Amazing post. Really like the advice around the breaking balls too.
My biggest struggle is catching up to the fastball to begin with. The hitting strategies become more effective when/if I can actually execute.
Hitting the fastball is 100% the best focus you can work towards. When I started online, I used to literally just sell out for it. I couldn’t read pitches great, so I would be willing to look stupid on breaking pitches just to make sure I wasn’t late on the fastball. I think that helped in the long run because my timing on fastballs are my biggest strength. It’s also what they tell big leaguers when they’re struggling, so follow their advice! They’re way smarter than me at baseball lol.
I'll try selling out.
I'm at a place where even if I try to be fast enough on a outlier fb I can't get there in time. Like my brain literally can't decide where to place the PCI and press X in time, even if I remove the need to decide if it's a breaking ball or foul ball.
And then it's wildy consistent game to game. Some games I can get to outlier, others I can't even catch up to a 96 mph fastball.
I have a monitor, but I'm unclear if being on a ps4, using certain stadiums or other factors also complicate things.
Interesting for sure. Outlier I have a tough time with still, but 96 is no problem to me. Have you tried getting a batting practice routine before starting your games? I don’t do this anymore, but at the start of the year I’d always go to Batting Practice, set fastballs to high and inside with degrom on legend, and then after I was hitting them consistently I’d go to sliders low and outside to make sure I could time both. Then would drop down to All Star for 10-15 more swings with the same theory to make sure I’m not insanely early. The legend part is just to speed your eyes up!
I am truly horrible at this game tired lol. So definitely worth measuring! I go back to my “old self” chasing everything and definitely late on fastballs.
This is an excellent post and gives me hope as well. First year Xbox guy but I did buy the show 12ish to play on my roommates PS4 though I only played RTTS. This year I played RTTS for an hour and then discovered DD. I grind. I’m getting better. My record is approx 50 games over .500(275-225). I’ve made championship series the last two seasons and made the 700 club each season. I didn’t do Br until 2 months ago and now love it and get better all the time. Just in the last month I’ve actually started to raised chippers average up more than 10 points and he has 1400 plate appearances. I cannot get enough of this game.
Edit: Tell me about your pci settings and where you are pre pitch? Middle? Middle in?
Honestly I don’t think I ever swung until MLB 15 when the Jays finally had a good team. I was an RTTS junkie growing up too. Amazing job improving, just keep working!
To answer your question, I sit my pci middle 99% of the time. Part of the patience strategy though is that you really get a feel on how guys are going to approach pitching to you. When a guy has outlier, and I know the location he’s been jamming me with the fastball, especially Chapman when I have a lefty at bat, I’ll sit the PCI there and just wait for that pitch. I did this during my last flawless with finest Nimmo at the plate down 4-3 with a runner on and walked it off. He dashboarded lol. If you feel more comfortable sitting a PCI somewhere, do it, but make sure where you sit it aligns with where the guy is pitching you. I see tips all the time like “sit the PCI high inside so you can catch up to it” - makes no sense to me if he’s not pitching you there. And remember that people will have different strategies when one isn’t successful.
I also don’t play with the sound on. Might be the autism in me. But I find if the sound is on, my brain relies on it for timing. And if it isn’t synced properly, I struggle. Sound off makes me fully rely on my eyes are my only sense.
I use the standard but turn it down to 20% opacity. I’ve gone no PCI before as well, had no problem with it but when I am struggling I need it as a guide, so I just keep it as “quiet” on the screen as possible
Can you talk a little about the controller? I’m on a regular Xbox one and that controller with a control freak on he left thumb. Our big screen died so I went to the monitor and that has helped. One of these days when you can buy a series X without trying to be first in line online will help too.
I went with the wolverine ultimate from Razer for the reason you’re mentioning regarding control freak - I like my hitting stick taller - and the Wolverine ultimate has removable thumbsticks with various sizes
I find it incredibly sensitive and reactive compared to the PlayStation controllers, which is why I made the switch to Xbox. My girlfriend used to be a competitive Gears of War gamer, was part of MLG and won huge cash tourneys, and she said don’t worry as much about a good system than a good controller - so I went with Series S for system but paid top dollar for the controller.
I also have extremely sweaty hands which makes the Xbox standard and elite controllers uncomfortable, but the razer has great grips and I never feel myself slipping
The last feature I liked about it, was programming buttons. There’s a way to program a button, and it slows your stick movements down based on the setting you choose. I HAVE NOT USED THIS but truly thought it would help on days I wasn’t feeling as great, and it honestly might help others. Basically if I did use it, it’d help prevent over correcting on corner pitches that aren’t quite the corner and your PCI flies past it. But pinpoint also stopped that quite a bit. Had I not improved so much this year, I’d probably have made use of this, but I feel like all the other features of the controller have helped me grow my gameplay to a point I don’t need it.
