so i've been working my way up from 75 for the past week hopefully i'll be at 100 by the end of this week) the reason I have so many homers is because the AI throws me 30% or so of the pitches at the belt or higher(72 of my 79 homers have been on pitches above the belt) the weakness of the above belt pitches is simple, if they get squared the balls gonna travel a really long way because I don't have to elevate the pitch since the pitcher already did it for me, on a pitch at the knees or lower even if it gets squared up its still at most a single 90% of the time(very few hitters can do more with pitches right at the knees other than hit a single, really only the truly elite hitters can get more than a single and even then they have to square the ball 100% with very little margin for error.). If you throw me 30 above belt pitches in 1 game all I need to win the game is to square up 5 of those pitches and I'll probably get 3 homers and 2 doubles on those pitches which should be enough to win. Whereas if you're pounding the bottom of the strike zone I'm only really gonna get singles so I probably need to square up 12-15 pitches instead of 5.
For the stamina i decrease by 15 for guys 95 or above and by 10 for 90 and below.
It really comes down to what you think pitching strategy is. When I play against my 2 buddies they think it means that you mix your pitches and location constantly and by having 20-25 different pitch possibilities(basically they throw any pitch at any level) I won't know what they're gonna throw. This is why I always demolish their pitching they throw way to many high pitches to try and fool me which is exactly what I want them to do, it's still harder to hit a 4seamer on the black on the outside the 20th time you've seen it then an offspeed pitch or 2 seamer belt-letter high over the heart of the plate even if it's the 1st time you've seen it in your life. Realistic pitching is mixing 6 or 7 really good pitches in really good locations and battling like crazy to never ever throw anything out of sequence or over the plate. It's not throwing any pitch in any location and just hoping like hell the guy doesn't square the ball up or if he does it's hit right at someone.
So it's all about what you think pitching strategy is all about to me it's pounding the bottom of the zone, which in this game is hard because the programmers specifically tried to make the game so that the AI found high pitchers harder to hit then low pitches( a lot of people complained that in last years it was to easy to pound the AI at the bottom like I'm saying real life pitchers do so the programmers overreacted and did the complete opposite this year basically the AI crushes pitches that are hard to hit in real life and is horrible on real life meatball pitches, I don't have a link but i definitily read this about a month ago), so if pounding the ball at the bottom is how you like to pitch you need the pitcher to actually have control or it's to easy to get strikeouts and it's boring because the strikeouts you get are mostly on meatball pitches. If like my 2 buddies you think throwing any pitch in any location at any time is real pitching than it's more challenging with the pitcher control very low so that's how you should play, it's all about the individual having fun.
MK both my 10 game samples were with AI at 80, 80. To me I'm a massive stats nerd and the problem is that I was getting such a high strikeout total for 2 reasons:
1. I was getting a whiff %(how often a hitter swings and misses only at pitches they swing at) of somewhere between 17-22%( i didn't actually count every pitch in my head would have taken to long), the mlb average whiff % is 8.7 and I don't think any pitchers ever had above 13-15% in any given season, yet I was at 17-22 with a staff featuring a lot of not so good pitchers
2. I was getting an O-Zone%(% of pitches hitters swung at outside the strike zone) of somewhere between 40-45%(again i didn't actually count this just guess) the MLB average is between 27-30 every year yet the AI was blowing past this, i didn't like that I was getting so many free strikes
The point is the only way to normalize this would be to raise contact(probably to at least 90 if not 95) which would stabilize strikeouts but make the hits total unrealistic in other words like you said before there is no perfect solution, just whatever fits the individual best. I'm gonna try it with 90 c 80 p but first I'm thinking of trying out last years game again(i've been considering it for weeks only haven't yet because i spent like 50 hours editing all the starting pitchers so they have their realistic pitch combos and don't want to start from scratch)
It really comes down to what you want from the games, the vast majority of sports fans think offense, offense, offense like my 2 buddies when they play they could care less about pitching they just want to hit. If you play for pitching then try my settings(or a tweaked variation of them exact settings will never work for more than 1 person) as the settings are geared towards people who like pitching and defense. If you're playing the game for hitting than everything I said was meaningless and you want to play a game where pitchers throw a ton of high pitches because they're easy to hit. In other words if you play the game solely for hitting stick with what you're doing and have fun if you play to pitch you might want to try my settings because it's more challenging and could even lead you to playing with different settings you like even more.
On average I try to throw like a realistic pitcher, so about 10% of my pitches I throw above the belt. Watch most pitchers work and they at least try to throw 85-90% of their pitches below the belt and use the other 10-15% higher then the belt to either take the hitter by surprise for a called strike or change their eye level to set up the next pitch. Also you want to try to only throw at the corners and the bottom of the zone, essentially every pitcher's number one goal should be to throw a ton of strikes without throwing any over the heart of the plate and throwing very few pitches high(also for the most part the only pitches that really work well high within the strike zone is the 4 seam fastball and a change up but only pitchers with super elite changes can survive throwing them high guys like Hamels, Buehrle and Shields, curves can work up in the zone but only when the hitter is sitting dead red fastball otherwise it's a bad pitch). Technically the high pitches I throw could count as glitch pitches, I don't think of them that way because by only throwing about 10 high per game even without the glitch I would probably get away with it because it would take them by surprise or make them miss squaring up the ball because they'd constantly be looking for low pitches. I don't throw 30 or 40 high and really take advantage of the glitch is what I'm saying since when you're throwing 30 or 40 you're not taking anyone by surprise.
