I remembered a tactic I used to use a lot back in the NES era of baseball games, so I thought I would give it a shot here. It seems to keep hitters extremely off balance in MVP as well.
Following this pattern, I struck out 8, 10, and 14 batters in my 3 games last night, respectively. First, you need to throw an inside fastball out of te strike zone. Bust the hitter inside, but make sure you don't hit him. On the following pitch, throw either a curve or slider on the low outsde corner of the strike zone. The cpu hitter will take it for a strike each and every time. There appear to be limitations to this, so you will need to follow them to get good results.
I found that it only seems to work on 1st or 2nd strikes. If you try to do it for a strike out, it is likely going to be hit. So, you may want to go fastball inside, curve on the outside corner, fastball inside, curve or slider on the outside corner, and then on the 2-2 pitch, throw a slow curve, splitter or sinker low out of the zone to get him to chase for strike 3, or throw some high gas just above the strike zone and he will often chase for the strikeout.
Another thing to note : it appears that for this method to work, the low and outside corner has to be either a cold or neutral square. The strategy worked flawlessly for me up and down the Rangers lineup, except for with Rafael Palmeiro, who was the only Rangers hitter with a red hot square on the low and away corner. He got 2 bloop singles when I tried it on him.
Honestly, it is a pretty cheap strategy, IMO, because it can be exploited a little too easy. Throwing the inside fastball out of the zone to set him up for the low curve freezes the hitter a little too much. It is the same exact strategy that I used back in the day to throw many no hitters in Little League Baseball for the NES. However, if you just keep the idea behind it in the back of your mind, you can use it to understand how to set up hitters and get really good results.
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