The Strongest and Weakest parts of your game

[bcruise]

Re: The Strongest and Weakest parts of your game

Strongest: Working the count and knowing my players abilities, and playing within them.

At the plate, that means waiting for my pitch and having the eye and ability to lay off pitches I know I'm not going to make good contact on (if any contact at all). Even on default settings I've been able to consistently draw walks year after year in this game, and I know a LOT of people struggle with that and really depend on sliders to make it playable for them. I mostly play on HOF batting and my results trend right around what they should in just about every area.

On the mound, it means not falling into repeated patterns (unless they're successful) and minimizing the risk of mistake pitches. AllStar+ / HOF pitching is all about reducing the chance that the CPU will mash whatever you throw over the plate. Rarely do I aim any kind of pitch entirely over the plate - 3-0, 3-1 counts are just about the only time (and I'm not even giving THAT to a good hitter). I trust my ability with the meter, the pitcher's ratings, and the batter's chance he will swing and miss or make weak contact on a corner pitch. Of course, HOF being what it is, I do still leave pitches hanging over the plate, and I will also walk people. But whenever possible I try to lean towards the latter - it's usually better to walk someone than give up a ringing line drive somewhere.

Weakest....well, I'd like to be a LITTLE more precise with my HOF pitching as the mistake pitches that actually float back far enough over the middle tend be the result of my own user error in stopping the meter too soon or too late. And the high fastball, although I've improved at identifying/laying off of it, still causes me trouble at times at the plate.

[cardinalbird5]

Re: The Strongest and Weakest parts of your game

Strength...zone hitting and discipline, esp high heat

Weakness...analog pitching although I have improved a lot with it over the past two years

[Belkbuzze]

Re: The Strongest and Weakest parts of your game

Pitching is my strongest, then hitting, fielding and running. I really can't run to save my life!

I tend to confuse advance lead runner vs advance all. Or worse, When I need to return the trailing runner but advance the lead. (I.e sack fly with runner on 1st and 3rd, want 1st to stop in between then return and 3rd to tag and score)

[decga]

Re: The Strongest and Weakest parts of your game

The Strongest: Pitching! I use the pitcher meter and it puts me into the game.
The weakest: Scoring runs! I get the hits, but just cant get them across the plate.

[ranger91]

Re: The Strongest and Weakest parts of your game

Not sure about my strength, but I can't hit a change-up to save my life. If I face a pitcher that throws a lot of change-ups sometimes I can sit on a couple for good hits, but other than that I'm always swinging way out in front thinking it's a fastball.

[THESHAMISASHAME]

Re: The Strongest and Weakest parts of your game

Hitting is strongest because I always show patience and weakest is Pitching because I have no Patience but quick counts has helped this the last few years great addition

[Ghost Of The Year]

Re: The Strongest and Weakest parts of your game

Like most people, probably. Weak at hitting, strong at pitching.

[nemesis04]

Re: The Strongest and Weakest parts of your game

It depends what I am playing:

Offline:

Hitting is the strongest and pitching and defense would be equal.

Online:

Pitching would be the strongest followed by defense. Hitting is a crapshoot, I am very streaky when it comes to hitting online)

[ChGtXgMs]

Re: The Strongest and Weakest parts of your game

Used to be terrible at hitting, until I adjusted the camera angle and started looking for pitches low and only pitches low, until the pitcher would adjust. Then look and mash balls up in zone. Still often get fooled by down down, up out of the zone though.

My weakest is outfield fielding, I don't know how and I don't know why but I can have a 85+ defensive outfielder and still overrun or make the worst errors in the outfield.

[takki]

Re: The Strongest and Weakest parts of your game

Hitting is definitely my weakest part of my game. I'm impatient. If a ball is in the strike zone, I want to swing, instead of waiting for meat balls and tiring out their pitcher by going deeper in the count. I make Mike Trout look like a blind child out there.

My strong point is preventing extra bases I guess? I was exceptionally good at shutting down stealing cheesers in Diamond Dynasty back before they patched base running.

People thought they could steal their way around the bases with 99 speed contact hitters and I showed them why nobody puts their hands in the cookie jar in my house. I always use a left handed 1st baseman to make it easier to throw people leading off out. And I check people on first to tire them out so that when they do steal, they stand no chance. I think my success rate was above 80% at throwing people out.