Just watch most really good pitchers, they pound the bottom of the strike zone and very rarely throw any pitches above the knee level(Halladay, King Felix, Lee). Only pitches with 95mph fastballs or greater can survive consistantly throwing the ball high. Look at it from the hitters point of view any pitch above the belt that you square up is gonna be either a long homer, a double or a line drive right at someone, it's exceptionally hard to get more than a single on a pitch right at the knees, in other words as a pitcher your goal should be to throw everything down, pound the strike zone and force the other team to get 3 hits or more in a 5 batter span just to have to score 1 run. In my first 30 games in franchise I've hit 79 homers(I'm using Mk's settings except the pitch speed is at 90, I tried 100 and it was to fast for me so i've been working my way up from 75 for the past week hopefully i'll be at 100 by the end of this week) the reason I have so many homers is because the AI throws me 30% or so of the pitches at the belt or higher(72 of my 79 homers have been on pitches above the belt) the weakness of the above belt pitches is simple, if they get squared the balls gonna travel a really long way because I don't have to elevate the pitch since the pitcher already did it for me, on a pitch at the knees or lower even if it gets squared up its still at most a single 90% of the time(very few hitters can do more with pitches right at the knees other than hit a single, really only the truly elite hitters can get more than a single and even then they have to square the ball 100% with very little margin for error.). If you throw me 30 above belt pitches in 1 game all I need to win the game is to square up 5 of those pitches and I'll probably get 3 homers and 2 doubles on those pitches which should be enough to win. Whereas if you're pounding the bottom of the strike zone I'm only really gonna get singles so I probably need to square up 12-15 pitches instead of 5.
For the stamina i decrease by 15 for guys 95 or above and by 10 for 90 and below.
It really comes down to what you think pitching strategy is. When I play against my 2 buddies they think it means that you mix your pitches and location constantly and by having 20-25 different pitch possibilities(basically they throw any pitch at any level) I won't know what they're gonna throw. This is why I always demolish their pitching they throw way to many high pitches to try and fool me which is exactly what I want them to do, it's still harder to hit a 4seamer on the black on the outside the 20th time you've seen it then an offspeed pitch or 2 seamer belt-letter high over the heart of the plate even if it's the 1st time you've seen it in your life. Realistic pitching is mixing 6 or 7 really good pitches in really good locations and battling like crazy to never ever throw anything out of sequence or over the plate. It's not throwing any pitch in any location and just hoping like hell the guy doesn't square the ball up or if he does it's hit right at someone.
So it's all about what you think pitching strategy is all about to me it's pounding the bottom of the zone, which in this game is hard because the programmers specifically tried to make the game so that the AI found high pitchers harder to hit then low pitches( a lot of people complained that in last years it was to easy to pound the AI at the bottom like I'm saying real life pitchers do so the programmers overreacted and did the complete opposite this year basically the AI crushes pitches that are hard to hit in real life and is horrible on real life meatball pitches, I don't have a link but i definitily read this about a month ago), so if pounding the ball at the bottom is how you like to pitch you need the pitcher to actually have control or it's to easy to get strikeouts and it's boring because the strikeouts you get are mostly on meatball pitches. If like my 2 buddies you think throwing any pitch in any location at any time is real pitching than it's more challenging with the pitcher control very low so that's how you should play, it's all about the individual having fun.
MK both my 10 game samples were with AI at 80, 80. To me I'm a massive stats nerd and the problem is that I was getting such a high strikeout total for 2 reasons:
1. I was getting a whiff %(how often a hitter swings and misses only at pitches they swing at) of somewhere between 17-22%( i didn't actually count every pitch in my head would have taken to long), the mlb average whiff % is 8.7 and I don't think any pitchers ever had above 13-15% in any given season, yet I was at 17-22 with a staff featuring a lot of not so good pitchers
2. I was getting an O-Zone%(% of pitches hitters swung at outside the strike zone) of somewhere between 40-45%(again i didn't actually count this just guess) the MLB average is between 27-30 every year yet the AI was blowing past this, i didn't like that I was getting so many free strikes
The point is the only way to normalize this would be to raise contact(probably to at least 90 if not 95) which would stabilize strikeouts but make the hits total unrealistic in other words like you said before there is no perfect solution, just whatever fits the individual best. I'm gonna try it with 90 c 80 p but first I'm thinking of trying out last years game again(i've been considering it for weeks only haven't yet because i spent like 50 hours editing all the starting pitchers so they have their realistic pitch combos and don't want to start from scratch)
It really comes down to what you want from the games, the vast majority of sports fans think offense, offense, offense like my 2 buddies when they play they could care less about pitching they just want to hit. If you play for pitching then try my settings(or a tweaked variation of them exact settings will never work for more than 1 person) as the settings are geared towards people who like pitching and defense. If you're playing the game for hitting than everything I said was meaningless and you want to play a game where pitchers throw a ton of high pitches because they're easy to hit. In other words if you play the game solely for hitting stick with what you're doing and have fun if you play to pitch you might want to try my settings because it's more challenging and could even lead you to playing with different settings you like even more.
:wink:
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