How much energy do you use on your pitches?

[PirateFan]

I usually use no energy unless I'm finishing a batter with a high fastball. In my last franchise game, I pitched John Flaherty against the Mets, and I threw all high energy pitches. The first 5 innings I only threw 50 pitches then 6 runs crossed in the 6th. I've had so much more success with pitches that have no energy at all. High-energy, perfect pitches should have more success... I'm just not seeing that.

[bcruise]

Quote: Originally Posted by PirateFan

I usually use no energy unless I'm finishing a batter with a high fastball. In my last franchise game, I pitched John Flaherty against the Mets, and I threw all high energy pitches. The first 5 innings I only threw 50 pitches then 6 runs crossed in the 6th. I've had so much more success with pitches that have no energy at all. High-energy, perfect pitches should have more success... I'm just not seeing that.

Hmm, I tend to see the opposite, so much so in fact that the majority of my pitches are high-effort (full meter or close to it) pitches. I find that those are easier to make the CPU hitters chase out of the zone, even if they are somewhat less accurate. Due to the way I pitch I rarely leave myself open to something hanging in the middle unless I really mess up my meter input, so I don't get burned by hanging curveballs or sliders very often.

In addition I rarely if ever see a meaningful difference in energy use from throwing a high percentage of full-meter pitches. It's nothing that influences my decision making on when to take a pitcher out, I can say that much.

What does influence my decision to use full effort or not is the game situation - specifically, confidence. If I'm getting knocked around and overall confidence drops, it becomes a lot more difficult to locate high-effort pitches and if I don't dial it back some I could either end up walking a ton of guys or leaving a bunch of pitches in the middle of the zone. So at those times I only full effort when using a pitch that individually has high confidence, or when I'm pitching from way ahead of the count and can just afford to waste something way outside of the zone to see if the hitter swings at it. If they do then I've gotten confidence back in that pitch and throw it a little more effectively again.

To add: I think difficulty matters a lot here too. I play on Legend pitching, and it feels like if I throw everything low-effort, I'll just get tattooed whenever I have to throw a strike. High effort allows me to generate some swings and misses both in and out of the zone on that difficulty. The tradeoff on effort is command of your pitches, but it also means you have to be good with the pitch mechanic in order to not throw something really off the mark. So, being forced to use high effort pitches (and deal with the risk/reward of doing so) to get swings and misses could be considered a component of difficulty.

[EnglishBaseball]

So you're telling me that you're not meant to hit the top corner of the meter every time?

Played The Show since 08 and never knew this. Explains why my starters stamina is meh.