[dalger21]

Re: The Strongest and Weakest parts of your game

Preface this by saying I only play RttS.....the strongest part of my game is being able to layoff that tough pitch and talking the walk. I'm in the mist of something like 6 or 7 straight years of 100+ walks. Weakest is probably defense mostly because I don't play it. I skip all defense chances.

[Armor and Sword]

Re: The Strongest and Weakest parts of your game

Strongest - Hitting. I have great patience at the dish, am able to draw walks, work counts, fight back from 0-2 and 1-2, sac guys, and generally hit the ball well. Yes I go through slumps like everyone. But hitting is a big strength of mine.

Pitching - I am good at moving the ball in and out of the zone and mixing my pitches well. Setting up hitters, also good at inducing ground balls when really needed.

Defense - Good at scouting my opposing batters and using spray charts to position my guys properly in situations that demand that. Also knowing where to go with the ball at all times before every pitch.

Weakness - Bullpen management. This is my true Achilles heal and costs me more games than any other factor. I tend to stick with my starters too long. I could be cruising and then all of a sudden bam!!!! 4 run inning with no one warm in the pen. I need to get better at having guys at the ready and having a shorter leash with my 3,4,5 starters.

[CornHoller]

Re: The Strongest and Weakest parts of your game

Nice thread here.

Hitting = Veteran - I don't use RTTS and use directional hitting interface. I use custom4 for my hotting view.

Pitching - Meter - Pitching view center.

Strength - Not sure it's strength yet but getting better at hitting. What I do notice is that I am still late in the zone and pull very few balls.

Weakness - Outfield fielding. The game is awesome in the outfield - their fielders get the ball and all of them fire rifle shots to the cutoff or the base - my guys will grab the and nonchalantly throw the ball in.

You said you are 'feathering' - just what exactly is this?

Plus my infielders will sometimes grab a line shot, game I hit the base I want to show to and he lobs a grenade over the bag. I also have had way too many inside the park homeruns as my outfielders play the ball like a bunch lazy bastards then lollypop a throw.

I'm interested in others outfield techniques.

As I said before - great thread and thanks for starting.

[TheWarmWind]

Re: The Strongest and Weakest parts of your game

You said you are 'feathering' - just what exactly is this?

Plus my infielders will sometimes grab a line shot, game I hit the base I want to show to and he lobs a grenade over the bag. I also have had way too many inside the park homeruns as my outfielders play the ball like a bunch lazy bastards then lollypop a throw.

I'm interested in others outfield techniques.

As I said before - great thread and thanks for starting.

I always used to just run to where I thought the ball was going to land in the outfield as fast as possible. This is good for balls that are at the edge of an outfielders range, but will cause errors otherwise.

So instead I started "feathering", where once I get close to the ball marker I ease up on the joystick. It takes some practice, since you have to learn which balls you have time to set yourself for, and which ones you just have to do a jogging catch for, but the basic principal is the same. When you get under the ball marker, you should never be pushing the joystick full tilt (unless at the aformentioned maximum range...charging a liner also works, but I digress).

You'll know you've mastered the technique when you start purposefully slowing yourself down taking a path to the ball just to get the timing of your jogging catch (not to be confused with the full tilt running catch). A good way to think about it is that there is a tradeoff between the speed that you run a ball down and your players ability to track said ball. Still, it is sometimes better to run to a spot then set your player, especially if you have plenty of time before the ball drops.

I probably made that sound way more complicated than it actually is. All I know is that ever since I started doing it, my errors in the outfield have dropped dramatically.

Thanks for the compliment! I was curious to see if my suspicion that hitting was the hardest part of the game was true or if it was just me. I'm glad to see that while I follow the trend (bad at hitting, good at pitching) there are plenty of people with unique skill sets out there. Makes the game even more interesting to me.

[Jeffrey Smith]

Re: The Strongest and Weakest parts of your game

I use dynamic difficulty.

My strength is pitching. I can graduate up to hall of fame difficulty and still keep my team E.R.A pretty low.

Hitting is much more of a challenge. I get up to all star difficulty on the strength of my willingness to take many pitches but when i do take a swing it's usually a foul or pop up.

I end up losing a lot of low scoring games.