MLB The Show 16: Gameplay Taking Steps Forward

[kehlis]

MLB The Show 16: Gameplay Taking Steps Forward

Your data doesn't include arm speed, though, which is what makes it incorrect. A pitcher in real life that throws a 97 mph fastball followed by a 83 mph changeup is not maintaining the same release and arm speed for both pitches, but in The Show, all pitches have the exact same delivery and arm speed.



I don't know how feasible it is to have varying arm speeds in The Show, but as a balancing point, until it exists, these pitch speed differentials need to be maintained at an amount lower than real life. Such a reduction in differentials is what would happen if a real life pitcher were forced to use the exact same same speed every time.

Arm speed for the above two pitches (97 mph fastball/83 mph changeup) is the same.

If a pitcher adjusts his arm speed for a change up he's doing it wrong.

[Bobhead]

Re: MLB The Show 16: Gameplay Taking Steps Forward

That would require a different pitching motion for every pitch for every pitcher from both the windup and the set position. A pitcher with 4 pitches would have 8 unique pitching motions. I doubt the programmers they would have to hire to accomplish that would be worth it.

That's why I didn't suggest different deliveries, I suggested a reduction in the differential. You should actually read my post.

[Bobhead]

Re: MLB The Show 16: Gameplay Taking Steps Forward

Arm speed for the above two pitches (97 mph fastball/83 mph changeup) is the same.

If a pitcher adjusts his arm speed for a change up he's doing it wrong.

That's exactly it, a lot of them are doing it wrong. They aren't slowing their arm on purpose, but they are still slowing their arm. That's where The Show goes wrong.

A lot of pitchers don't even have the same release point for a changeup. Source:

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1680808-what-sets-an-elite-changeup-apart-from-the-rest-of-the-pack

Just because a pitcher attempts to throw a changeup, and calls it a changeup, doesn't mean he's doing it correctly. Entire articles are written about the few that do it correctly:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/sp...tana.html?_r=0

The implication and conclusion being that everyone else is not doing it correctly. For most pitchers, there are noticeable differences between the delivery of a changeup and a delivery of a fastball. See Jason Giambi's quote for more information.

Giambi said some pitchers “choke” the ball (grip it more tightly) when uncorking a changeup, so it is easy to detect what they are throwing.

And that is all just on changeups. Curveballs have even more volatility here

http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2010/7/6/1549254/how-does-a-different-release-point

This isn't just my opinion I'm giving. It's a fact. There is a very small number of pitchers who can throw a changeup or curveball with a 15 or 20 mph differential, respectively, without changing their delivery in some way.

The Show needs to account for this, and the easiest way to do that is to simply add a few mph to everyone's changeup and curveball, except for the elite pitches of those types.

If the differentials seem too big in The Show, it's because, all else being equal, they actually are.

[kehlis]

Re: MLB The Show 16: Gameplay Taking Steps Forward

A lot of pitchers don't even have the same release point for a changeup. Source:
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1...st-of-the-pack

If that's your source for proving that "a lot of pitchers" don't have the same release you may want to re-read the article or find another story. I do agree with you that there are pitchers that do tip their changeups (and other pitchers) but don't agree that it's a lot of pitchers as your post suggests and that article certainly doesn't back you claim in any way.

But saying "A lot of" and then posting a story about one pitcher who doesn't share the same release point isn't exactly a discussion point.

[Bobhead]

Re: MLB The Show 16: Gameplay Taking Steps Forward

If that's your source for proving that "a lot of pitchers" don't have the same release you may want to re-read the article or find another story as I agree with you that there are pitchers that do tip their changeups.

But saying "A lot of" and then posting a story about one pitcher who doesn't share the same release point isn't exactly a discussion point.

Well... most articles are written about one pitcher at a time, and no one is writing an article on Dallas Braden or JA Happ. Furthermore, only pitchers that use their changeup frequently are going to get an article written about it... no one cares if Joe Schmo is tipping his changeup that he only throws once per game... so there is going to be a disproportionately low number of articles on individual pitchers, to begin with. Not sure how many more you are looking for.

Fernando Rodney: http://www.lookoutlanding.com/2015/7...ng-his-pitches
Zack Wheeler AND Drew Storen tip pitches with differing deliveries: http://www.nationalsarmrace.com/?p=7080

I think we can agree Clayton Kershaw is pretty good at pitching, and this is even a noteworthy concern for him:

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/pitchcraft-clayton-kershaw-the-worlds-best-pitcher/

but he has to work on keeping the same arm speed he uses to throw his fastball; he has to do a better job of selling the pitch

It's a conscious action, on every pitch, to increase your arm speed on an offspeed pitch, to disguise the pitch. It's not an automatic thing.

