When a ball's down the middle, does guessing pitch location "hurt" your swing?

[torpidbeaver]

Drives me effing crazy, and I've seen it enough to ask:

When I guess "inside" or "up" or "down" or "etc" on a pitch, and it's dead-center-perfect-middle (or nearabouts to activate the 4-zone-ness) am I hurting myself by "guessing" on the pitch?

I look on the pitch/swing-tracker the next guy up, and it looks like I'm hitting it off the end/off the top/off the handle/off the etc.

Muh? Do I need to "move" the cursor around and leave it "unset" to get the thing to give me sweet spot recognizance? What the hell's going on here?

[capnharry]

Quote: Originally Posted by torpidbeaver

Drives me effing crazy, and I've seen it enough to ask: When I guess "inside" or "up" or "down" or "etc" on a pitch, and it's dead-center-perfect-middle (or nearabouts to activate the 4-zone-ness) am I hurting myself by "guessing" on the pitch? I look on the pitch/swing-tracker the next guy up, and it looks like I'm hitting it off the end/off the top/off the handle/off the etc. Muh? Do I need to "move" the cursor around and leave it "unset" to get the thing to give me sweet spot recognizance? What the hell's going on here?

I believe so. If you guess location and you get the crosshairs like you said, your PCI is going to lock in the center of the zone you guessed, not on the location of the pitch. You have to move the L stick for best contact. However, the PCI will not lock if you don't guess location correctly, it will remain in the center of the zone.

[I_am_Canadian]

I hear what your sayin torpidbeaver, many times i've guessed down in the zone only to get a hanging breaking ball in the middle and the top of the pci will lock on the pitch instead of squaring it up. I guess its because your pci is limited to that one zone thats why it won't square it up. It does get really frustrating....I've tried power swing, contact, using the swing influence up and down and only sometimes I will get a hit and never the hit that you should get when the ball is down the middle. I wish you could still move the pci even after it locked on a certain location so that you could put it the ball in the middle of the pci.

[Jdurg]

That's the penalty you face for trying to guess the pitch location. Guessing pitch and location isn't a 'benefit only' type of thing. If you guess either of them wrong, the game punishes you. So if you guess fastball down and away, and the pitcher throws a curveball in the middle of the strikezone, the game will penalize you for guessing the wrong pitch, AND it will penalize you for guessing the wrong location. As a result, even if you manage to make contact, you will probably hit a pop-up on the infield or a weak grounder to the pitcher. It's a way to prevent the user from using guess pitch on every single pitch. In reality, the only times one should even think about using the guess pitch and guess location feature is when you are ahead in the count 3-0, 3-1, etc. and you can hone in on a location and a pitch. If the ball isn't in that location or isn't that pitch, don't swing.

[cristane]

Quote: Originally Posted by Jdurg

That's the penalty you face for trying to guess the pitch location. Guessing pitch and location isn't a 'benefit only' type of thing. If you guess either of them wrong, the game punishes you. So if you guess fastball down and away, and the pitcher throws a curveball in the middle of the strikezone, the game will penalize you for guessing the wrong pitch, AND it will penalize you for guessing the wrong location.

I never felt like the game was punishing me for guessing wrong, on the contrary. It's always more helpful to try to guess - even if you don't succeed. You try fastball up and don't guess it? Most of the times it's a breaking ball down. No punishment for not guessing. I mean, if you don't try, it can pretty much be any pitch anywhere. If you do try and guess, even if you miss it, at least you know it's not that pitch.

As for the topic question - that is actually the only situation where you can be really fooled. If it's dead center and I succesfully guess up, and it's a fastball, I always swing over it. If it's a breaking ball, I might have time to adjust, but rarely.

Anyway, I also am trying to not overuse guess pitch, but there are pitchers that I simply can't hit. I guess I need more practice

[torpidbeaver]

I guess I also feel like the game penalizes me for not moving the aimer when a pitch is down the middle. No idea if this is all in my head, but I swear to christ every time a ball gets mainlined and I don't move the cursor, but just swing, I get a bad/neutral result for simply not having moved the Lstick.

[Mabster]

Quote: Originally Posted by cristane

I never felt like the game was punishing me for guessing wrong, on the contrary. It's always more helpful to try to guess - even if you don't succeed. You try fastball up and don't guess it? Most of the times it's a breaking ball down. No punishment for not guessing. I mean, if you don't try, it can pretty much be any pitch anywhere. If you do try and guess, even if you miss it, at least you know it's not that pitch.

While guessing pitch incorrectly may help you as a player judge what and where the next pitch will be, what Jdurg didn't mention is there is an inherent penalty for not guessing pitch and location correctly. The batter will be punished with decreased contact and power ratings so even if you make a good swing on incorrectly guessed pitch you will still suffer a penalty in game.

Since you can't guess down the middle as a location, guessing any location when the pitch is down the middle you would be guessing location incorrectly and you will be penalized.

[cristane]

Quote: Originally Posted by Mabster

While guessing pitch incorrectly may help you as a player judge what and where the next pitch will be, what Jdurg didn't mention is there is an inherent penalty for not guessing pitch and location correctly. The batter will be punished with decreased contact and power ratings so even if you make a good swing on incorrectly guessed pitch you will still suffer a penalty in game. Since you can't guess down the middle as a location, guessing any location when the pitch is down the middle you would be guessing location incorrectly and you will be penalized.

Wow, I had no idea I did hit a bunch of homers when I was completely wrong on the guess, so really, this is a surprise. Actually, there were times when I intentionally tried guessing wrong, e.g. a pitcher with 3 pitches (4SFB, 2SFB and a changeup) - I always tried guessing change-up, knowing that if I miss it, a fastball is coming