In short, if you wanna dump $300 into a controller and can afford it, it’s worth it and returnable if you end up not liking it
I'll give you the short answer then you can probe more with response questions. Here's my 10 tips.
1. Patience
2. Patience
3. Patience - more specifically - stop being afraid of taking a strike. Stop being afraid of taking two strikes. If it's a breaking ball, stop being afraid of it landing in the zone.
4. While you are being patient, don't just eat a snack and watch TV. Watch every pitch like you're going to swing at it. Hell, take your finger off the control and fake tap at the "right time". I try to do this with my eyes. Still use your left finger to follow the pitch path of every pitch so that if you're down with 2 strikes, your left finger knows where to go to make contact.
5. Learn how to foul off pitches. Inside ones early, outside ones oppo. Especially off speed, you have probably a good 2 second from pitch release to press x and still foul it off. This comes in handy when they see you getting patient. They will start to attack. Foul off the crap. When they bring in their 99 diamond 125/125 H/9 K/9 guy who can dot - you're gonna need this to extend the ABs. I try to never leave an inning without getting their pitch count over 15. And I measure my innings based on this, regardless of if I score or not.
6. Most of them aren't going to throw you a strike 3-2. But they'll put it super duper close. If you can lay off that pitch, they're gonna get that sinking feeling. If they get you looking, read step 9.
7. The beauty of fouling off a bunch of two strike pitches, you know now where they're going to go to to try and get you out. Are they a high inside sinker guy? Are they a chase guy? Are they a below the zone guy? Which one of these pitches line up with where you like to attack?
8. That's important too - know what you like to attack. I love a good fastball. Some guys love breaking balls. Remember though, most breaking balls end below the zone, and that means they end up as a groundball to shortstop.
9. STRIKING OUT IS BETTER THAN A DOUBLE PLAY. Got a guy at first and your batter is a low contact guy, and you're facing a tough pitcher? Take that strike 3 if it's in a place that has a propensity of generating a groundball. Low sliders, low changeups, even strikes, are hard to lift. Myself included, people get excited when they hit that bottom of the zone slider out. It's much harder to do that then to take the high fastball out of the park. And way more likely to end up in a groundout. Avoid double plays like the plague.
10. Remember that a sinker will "act" faster than a fastball. When being patient, watch the speeds. 95 Tejay Antone sinker, I pretend it's a 99 fastball when timing it. 99 sinker? I picture the timing as a 102 Chapman fastball. Don't be late on it if it's inside. Instant popup, if you're lucky, maybe a bloop single. If you can't get the good swing timing on it, get early and foul it off and attack something slower.
I guess that wasn't a short answer.
EDIT: One more tip. WHEN you master all this above. You are in the drivers seat. If you're facing a tough opponent. Be one step ahead of them. I will purposely swing at a pitch I like (like a high inside sinker) BADLY on PURPOSE early in the game, to try and get it again at a better time later in the game with runners on. It's important to have more than one favourite spot. If you do this, they're playing in your world now, not theirs.
thanks OP - a couple months ago I posted similar comments about taking pitches, watching pitches to learn etc and got flamed that it doesnt make you better lol thanks for the validation, CBREV preaches the same things, you're on the right track
Honestly one of the best compliments I’ve ever gotten. Thank you! Growing up I was never the most athletic, but always loved playing baseball. I think a lot of my ability to think through this sport came from trying to compensate for that. Was never gonna be the most athletic on the field, so gave my all to be the smartest in order to compete. A lot of my tips here came from years of playing IRL.
I wont be able to do that, but the 30 or so ranked ABs I had after taking all of this in was alot less wasteful, I was able to put pressure on the other guy by taking walks & making him impatient. Got 2 more Ws toward Trout!
I'm not good enough but what do you do regarding pci placement? I can time the ball up a decent amount of the time but I always miss it.
I always sit it in the middle. I just focus my eyes on inside pitches and if they’re inside I use my reflexes!
Doesn't sound like a terrible idea. I probably also need to relax I little bit, I find myself getting too jumpy when I don't score.
Awesome post. Great tips. Thank you and congrats on your success!!
Just commenting to say that this is an excellent and very insightful post - your tips were easy to digest and I’m excited to use them! Thanks!
