AI walks issued, AI pitches chased... Hopefully can be adjusted in a patch...

[Bobhead]

I see what you're saying. I didn't realize OP was basing his observations strictly on raw numbers (as opposed to percentages).
We definitely were talking about two different things.

[Brian SCEA]

Quote: Originally Posted by Bobhead

I see what you're saying. I didn't realize OP was basing his observations strictly on raw numbers (as opposed to percentages). We definitely were talking about two different things.

Well sorry for writing too much about it then..unfortunately I'm obsessive compulsive about details but I'm told that's also why they made me work on this stuff.

[BrianU]

Quote: Originally Posted by Brian SCEA

That's also a flawed comparison, for several reasons. First, both of us are talking about actual number of chased pitches, not the rate. If a rich person has a super low tax rate, they probably still pay more way taxes than you. What correlates with one may indeed have a reverse correlation with the other. Secondly, the rate of chases is strongly correlated to the accuracy of the pitcher. But given a specific pitcher, throwing more pitches around the strike zone will in fact generate more chased pitches despite him having possibly a very low chase rate. There is no contradiction there. Ask the simple question, if a pitcher always throws in the strike zone, how many pitches will get chased? The answer is zero. It's not even up to the batter there. Let's examine the statement "more at bats will tend to result in more home runs". This is a generally true statement, even though of course some hitters will never hit a home run. However, you will in fact find that the player with the highest home runs will probably have fewer at bats than some players with no home runs. Yet the original statement still applies in this fashion - take that home run hitter, have him play many more at bats, and he will likely end up with more home runs than before. None of these statements are contradictory. More to the point, the first statement does not suggest a correlation, but a cause and effect. The example I cited was for taking an average pitcher and pitching differently with him. If you don't use an average pitcher, you must account for that.

You mentioned earlier how if you don't feel the need to pitch outside the zone then you should consider moving up the difficulty. It seems most people play on All-Star and tweak sliders from there. But I was wondering if maybe you could give some insight if you have time on the differences between All-Star, Hall of Fame and Legend?

I love how this game is designed everything is so well thought out you guys do a marvelous job. Just reading your posts you can tell you don't half *** anything, which is even more impressive since you have no real competition and could mail it in if you wanted but you dont.

So as you raise the pitching difficulty from AS to HOF to Legend what exactly is changing behind the scenes? Does it take away from your pitchers abilities, give you bigger penalties for missing your spots on the meters, boost the CPUs hitters, change their logic, all of the above?

I want to make pitching as realistic as possible but i'm not sure which setting to begin tuning on. Do they all result in the same performance by the AI in terms of how they choose to swing and where to swing and just the outcome is alter after making contact, or does it not affect the CPU batters at all and just affects your pitching by increasing meter speed/precision

[Bobhead]

Quote: Originally Posted by Brian SCEA

Well sorry for writing too much about it then..unfortunately I'm obsessive compulsive about details but I'm told that's also why they made me work on this stuff.

More is always better, so there's nothing wrong with that.

But it can't be exclusively the player: in CPU vs CPU games, the chase percentages for batters are still quite low. There's no human element there.

But in fairness, I want to make it clear. I can't actually say I've had trouble inducing chases this year, since I've only pitched like 3 or so games against the AI.

All of my observations and comments apply to CPU vs CPU.

[Brian SCEA]

Quote: Originally Posted by BrianU

You mentioned earlier how if you don't feel the need to pitch outside the zone then you should consider moving up the difficulty. It seems most people play on All-Star and tweak sliders from there. But I was wondering if maybe you could give some insight if you have time on the differences between All-Star, Hall of Fame and Legend?

For pitching, Legend is less accurate both overall and in the form of a small multiplier against your bad input. In 1P games, the CPU will gain hitting bonuses (contact, vision, a little bit of power, but NO CHANGE for discipline). For hitting, you have hitting penalties (reverse of the CPU bonuses) and the timing window is smaller. When choosing Veteran or Rookie, in addition to reverse bonuses and penalties the CPU strategy is dumbed down..for example they don't pay attention to obvious weaknesses or patterns as much.

Just as an estimate (this depends on the person), if you switch from Allstar to HoF you lose about 1-2 H and gain maybe 1 K per game. It seems small but keep in mind if you adjust both hitting and pitching together it's double that (you hit less but the CPU hits more). If you won 6 of 10 games, you might win 5 of 10 now in the long run.

[BrianU]

Thank you very much for your detailed response, very helpful. Didn't mean to amubush you I appreciate the reply!

[darkknightrises]

Regrading the differces between differculty when you go up in differculty how much of a difference is there in the time window and how much of a differces is there in the pci? For ecxample if you go form all star to hof how much of a difference is there between have good timing on a 93 mph fastball down the middle on all star compared to hof if you are using the same hitter? What about pitch speed how much of a difference is there with it on 0-10? or with it at like 9-10? How does the time window and pitch speed compare to last year? There is a bigger time window and slower pitch speed compared to last year but i would love to hear details about how much of a deffernce there is. Like on default pitch speed how much slower is it then last year and how much deffernt is the time window on all star default compared to last year?

[nomo17k]

Quote: Originally Posted by Brian SCEA

... I want to also point out what I meant by 'It takes skill to throw the MLB number [of walks].' It is a trivial thing to throw many pitches but no walks. It is also a trivial thing to throw few pitches and no walks. You can write a long chapter about why that is, but those 7 words summarize it.

This is actually where I feel The Show stil lacks in simulating a pitcher who doesn't have good command of his pitches but can still survive well due to his stuff... great movement, velocity, deft at changing speeds, etc.... I've just started my stats tracking session for the game, so I'm not sure how much things have changed from the last year (so far my numbers agree with Bobhead's after 25 games or so...)


I'm sure Brian actually looks at the pitch f/x data and that may be where his insight comes from, but I'd like to argue that it is actually not trivial for a pitcher to go 9 innings without issuing any walks during a game, even if batters *never* swing at pitches.... he in fact probably needs some help from hitters (like by chasing) to walk no batters.

I've read in The Book by Tango Tiger et al. about their exploration as to what really is the natural ability for a pitcher to throw one in the strike zone... which is actually not necessarily easy to measure directly off of game data, since when competing everything tries to find the equilibrium between pitching and hitting ... (.. one of those days somebody should actually make MLB pitchers take part in this experiment)... but their tentative conclusion was it's about strike % of 70%... that is, historically, in situations where a pitcher absolutely had no reason to throw anything other than a strike (e.g., when pitching to the opposing pitcher in 3-2 count, men on all bases), he still failed to do so about 30% of the time. It can still be argued if this is a robust number or not, but it is safe to say that pitchers cannot always throw strikes even if they aim down the middle.

If the natural strike % of a pitcher is 70%, I estimate that he ends up walking about 7% of hitters... close to 2 walks per game even if batters never swing. Even if we bring the strike % up to 80%, it would still amount to 1 - 2 walks. (I got those #s from monte carlo simulation.)

And there are pitchers who really cannot find the zone. Like Rick Ankiel at one point. I'd also argue that Nolan Ryan was one of those kinds of pitchers who didn't have much command but got by because his stuff was just great... fastball, curve ball both very hard... so even if he couldn't command them to where he really intended to, hitters had not choice to take hack at some of them.

I don't feel these pitchers are simulated very well in the game yet...