Can't draw a walk for the life of me. Please help!

[Rwilldred27]

I'm new to this game and have been working on my Palehose franchise. First couple of games against the Royals, the BB/K ratio of their starters against me:

Game 1: Shields - 0BB, 9Ks (his default BB/9 of 83)
Game 2: Santana - 0BB, 11Ks (his default BB/9 of 47)

I am playing on Veteran right now. From looking around this forum, it seems that Pitch Control -4, Consistency-3, Strike Frequency-3 or some variation seems to be what most people are using so that's about what I've been testing in my games thus far.

Definitely have noticed too much perfect painting of the corners. I am still working out the kinks with my hitting, but my strikeouts as a hitter are largely a function of working the counts as much as I can, before I have to either take a called third strike (between the 2 games, had 6 full count strikeouts looking against me; > half of my strikeouts are looking), or make a late decision to swing at something on the corners in a 2 strike count. It's upsetting I couldn't even draw a walk against Ervin Santana whose BB/9 ability is relatively horrible. He was painting like Greg Maddux against me all day.

Has anybody figured out the key to drawing walks in this game??? If so, some shared tips would be greatly appreciated. Do I just ride it out? Obviously, my sample size is small, but I've noticed this throughout the ST and exhibition games I've played too. For a game that's supposed to be high on REALISM, I don't know how realistic it is for me to have a near identical OBP to AVG over the course of a season, especially when I'm actively trying to draw walks.

[eF 5ive]

Re: Can't draw a walk for the life of me. Please help!

Take the first pitch unless it's down the heart of the plate and you got a big bat up and you're focused on that spectrum of the zone.

Nothing good really comes out of a first pitch swing. If you do make contact and get called an out you just minimized the number of pitches you're forcing the CPU to throw, meaning you have to deal with this guy even longer.

If it happens to be a strike, at the minimum you should have gotten a feel for his pitch speed and you can now start gauging his pitch location, drop, etc (further along you go of course.)

Just try not to feel pressure until you have two strikes. When I have two strikes i take a defensive approach and nearly all my swings become "late" because i'm trying to foul them off as opposed to hitting for bases. I make the swing late on those 50/50 calls. Obviously get good timing on sure strikes.

Essentially every at bat should be 6 pitches. This obviously doesn't happen but this is how you should look at it.
In this 4-6 pitches, you can almost guarantee that anyone outside of an ace is going to make a mistake.

Don't be scared to take a 3rd strike looking. Some times those blacks are 50/50 calls and you'd be surprised how many ball fours you can actually take. Strike 3, groundout, popout, etc... It's all the same.

sorry explained just an approach to hitting but it should help you get some ball fours. i really feel like BB fundamentals starts with taking that first pitch and for me, it helps "see" the ball.

Try to track how many first pitch outs you have, or how many times you swing at a first pitch ball, or a full count ball is swung at.

[volsman]

Re: Can't draw a walk for the life of me. Please help!

First thin is turn off the check swing call feature until you get to were you can judge the ball better. Next thing is play around with the custom camera until you find one that allows you to judge the ball. There a bunch of custom cams on here, just find one and tweak to your likings. Finally I believe that it is a must to drop human strike frequency to at least 3.

[orion523]

Re: Can't draw a walk for the life of me. Please help!

I'm new to this game and have been working on my Palehose franchise. First couple of games against the Royals, the BB/K ratio of their starters against me:

Game 1: Shields - 0BB, 9Ks (his default BB/9 of 83)
Game 2: Santana - 0BB, 11Ks (his default BB/9 of 47)

I am playing on Veteran right now. From looking around this forum, it seems that Pitch Control -4, Consistency-3, Strike Frequency-3 or some variation seems to be what most people are using so that's about what I've been testing in my games thus far.

Definitely have noticed too much perfect painting of the corners. I am still working out the kinks with my hitting, but my strikeouts as a hitter are largely a function of working the counts as much as I can, before I have to either take a called third strike (between the 2 games, had 6 full count strikeouts looking against me; > half of my strikeouts are looking), or make a late decision to swing at something on the corners in a 2 strike count. It's upsetting I couldn't even draw a walk against Ervin Santana whose BB/9 ability is relatively horrible. He was painting like Greg Maddux against me all day.

Has anybody figured out the key to drawing walks in this game??? If so, some shared tips would be greatly appreciated. Do I just ride it out? Obviously, my sample size is small, but I've noticed this throughout the ST and exhibition games I've played too. For a game that's supposed to be high on REALISM, I don't know how realistic it is for me to have a near identical OBP to AVG over the course of a season, especially when I'm actively trying to draw walks.

