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 Post subject: Being Scouting a Lot as a Pitcher, Could use some tips!
PostPosted: Tue Nov 05, 2013 12:15 pm 
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Joined: Fri Sep 11, 2009 9:58 am
Posts: 3
Favorite Team: Yankees
Console '07: Don't Own
Console '08: Nintendo Wii
Hey everyone! I'm in season 2 of My Life mode with a starting pitcher I created in Success Mode. I did pretty well my first year, but my second year isn't going so smoothly. I had a lot of decent/good outings, but I've had several times when the manager told me I'm being scouted more. I'm at the point where anything I throw in the strike zone is being hit, either for a contact out or a base hit. I'm still getting through many games and winning, but giving up 8-12 hits per outing, and my strikeout average per game has gone from 9-10 when I started to around 3-4. And when I play the stronger teams like the Yankees or Red Sox, they put up some monster innings on me (and I reset the game, ha ha).

I have played this game for a long, long time, and played My Life once before, but got so frustrated with it, that I stayed away from this mode, sticking only with Success and Season Mode. I only recently decided to give this mode another shot, but I'm getting worried that if this continues, I'll be throwing my controller at the TV. And I don't want that... :p But yeah, if they keep scouting me, I am afraid every game is going to be like a game against the Yankees or Red Sox, and I just won't get anywhere.

So, my question - Anyone have any tips (as pitchers) as to how they continue to do well in their My Life career when the difficulty starts going up? I saw some posts on this for hitters, but didn't see any for pitchers, which makes me think that other players out there get by despite this scouting. I mean, does the AI learn your tendencies, which means you have to start throwing pitches in random parts of the zone, like high in the zone? Do you have to throw more balls out of the zone to throw off batters? It's just that I'm throwing good sequences with decent location, but when the batters are hitting lvl 5 Original Pitch Sliders and lvl 5 Drop Curves for hits repeatedly, it gets one frustrated. These are supposed to be out pitches! And I mix up my selection well - I pitch in real life, so I use those same strategies (pitching to both sides of the zone, changing speeds, etc.) in the game. I might soon get better results in real life than this game. :(

And in case anyone was wondering if it is just my abilities, 99 mph fastball (with Fastball Life), Stamina A (188), Control (152), good array of breaking balls with Spin (2FB - 2, Orig (Slider with more break) - 5, DCB - 5, CChg - 4, V-Sld - 2), and lots of blue abilities. So, I don't think it's my character, I just could use some tips to know how to counter the teams scouting me!


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 Post subject: Re: Being Scouting a Lot as a Pitcher, Could use some tips!
PostPosted: Tue Nov 05, 2013 1:56 pm 
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Joined: Thu May 30, 2013 4:01 pm
Posts: 1680
Location: Swagsonville
Favorite Team: Yankees
Console '07: Nintendo Wii
Console '08: Nintendo Wii
Favorite Japanese title: Don't Own
Battle through the games. Strikeouts aren't that important. Also note that if you have string of bad outings, the AI will get easier. That's basically how it works in real life. (Don't be afraid to give up 8 runs a game [not on purpose, of course :P] Everyone has their bad outings.)

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 Post subject: Re: Being Scouting a Lot as a Pitcher, Could use some tips!
PostPosted: Tue Nov 05, 2013 8:55 pm 
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Joined: Mon Oct 28, 2013 1:06 pm
Posts: 40
Favorite Team: Mets
Console '07: Nintendo Wii
Console '08: Nintendo Wii
Favorite Japanese title: Don't Own
I agree with what Power Pros 27 stated above. The reality of this game is that hitting is far easier than pitching. (Now don't get me wrong, the pitching AI in this game is much better than hitter AI) Part of the reason for this has to do with the fact that the strikezone in my opinion, is way too big. "Wouldn't that help the pitcher?" you may ask. Of course it would, in real life anyways. In Power Pros, it would seem like most pitches called for a ball are way to far away out of the strikezone to even be considered anywhere close to the plate. Of course, anyone who plays this game will tell you that they did this intentionally to allow for the umpire to make lots of "bad" calls on balls that are called strikes, and strikes on the corners that are called balls, in order to make it more realistic. So as a pitcher, you will get some lucky breaks now and then. Other times...not so much.

Now that that's out of the way, lets look at your pitches. You have a 99 mph fastball (which is always a good thing to have) 2-seam fastball, Slider with more break, Drop Curveball, Circle Change-up, and Vertical Slider. These are all great pitches to have in this game, no doubt. However, it seems to me that you were just trying to build up your player with lots of great pitches without thinking about how they come together.

Slider with more break is a wonderful pitch to have, especially since your guy can pitch 99 mph fastballs. So your slider is thrown at 80-something mph, which is almost god-like in a way. Drop curve is amazing to use in real life as well as in the game, no explanation needed there. Circle change up, of course you have that pitch to completely throw off the batter's timing. And finally, your Vertical Slider....now I'm not sure if anyone in real life actually uses that on the professional level...but I think if I recall, the V-Slider has a spin on it that looks like it will move the same way as the regular slider, except it dives down instead of moving across the plate (in the game anyways)

So a viable strategy I think you are trying to use based on those pitches would be to pitch your v-Slider, and then surprise the hitter with your real Slider (possibly because your V-Slider is still too weak at the moment to use as a strikeout pitch?) If that's the case, then it will be easy for me to explain the rest of this.

First, you currently have a 2-seam fastball with no pitch to compliment it with. What do I mean by that? Imagine having to face a pitcher with both a 2-seam fastball and a splitter for instance. In the video game, the two pitches look identical in terms of how the ball marker curves on the screen (straight down in this case with nearly identical spin) What makes this a hard combination to hit against is that both pitches are similar in that they are fast, but there is a huge difference in how much they will curve. (Naturally, the splitter should curve more than the 2-seam) So with two pitches of similar speeds, the batter has no choice but to swing at nearly the same moment with either pitch. This allows you as a pitcher, to force the hitter to pop up or hit very short grounders the catcher could pick up. The reason for this is that the hitter now has to guess which of the two pitches is coming, with little to no time to adjust if they can recognize it in time.

So with that said, you have your custom slider and vertical slider. If you can make your pitcher learn a cutter, you now have a third pitch to use that can really mess with the batter's timing. Possibly even better in this case than the example I gave since your cutter is going to be significantly faster than your slider, and curve less no matter what.

Remember that you can make your pitcher learn up to 10 breaking ball pitches (technically 11 with the 2 seam pitch) Use your earlier years to learn lots of new pitches, taking my advice into consideration so you can make wise choices as to which pitches you want to learn. And during spring training (as well as the post season if you don't make the playoffs or get knocked out early), bust out the pitch development training practices so you can improve your curves


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