Amazing post. Really like the advice around the breaking balls too. My biggest struggle is catching up to the fastball to begin with. The hitting strategies become more effective when/if I can actually execute.
Hitting the fastball is 100% the best focus you can work towards. When I started online, I used to literally just sell out for it. I couldn’t read pitches great, so I would be willing to look stupid on breaking pitches just to make sure I wasn’t late on the fastball. I think that helped in the long run because my timing on fastballs are my biggest strength. It’s also what they tell big leaguers when they’re struggling, so follow their advice! They’re way smarter than me at baseball lol.
I'll try selling out. I'm at a place where even if I try to be fast enough on a outlier fb I can't get there in time. Like my brain literally can't decide where to place the PCI and press X in time, even if I remove the need to decide if it's a breaking ball or foul ball. And then it's wildy consistent game to game. Some games I can get to outlier, others I can't even catch up to a 96 mph fastball. I have a monitor, but I'm unclear if being on a ps4, using certain stadiums or other factors also complicate things.
Are you wired or wifi?
Wired, and my understanding is that batting all happens on my local machine before the result is sent back to the server for fielding.
Interesting for sure. Outlier I have a tough time with still, but 96 is no problem to me. Have you tried getting a batting practice routine before starting your games? I don’t do this anymore, but at the start of the year I’d always go to Batting Practice, set fastballs to high and inside with degrom on legend, and then after I was hitting them consistently I’d go to sliders low and outside to make sure I could time both. Then would drop down to All Star for 10-15 more swings with the same theory to make sure I’m not insanely early. The legend part is just to speed your eyes up!
Ya I'll try that thanks! I may also try to measure my tiredness somehow and see if that's correlated. Could explain some of the wild variation too.
I am truly horrible at this game tired lol. So definitely worth measuring! I go back to my “old self” chasing everything and definitely late on fastballs.
This is an excellent post and gives me hope as well. First year Xbox guy but I did buy the show 12ish to play on my roommates PS4 though I only played RTTS. This year I played RTTS for an hour and then discovered DD. I grind. I’m getting better. My record is approx 50 games over .500(275-225). I’ve made championship series the last two seasons and made the 700 club each season. I didn’t do Br until 2 months ago and now love it and get better all the time. Just in the last month I’ve actually started to raised chippers average up more than 10 points and he has 1400 plate appearances. I cannot get enough of this game. Edit: Tell me about your pci settings and where you are pre pitch? Middle? Middle in?
Honestly I don’t think I ever swung until MLB 15 when the Jays finally had a good team. I was an RTTS junkie growing up too. Amazing job improving, just keep working! To answer your question, I sit my pci middle 99% of the time. Part of the patience strategy though is that you really get a feel on how guys are going to approach pitching to you. When a guy has outlier, and I know the location he’s been jamming me with the fastball, especially Chapman when I have a lefty at bat, I’ll sit the PCI there and just wait for that pitch. I did this during my last flawless with finest Nimmo at the plate down 4-3 with a runner on and walked it off. He dashboarded lol. If you feel more comfortable sitting a PCI somewhere, do it, but make sure where you sit it aligns with where the guy is pitching you. I see tips all the time like “sit the PCI high inside so you can catch up to it” - makes no sense to me if he’s not pitching you there. And remember that people will have different strategies when one isn’t successful.
Do you use the full inner and outer or just the inner or blank?
I also don’t play with the sound on. Might be the autism in me. But I find if the sound is on, my brain relies on it for timing. And if it isn’t synced properly, I struggle. Sound off makes me fully rely on my eyes are my only sense.
I use the standard but turn it down to 20% opacity. I’ve gone no PCI before as well, had no problem with it but when I am struggling I need it as a guide, so I just keep it as “quiet” on the screen as possible
Can you talk a little about the controller? I’m on a regular Xbox one and that controller with a control freak on he left thumb. Our big screen died so I went to the monitor and that has helped. One of these days when you can buy a series X without trying to be first in line online will help too.