What kind of strike frequency are you getting per game? You should be in the ballpark of 60-65% with the better pitchers hitting at the higher end. Without that you'll never walk. I have the CPU at 4 control, 4 consistency, and 1 strike frequency and it's been perfect for me and I would consider my plate discipline to be about average

[Side Effect]

Re: Can't draw a walk for the life of me. Please help!

I'm using TNK's sliders with Timing/Classic and am now averaging 1-3 walks per game. Which is great since in past years I would rarely ever walk.

[Heroesandvillains]

Re: Can't draw a walk for the life of me. Please help!

I'm on AS and am averaging just under 3.20 BB's per game. My only adjustment is the Strike Frequency slider which I've only dropped one click (to 4).

A lot of things factor in BB's. I mean, so many. But first...

Absolutely disregard the tip about always taking the first pitch (I'm not singling anyone out. I read this all the time on OS). The CPU is programmed to recognize this pattern. If you always take, you will almost always begin to see first pitch strikes. And once you begin to see it, you need to break it...by absolutely demolishing the pitch (which will lower the pitch and overall confidence, which will improve BB's).

Pitch Speed is important. If it's so fast that you are constantly chasing...especially on 3 balls counts in order to protect...and always checking your swing, that means it's set too fast. You need to be able to see the ball in order to take the bad ones.

Foul balls are essential in prolonging pitch counts and forcing the pitcher to miss. If you are not fouling off in the neighborhood of 20 per game (though, realistically it should be higher), that means every time you actually commit to a swing, you're actually putting the ball in play (which will probably make your subconscious tell you to feel bad for swinging the stick!). You cannot walk if the ball is put in play. And to go with that, you cannot walk if you swing (I know, I know. In one breath I'm telling you to swing, and in the other I'm telling you not too. LOL! I hope I make sense here ). Shoot for taking in the neighborhood of 45% of all pitches. Though, not every game. Just as an average.

The pitch history is a beautiful reference tool. CPU pitchers resort to patterns. In "Behind Count" in pitcher history, if you sort it by batter handedness, you'll be stunned at the type of repetition you see. Often times, you'll find there that 4 out of the last 6 "Behind Count" pitches to a RHB were (for example) low changeups out of the zone. So when you get in that situation again, look for it. Heck, even use the Guess Pitch and Guess Location options if you need to in order to isolate those pitches to make it easier for you to take.

Also, it's no secret that Veteran level will allow more strikes than on All-Star and above. I'm not recommending you change any levels, but you need to keep this in mind. This is why you will very often see Veteran players drop the CPU pitching sliders. Whether it works or not, I cannot say, because I don't play on that level.

[Bobhead]

Re: Can't draw a walk for the life of me. Please help!

Just to piggy back off of everything else, if you do decide to stay on Veteran difficulty... the lower your difficulty level, the more aggressive pitchers are... so you are going to want to lower strike frequency a bit more.

And minor league games are even lower in difficulty, so if this thread is about RTTS mode, rest assured things will improve as you climb the ranks.

[Rwilldred27]

Re: Can't draw a walk for the life of me. Please help!

Thanks everyone for the input. I got demolished tonight by the Royals 3-0 (Guthrie with too many K's for me to want to disclose on here...), but largely because I upped hitting to All-Star since I read elsewhere on OSFM that increase in hitting difficulty will inherently help lower the high strike %.

I did start seeing more Balls on All-Star, but with that I was chasing a ton more since the pitcher's strategy was noticeably more varied. This led me to chase more pitches coupled with timing problems since I was seeing a ton more offspeed pitches that I am not adjusted to yet.

I appreciate all the feedback so far. I think my gameplan will be:
-stick it out on Veteran for a bit
-decrease the sliders for the CPU pitcher considerably closer to 0.
-Decrease the pitch speed slider to 2 or 3. 5 was ok when I was just getting a feel for the game (playing on beginner/rookie) and was fine with swinging at everything since everything was a strike. Much easier to time swings under those conditions.
-Coming over from MLB2K (no choice since i had a 360), I definitely noticed the reaction time as a hitter requires much quicker reaction/decision making by the user, so I am still getting used to that now as well.
-Definitely will look for an optimal camera angle on this forum. It makes all the difference in gauging the trajectory.

[Zeppelin8]

Re: Can't draw a walk for the life of me. Please help!

I used the 4-3-3 combo with contact 7, foul frequency 3 and solid hits 3 (TNK's set). This is with zone hitting - allstar difficulty. I was averaging around 2 walks a game (tested through 20+ games). I found myself forcing to get walks to make stats right, at the other hand hitting became way too productive for me with solid hits at 3.

