[ParisB]

All in all, the Confidence is too fickle in this game and plays too big of a role.

Just like the example above, when a top flight pitcher gives up a homerun, they don't rattle to pieces and suddenly can't locate anything (and unfortunately in this game "not locating" means meatballs down the middle that get hammered).

There should be some static confidence attribute where a guy like Beckett, Lackey, Sabathia, or whatever don't fall apart after a bad inning or bad at-bat. They should still have the occasional bad start where they're just not feeling it, but the Confidence meter is simply too dynamic. Once it kicks in the slider settings don't even matter. Mediocre pitchers become marksmen if they take you down 1-2-3 in the first two innings. And elite pitchers just fall apart if you give up a couple of hits. Once your pitcher gets in that rattled mode, there's nothing you can really do but ride it out. The CPU will string along 3 singles and 2 doubles, get their 3 spot and then go down easily. You can almost sense the 3spot inning is coming if you walk the leadoff guy and the next batter slices a double in the gap. But once the 3 runs go on the board, the CPU becomes feeble most of the time.

I mean, there's pitchers who can get rattled easily or be completely dominant at times (ervin santana is the perfect example), but this game takes it a little too far.

p.s.- and my biggest complaint is how we still get punished for throwing intentional balls on 0-2 counts. C'mon, my confidence meter shouldn't drop on pitches where I intentionally throw junk.