This article is on a unrelated topic, but David Ortiz gives a relevant quote which should give you an idea that it happens fairly often: http://m.mlb.com/news/article/4597054/

Sometimes there's guys tipping their pitches out there, and I still won't hit it because I can't focus on that.

David Price used to tip his changeup, he just recently increased his changeup velocity to correct it: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/anato...-hit-disaster/
But then he relapsed: http://www.si.com/mlb/2015/10/24/roy...clinch-pennant

Both confirmed it: Price tipped his changeup—maybe not 100% of the time, but enough for Kansas City to buy in.

Not tipping his pitches was Greg Maddux main key to success

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nationals/greg-maddux-a-hall-of-fame-approach-that-carried-an-average-arm-to-cooperstown/2014/01/07/fdd7ae82-77d3-11e3-af7f-13bf0e9965f6_story.html

Jamie Moyer: http://www.thepostgame.com/blog/eye-...book-radar-gun

Also see this quote about Marco Estrada:

On average, Estrada drops nearly 11 mph off his four-seam fastball with every changeup, giving him the largest difference of any right-handed starter in baseball.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/marco...iest-changeup/

A lot of this is inference. We know that pitcher Y is successful because of X, and we know a lot of pitchers are not successful. Therefore, does it not hold highly probable that X is not true for a lot of pitchers?

Somewhere between the 8 or so links I've shared, I think it's safe to say that if a pitcher is highly successful, it is usually because they have eradicated any and all indicators for their pitches.
For the rest of the pack, 100% autonomy just doesn't exist.

[kehlis]

Re: MLB The Show 16: Gameplay Taking Steps Forward

Well... most articles are written about one pitcher at a time, and no one is writing an article on Dallas Braden or JA Happ. Furthermore, only pitchers that use their changeup frequently are going to get an article written about it... no one cares if Joe Schmo is tipping his changeup that he only throws once per game... so there is going to be a disproportionately low number of articles on individual pitchers, to begin with. Not sure how many more you are looking for.

Fernando Rodney: http://www.lookoutlanding.com/2015/7...ng-his-pitches

Yep, he's tipping his pitches but it has nothing to with his arm slot which unless I'm mistaken was your point.

Zack Wheeler AND Drew Storen tip pitches with differing deliveries: http://www.nationalsarmrace.com/?p=7080

As I agreed with you, there are pitchers who tip there pitches.

It's a conscious action, on every pitch, to increase your arm speed on an offspeed pitch, to disguise the pitch. It's not an automatic thing.

As someone who pitched at a college level I will agree to disagree with this statement. I lived off of my changeup and splitter. Keeping my release and arm speed was key in that.

Somewhere between the 8 or so links I've shared, I think it's safe to say that if a pitcher is highly successful, it is usually because they have eradicated any and all indicators for their pitches.
For the rest of the pack, 100% autonomy just doesn't exist.

None of the links you've posted have shown that at all. You've shown cases of individuals to prove your argument. I've seen nothing that proves your original argument which was a majority of pitchers change their arm speed and release to throw a changeup.


And please, for the sake of you and I, don't post anymore links. You and I aren't going to agree on this and that's okay.

You've proven nothing to me that will make me change my mind and I haven't said anything to you that will make you change your mind.


At the end of the day we are talking about a video game. I don't really think they need to worry about the depth of this discussion at all.

[BillBixbe]

Re: MLB The Show 16: Gameplay Taking Steps Forward

I don't run the bases, play the field, or throw. I pitch and hit. The problem for me is I don't walk enough AI batters in classic pitching. That kills a lot of the drama for me. The AI hitters are to hit happy. They don't work counts to draw walks. For me, the AI needs to become more intelligent at the plate.

[ajblithe20]

Re: MLB The Show 16: Gameplay Taking Steps Forward

I don't run the bases, play the field, or throw. I pitch and hit. The problem for me is I don't walk enough AI batters in classic pitching. That kills a lot of the drama for me. The AI hitters are to hit happy. They don't work counts to draw walks. For me, the AI needs to become more intelligent at the plate.

I pitched more walks on MLB 15 than I did on any of the former games, but I'm with you on this. A few more walks per game (pitched by me) would make the stats of my games reflect actual baseball almost perfectly.

My other minor issue with gameplay are pitch counts. I'm sure it has something to do with there not being enough foul balls per at bat. I knoq some slider tweaking could help this, but maybe the default sliders this year will accurately represent the number of foul balls hit.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[nomo17k]

Re: MLB The Show 16: Gameplay Taking Steps Forward

I don't run the bases, play the field, or throw. I pitch and hit. The problem for me is I don't walk enough AI batters in classic pitching. That kills a lot of the drama for me. The AI hitters are to hit happy. They don't work counts to draw walks. For me, the AI needs to become more intelligent at the plate.