I did not like strike frequency at 2. I tested it for 2 games and AI too many times fell 2-0 behind and in return threw something very, very hittable. Solid contact was so often, that walks sort of became unnatural, something I forced myself to achieve.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but batters come into the box with the idea of looking for a good pitch to hit, not to force walks. More patient ones will wait for better pitches, if the pitcher is not giving any, they will try to get a base on balls, but they are still looking for hittable pitches. Walks happen when pitchers want to paint corners despite falling behind, and with control at 4 even averages ones did it on a consistent basis. I did raise the foul frequency slider which helped a little bit, but in the end, I found myself fouling almost everything, taking counts way too deep to draw walks. Which of course resulted in too many pitches for AI and much less strikeouts for user.

So I settled for CPU control at 3 and solid hits at 2. Had a great game, 8 hits and 4 walks. Another game I had 6 hits and 3 walks. Sample size is small but a good base nonetheless. Hitting seemed a bit more difficult with solid hits at 2, but I drew walks and got rewarded for not swinging at bad pitches. There are times that pitchers will come up with meatballs when they're down 2-0, but this also happened with control at 4. With strike frequency at 2, it happened more often because the pitcher almost always fell behind.

[ocho cuatro]

Re: Can't draw a walk for the life of me. Please help!

Heroes summed it up very well, so I'll just add one thing:

Take plenty of borderline pitches, even with 2 strikes. If you watch MLB hitters who have great discipline, they take a ton of pitches that are on the edge of the strike zone. You may get some strike 3 calls, but you'll also walk more.

[eF 5ive]

Re: Can't draw a walk for the life of me. Please help!

There's a difference between swinging at a strike down the heart, as compared to a high zone fb, or low slider which 9/10 are resulting into pop ups, or grounders.

If the kid can't draw walks I'd feed him the fundamentals, because obviously he isn't even picking up pitch type/location.

I'm using psycho's set and even if the cpu makes a first pitch heart of the plate strike it isn't guaranteed to be hit for bases, so for me, it's just easier to take that pitch unless I have a great contact/power hitter up, and it would also have to factor in if he's hot/cold.

Some pitchers are pitching solely for contact and i've had games where i don't draw walks, i don't get k'd but everything is an out once it's contacted.

I drew 5 walks off Felix last night in 4 1/3'd because i noticed early he just couldn't hit his mark. So instead of bailing him out when I seen those pitches down the middle i made him try to strike me out. instead of taking the chance of trying to smash a 3-1 strike, I went ahead and took the whole way to force him to come back 3-2 and throw it again.

Sure any of those power hits could have been a home run, but they could have been a fly ball, or ground ball and an out , and also built his confidence up.

If it's there doesn't mean you have to take it.

[Blzer]

Re: Can't draw a walk for the life of me. Please help!

I can't stress this enough, but try a new camera. I've been sticking with the same custom camera for three years, and won't look back until they add more tweaking options.

[Bobhead]

Re: Diamond reminds us fact

We do without absolutely wrong automatically know which factor a will of steel instinctively prove

Wh... What?

[itbeme23]

Re: Can't draw a walk for the life of me. Please help!

Time to bring the thread back from crazy town....don't get what I'm talking about??? See the post right before Bobhead's.

I don't really have any suggestions to help the OP, I'm posting more for commiseration purposes. I consider myself to be a decent hitter. I'm usually pretty good at working the count, as I see a lot of 2-2 and 3-2 counts. However, despite being able to see a lot of pitches every at-bat, I have never been able to walk much. The majority of the walks I do get are on four pitches or on 3-1 counts. I always seem to get a little jumpy in the box with two strikes, especially on full counts. I think I give away at least one or two walks per game, just because I'm swinging at borderline pitches that probably would've been called ball four had I decided to take instead of swinging.

Any advice would be appreciated!!!

[RogueHominid]

Re: Can't draw a walk for the life of me. Please help!

This is perhaps a bit of a different take, but try zone hitting.

I have all visual aids off and have just started working with Bobhead's set to test some things. I have small variations in the pitching settings, but the hitting ones and fielding ones are the same

I never thought I'd like zone, but here's what it's done for me that's helped me get walks:

*Now that I'm thinking about a specific zone, I'm not trying to observe the whole strike zone at once. That allows me to leave a lot more pitches alone, many of which are balls.

*The ability to move the stick slightly to reach for pitches on the edges helps me foul off more pitches, which lengthens at-bats, which in turn increases your chances of seeing a ball and working a walk.

I'm also striking out way less this way. You might give it a shot, but it's not for everybody, as I can understand the appeal of timing hitting, which is what I've used exclusively this year.