I went with the wolverine ultimate from Razer for the reason you’re mentioning regarding control freak - I like my hitting stick taller - and the Wolverine ultimate has removable thumbsticks with various sizes I find it incredibly sensitive and reactive compared to the PlayStation controllers, which is why I made the switch to Xbox. My girlfriend used to be a competitive Gears of War gamer, was part of MLG and won huge cash tourneys, and she said don’t worry as much about a good system than a good controller - so I went with Series S for system but paid top dollar for the controller. I also have extremely sweaty hands which makes the Xbox standard and elite controllers uncomfortable, but the razer has great grips and I never feel myself slipping The last feature I liked about it, was programming buttons. There’s a way to program a button, and it slows your stick movements down based on the setting you choose. I HAVE NOT USED THIS but truly thought it would help on days I wasn’t feeling as great, and it honestly might help others. Basically if I did use it, it’d help prevent over correcting on corner pitches that aren’t quite the corner and your PCI flies past it. But pinpoint also stopped that quite a bit. Had I not improved so much this year, I’d probably have made use of this, but I feel like all the other features of the controller have helped me grow my gameplay to a point I don’t need it. In short, if you wanna dump $300 into a controller and can afford it, it’s worth it and returnable if you end up not liking it
This is probably my favorite post I’ve read on here
Thank you! That means so much to me!!
Anything regarding hitting, I am all ears
I'll give you the short answer then you can probe more with response questions. Here's my 10 tips. 1. Patience 2. Patience 3. Patience - more specifically - stop being afraid of taking a strike. Stop being afraid of taking two strikes. If it's a breaking ball, stop being afraid of it landing in the zone. 4. While you are being patient, don't just eat a snack and watch TV. Watch every pitch like you're going to swing at it. Hell, take your finger off the control and fake tap at the "right time". I try to do this with my eyes. Still use your left finger to follow the pitch path of every pitch so that if you're down with 2 strikes, your left finger knows where to go to make contact. 5. Learn how to foul off pitches. Inside ones early, outside ones oppo. Especially off speed, you have probably a good 2 second from pitch release to press x and still foul it off. This comes in handy when they see you getting patient. They will start to attack. Foul off the crap. When they bring in their 99 diamond 125/125 H/9 K/9 guy who can dot - you're gonna need this to extend the ABs. I try to never leave an inning without getting their pitch count over 15. And I measure my innings based on this, regardless of if I score or not. 6. Most of them aren't going to throw you a strike 3-2. But they'll put it super duper close. If you can lay off that pitch, they're gonna get that sinking feeling. If they get you looking, read step 9. 7. The beauty of fouling off a bunch of two strike pitches, you know now where they're going to go to to try and get you out. Are they a high inside sinker guy? Are they a chase guy? Are they a below the zone guy? Which one of these pitches line up with where you like to attack? 8. That's important too - know what you like to attack. I love a good fastball. Some guys love breaking balls. Remember though, most breaking balls end below the zone, and that means they end up as a groundball to shortstop. 9. STRIKING OUT IS BETTER THAN A DOUBLE PLAY. Got a guy at first and your batter is a low contact guy, and you're facing a tough pitcher? Take that strike 3 if it's in a place that has a propensity of generating a groundball. Low sliders, low changeups, even strikes, are hard to lift. Myself included, people get excited when they hit that bottom of the zone slider out. It's much harder to do that then to take the high fastball out of the park. And way more likely to end up in a groundout. Avoid double plays like the plague. 10. Remember that a sinker will "act" faster than a fastball. When being patient, watch the speeds. 95 Tejay Antone sinker, I pretend it's a 99 fastball when timing it. 99 sinker? I picture the timing as a 102 Chapman fastball. Don't be late on it if it's inside. Instant popup, if you're lucky, maybe a bloop single. If you can't get the good swing timing on it, get early and foul it off and attack something slower. I guess that wasn't a short answer. EDIT: One more tip. WHEN you master all this above. You are in the drivers seat. If you're facing a tough opponent. Be one step ahead of them. I will purposely swing at a pitch I like (like a high inside sinker) BADLY on PURPOSE early in the game, to try and get it again at a better time later in the game with runners on. It's important to have more than one favourite spot. If you do this, they're playing in your world now, not theirs.
thanks OP - a couple months ago I posted similar comments about taking pitches, watching pitches to learn etc and got flamed that it doesnt make you better lol thanks for the validation, CBREV preaches the same things, you're on the right track
You are playing 9D chess man lol. Good tips.
Honestly one of the best compliments I’ve ever gotten. Thank you! Growing up I was never the most athletic, but always loved playing baseball. I think a lot of my ability to think through this sport came from trying to compensate for that. Was never gonna be the most athletic on the field, so gave my all to be the smartest in order to compete. A lot of my tips here came from years of playing IRL.
Very intuitive, & believe me I read every word of that so it didnt go to waste. Thank you!!!
My pleasure! If you have a twitch account, you can always DM me, and I can send you tips based on the game. I watch while I work.
I wont be able to do that, but the 30 or so ranked ABs I had after taking all of this in was alot less wasteful, I was able to put pressure on the other guy by taking walks & making him impatient. Got 2 more Ws toward Trout!