Your defintly right i love the pitching mechanics in this game, someone said that you dont have to do both motions to pitch you only have to hold the first part and just let go. You can do that but you will not have the velocity or the break on it, you might get lucky but the computer will smack the crap out of it and i tested it a couple of times.
Also i probably will go back to the 2k8 version seems a little to easy for me but i think if i can adjust how fast it goes then that might be a different story. I like the hitting to might love the cursor though since i loved it in 2k3. After this pitching mechanic was implemented i can never go back to button pressing, just cant.