I like the game (playing the 07 iteration because it was cheap used, but any year will do). It’s pretty, and appears to be a good, deep simulation.
But I am really really bad at it. Especially batting. Under me, a player batting .200 with five homers in a season is an all-star slugger. There’s just something (well, many things) I don’t get.
I seem to be miserable at the pre-pitch guesswork. I have a general understanding of pitching strategy in real life baseball. I see how the game suggests I pitch, try to apply that to when I’m batting. Try to see trends once a pitcher’s been going a few innings. And I’m wrong. A lot. Particularly on the placement guessing, which is the really crucial one. This should be a one in four shot, and I’m lucky to guess one in ten correctly. I’d be better off not trying to figure it out, and just doing the stupid-kid-on-scantron-test strategy of choosing “C” every answer.
Once I’ve made my guess, the pitch is being thrown, and I’m revealed to have not guessed the placement correctly… I flail. Embarassingly. The announcers mock me tirelessly. Sometimes it’s easy to see that a pitch is going to be a ball, sometimes it’s just common sense to lay off. Rarely, I can see it’s a bad pitch once I’ve started a swing and check. But mostly I just swing at way too much junk. I can’t discern that a bad pitch is a bad pitch until I’ve committed to a swing and it won’t let me check.
If I do connect, it’s far more often very soft infield grounders and routine fly balls than anything with power (on regular or power swings). I hit about one home run every five games or so, and that feels like dumb luck that I guessed a pitch perfectly that ends up being dead center of the plate with my best batters.
I want to enjoy the game. Defense is quite fun, but offense is infuriating, and that should be the real joy. Please, give me tips, hints, cheats, whatever so that I can just play.
How can I guess pitches more accurately?
Is there something more to swinging at only the good pitches than just twitch decision-making (please)? If I want twitch reflex gameplay, and I rarely do, I’ll put in an FPS.
When I do connect, how do I hit well and make solid connection?