I pitched more walks on MLB 15 than I did on any of the former games, but I'm with you on this. A few more walks per game (pitched by me) would make the stats of my games reflect actual baseball almost perfectly.

My other minor issue with gameplay are pitch counts. I'm sure it has something to do with there not being enough foul balls per at bat. I knoq some slider tweaking could help this, but maybe the default sliders this year will accurately represent the number of foul balls hit.

Not that I really know exactly how things will change with the new precision input engine given that I haven't tried the final implementation, but my concern with making accuracy more easily attainable (without correspondingly making harder for the gamer to be accurate to begin with) is exactly how this may affect the dynamics of walks.

It is my opinion that The Show has been the only baseball video game in which walks can naturally occur (as opposed to most other games in which walks almost never occur and/or only happen in rather contrived ways), and even then when you actually control pitching, the game has been rather unfriendly to walks (and hit-by-pitch, which almost never occur).

I think there are a couple factors as to why this is so, but one major reason has been that user input for pitching in the game allows still much higher accuracy than what real-life pitchers are able to achieve. If you know that you can always throw one in the strike zone somewhere, any time in the game, then the only time you issue walks would be when you actually do not mind issuing one. So in video games where walks do not naturally happen, typical pitch location chart looks like this:



where the variation of pitch location fluctuates only a little bit away from the intended target. In an arcade video game like this, walks are mostly not part of the game.

A real-life pitch location chart looks more like this



The Show simulates the pitch location scatter of real-life baseball reasonably well



but I don't know if this continues to be the case.

Making the outcome of user input more "deterministic" does not necessarily need to translate to the kind of results we see in the arcade game above, but I think input interface needs to be made a lot harder to hit exactly the timing/location a gamer wants, in order to simulate how difficult for real-life pitchers to hit the spot they want.

[Broomy88]

Re: MLB The Show 16: Gameplay Taking Steps Forward

Can anyone tell me if they are bringing over the ball physics improvements from mlb 15 to mlb 16, i really liked that there were more doubles/triples in mlb 15. I really hope they don't change too much batting wise from mlb 15, anyone agree??
Or anyone think it could be even better????

[ryanmc564]

Re: MLB The Show 16: Gameplay Taking Steps Forward

Can anyone tell me if they are bringing over the ball physics improvements from mlb 15 to mlb 16, i really liked that there were more doubles/triples in mlb 15. I really hope they don't change too much batting wise from mlb 15, anyone agree??
Or anyone think it could be even better????

we should be seeing more doubles and triples in 16 since they have reworked the way outfielders take routes to the ball in a even more realistic way than in the past years, for what we have been told.

[Broomy88]

Re: MLB The Show 16: Gameplay Taking Steps Forward

we should be seeing more doubles and triples in 16 since they have reworked the way outfielders take routes to the ball in a even more realistic way than in the past years, for what we have been told.

yes i heard this, it will definetly create more variety of hits, i'm all for realism variety of single, doubles, triples and HRs. But feel mlb 15 had it down decently

[saintjimbo1885]

Re: MLB The Show 16: Gameplay Taking Steps Forward

Not that I really know exactly how things will change with the new precision input engine given that I haven't tried the final implementation, but my concern with making accuracy more easily attainable (without correspondingly making harder for the gamer to be accurate to begin with) is exactly how this may affect the dynamics of walks.

It is my opinion that The Show has been the only baseball video game in which walks can naturally occur (as opposed to most other games in which walks almost never occur and/or only happen in rather contrived ways), and even then when you actually control pitching, the game has been rather unfriendly to walks (and hit-by-pitch, which almost never occur).

I think there are a couple factors as to why this is so, but one major reason has been that user input for pitching in the game allows still much higher accuracy than what real-life pitchers are able to achieve. If you know that you can always throw one in the strike zone somewhere, any time in the game, then the only time you issue walks would be when you actually do not mind issuing one. So in video games where walks do not naturally happen, typical pitch location chart looks like this:



where the variation of pitch location fluctuates only a little bit away from the intended target. In an arcade video game like this, walks are mostly not part of the game.

A real-life pitch location chart looks more like this



The Show simulates the pitch location scatter of real-life baseball reasonably well



but I don't know if this continues to be the case.

Making the outcome of user input more "deterministic" does not necessarily need to translate to the kind of results we see in the arcade game above, but I think input interface needs to be made a lot harder to hit exactly the timing/location a gamer wants, in order to simulate how difficult for real-life pitchers to hit the spot they want.

