Pitch Lab Idea

[Smoothie7745]

I’m sure an idea like this has been discussed before so I’m sorry if I’m re-treading old ground. I tweeted this at the OOTP baseball Twitter account too, but wanted to come by here and make a rare (for me) post on the forums as well.

Would it be possible to look into a pitch lab kind of thing for OOTP 23 or 24? Something where you can examine spin rates and grips for your pitchers (data that isn’t yet even a part of the game) and release points and tweak, maybe during spring training? A way to teach pitchers new pitches, or refine arsenals to change philosophies? I’m thinking of Charlie Morton, for example - going from sinkerball guy in PIT to being a high velo north and south guy in HOU/TB/ATL. Or Greinke, aging gracefully from power pitcher to finesse guy.

Is that something that could be worked into the game? I remember spring training used to be handled differently in older versions of the game that allowed for more of this kind of thing, but I’m thinking specifically of reintroducing and expanding on some things while marrying it with modern data and concepts to really kick the game into a new gear?

By the way, this is hands down the best baseball game ever conceived and I’ve purchased every year since 2004, huge fan here. Thanks for all y’all do!

[KBLover]

Originally Posted by Smoothie7745

Would it be possible to look into a pitch lab kind of thing for OOTP 23 or 24? Something where you can examine spin rates and grips for your pitchers (data that isn’t yet even a part of the game) and release points and tweak, maybe during spring training? A way to teach pitchers new pitches, or refine arsenals to change philosophies? I’m thinking of Charlie Morton, for example - going from sinkerball guy in PIT to being a high velo north and south guy in HOU/TB/ATL. Or Greinke, aging gracefully from power pitcher to finesse guy.

I'm always in favor of more ways to try to guide your player's development.

Like you said, it happens in real life, especially as players start to struggle or need to make adjustments and whether or not they succeed change rewrite their whole careers.

The current development seems to have a hard time capturing moves like Greinke or even Maddux making a similar move even before he was old. Usually guys like that just simply collapse, not even trying to adjust. They just basically give up and throw their straight fastballs until you cut them.

I would especially think intelligent and/or hard-working players would at least try to adjust. They may not succeed, of course, but I could see their skills attempting to shift as they try to grasp new pitches and new mentalities on the mound (and the plate for that matter - like Yelich adopting the idea of lifting the ball to go from a hard grounder guy to a hard low-flyball guy and hitting HR without hurting BABIP).

Would absolutely love it.

[Smoothie7745]

Originally Posted by KBLover

I'm always in favor of more ways to try to guide your player's development.

Like you said, it happens in real life, especially as players start to struggle or need to make adjustments and whether or not they succeed change rewrite their whole careers.

The current development seems to have a hard time capturing moves like Greinke or even Maddux making a similar move even before he was old. Usually guys like that just simply collapse, not even trying to adjust. They just basically give up and throw their straight fastballs until you cut them.

I would especially think intelligent and/or hard-working players would at least try to adjust. They may not succeed, of course, but I could see their skills attempting to shift as they try to grasp new pitches and new mentalities on the mound (and the plate for that matter - like Yelich adopting the idea of lifting the ball to go from a hard grounder guy to a hard low-flyball guy and hitting HR without hurting BABIP).

Would absolutely love it.

Thanks for the feedback. Especially with the intelligence/work ethic and the adaptability rating (which isn’t a waste of a rating, per se, but which does seem - from the vantage point of one who can’t see the nuts and bolts happening in the programming behind the scenes - like it might be able to be utilized to a fuller degree) I think there could be a big addition to the game if they were able to utilize something like this. I’m not a programmer but I do imagine that what I’m describing here would be very difficult to pull off well - but I would definitely love to know if it’s been considered or if it’s even possible.

[Smoothie7745]

And yeah hitters having something similar would be awesome. Doing something like drastically retooling a swing to optimize launch angle a la JD Martinez in 2014 would be awesome. Random PD booms happen, of course, and they’re awesome and I wouldn’t take them out - but it would be so cool to be able to specifically work on a player (take em out on the back fields for private drills in ST, that kind of thing) and maybe see an otherwise washout player retool into something useful and rosterable would be such a cool addition to the game.

[Pdubya64]

While this is something I think would be kinda cool, unless things in the OOTP engine have changed in the last few years, pitches are approximated in some ways.

I don't remember all the details, you would have to get one of the Devs to give you an update. Essentially, pitch repertoires are fudged a bit to make the game work. Knuckleball pitchers did not have "Knuckleball" as their primary pitch and some other elements that did not have a 1:1 relationship.

As mentioned, I don't know if the underlying code for pitches and how they are represented on individual pitchers has been updated by Markus. What I am driving at here is that unless the code has changed, your idea is an extra detail about pitches that would have no underlying support in the code.

I am interested to see if/how the Devs respond.

[PocketsAintFull]

Yeah it would definitely be fun to have more ways to influence development and try to 'evolve' players.

In Football Manager for example you can set individual training focus for players to try and push them in a certain direction. Different sport of course but helps with feeling more involved.

That being said I'm sure the new coaching system from this year will evolve over time too

[KBLover]

Originally Posted by Pdubya64

I don't remember all the details, you would have to get one of the Devs to give you an update. Essentially, pitch repertoires are fudged a bit to make the game work. Knuckleball pitchers did not have "Knuckleball" as their primary pitch and some other elements that did not have a 1:1 relationship.

Yeah and for whatever reason now, they don't have fastballs even though every knuckleballer had a "fastball".

Before, they had to be under X velocity (which also doesn't make sense. Nothing says you can't throw 95 and a knuckler).