No offence nomo but you are comparing apples with oranges here!!

As a regular player of PYS I actually find it easier to draw walks on it than I do on MLB The Show.

I'm not sure what setting you were playing on or what pitcher you were using but that graphic looks nothing like the ones I see. The fact there were seemingly no balls thrown means you were either playing on too easy a level or you were playing with the pitch cursor on which means the cpu will throw virtually no balls - probably the latter seeing as there were only 68 pitches thrown!!

Here's a couple of pics from a game I just played with the overall total pitches and just the starter's pitches.

[nomo17k]

Re: MLB The Show 16: Gameplay Taking Steps Forward

No offence nomo but you are comparing apples with oranges here!!

As a regular player of PYS I actually find it easier to draw walks on it than I do on MLB The Show.

I'm not sure what setting you were playing on or what pitcher you were using but that graphic looks nothing like the ones I see. The fact there were seemingly no balls thrown means you were either playing on too easy a level or you were playing with the pitch cursor on which means the cpu will throw virtually no balls - probably the latter seeing as there were only 68 pitches thrown!!

Here's a couple of pics from a game I just played with the overall total pitches and just the starter's pitches.

I didn't actually mean to specifically point to PYS, as I didn't want to turn discussions into comparison between specific games (which I believe isn't welcomed in subforums), and I merely wanted to point out that in most baseball video games pitchers are way more accurate than real-life pitchers are. I don't have a PS3 running so I didn't pull that image from my own game. I could've played Super Mega Baseball myself but I don't think that game shows pitch location chart...

I would still say that your pitch location charts from PYS indicate that in-game pitchers are throwing strikes way more easily compared to real-life pitchers. The MLB average for pitched thrown inside the strike zone is about 45 - 46%, whereas the charts indicates about 64 - 67% were strikes.

Also, most pitches, even if they were balls, are still close to the edge of the strike zone, and those were typically aimed at the black by the gamer or CPU. If desired, one can choose to simply lay one closer to the center of the strike zone, just to avoid walks all game.

Real-life pitchers cannot consistently do that all the time, even if they aim down the middle; otherwise you would never see them walk opposing pitchers.

[Cavicchi]

Re: MLB The Show 16: Gameplay Taking Steps Forward

Our data comes directly from they MLB they have best camera's and technology of any of the pitch FX tracking mechanisms. We also cross reference it wother another source. The data we get is 98% accurate.

"Overview
Pitching is part art and part science. Pitching analysis is no different. At Brooks Baseball, we strive to present the most complete, accurate, and comprehensive dataset about pitching available on the web. To do that, we start with the PITCHf/x dataset, a public resource made available by MLBAM and Sportvision, and make systematic changes that improve the quality, usefulness, and useability of that data.

Pitch Classifications by Pitch Info
The PITCHf/x data downloaded from MLBAM contains a set of pitch classifications determined by an automated, real-time, neural network algorithm. While this has the advantage of providing very fast labels that can inform broadcasts and products such as MLB Gameday, such automated classifiers have difficulty with certain repertoires and pitch types.

The Pitch Classifications used by Brooks Baseball are manually reviewed by Pitch Info using several parameters of each pitch's trajectory and double-checked against several other sources, such as video evidence (e.g., pitcher grip and catcher signs) and direct communication with on-field personnel (e.g., pitching coaches, catchers, and the pitchers themselves).

Realistic Trajectory Data
Because the PITCHf/x dataset provides the details of each pitch's trajectory, we can slightly alter the default values to align better with reality than what is commonly reported. For example, we slightly shift our reported values back to a release distance of 55' - which more closely reflects the actual release distance of most pitchers - so that release points are more tightly clustered and velocities are slightly increased. We also provide options to visualize pitch movement with gravity added back into the equation or with the effects of air drag removed."

http://www.brooksbaseball.net/about.php

Of course, you would not name that 98 percent accurate source? I'd be very suspicious of any source claiming 98 percent accuracy--I mean, how would they know it's 98 percent, compared to what? Looking at what brooksbaseball has to say about MLB Gameday is interesting to say the least.

Kershaw's slider does not have more horizontal movement than that of Carlos Martinez--just compare horizontal movement. But, are your movement ratings based on reality, or just made to make pitchers harder to hit?

Kershaw has in the game an arm accuracy rating of 32, yes, thirty two. Is that because he walks lots of batters? Or maybe because he gives up lots of home runs? or maybe something else? I'm lost, I've no idea why he has 32 and King Felix something like 76.

Jose Fernandez has never thrown a slider according to brooksbaseball, and their methodology is shown on website. There is a choice, and the choice is yours.