One thing that would drastically improve hitting

If they widened the timing window for swing and miss AND for weak contact, it would drastically improve hitting. The number of ABs where an opponent with no clue what he's doing can foul off 5 or 6 pitches with terrible swings is a joke.

If they widened the timing window for swing-and-misses so that more "very early" and "very late" swings were whiffs instead of weak fouls balls AND widened the window for weak contact so more "early" and "late" swings, ESPECIALLY on balls out of the zone, were actually put in play, I think you'd see a big improvement in hitting quality.

Right now it's an absolute joke how someone can put 4 or 5 terrible swings on balls and not be punished and then FINALLY put a decent swing on a ball and hit it out. You shouldn't be rewarded for only being able to have good input on 1/5 swings in an AB.

Yea and early swings need to be foul balls, not home runs

@Washed__AF said in One thing that would drastically improve hitting:

Yea and early swings need to be foul balls, not home runs

For the most part. If you're out in front on an off-speed outside pitch, i can see a power guy launching it out.

@Matt_42187 said in One thing that would drastically improve hitting:

@Washed__AF said in One thing that would drastically improve hitting:

Yea and early swings need to be foul balls, not home runs

For the most part. If you're out in front on an off-speed outside pitch, i can see a power guy launching it out.

This is what I'm tired of. And I'm NOT calling you out for saying it, but this way of thinking has to go. Here's why:

In real life, when a guy is "early" with his swing, but still hits it out, it's because he did a whole handful of other things right, the most obvious being keeping his hands back. You can he "early" on a pitch, but if you keep your hands back, you've got a chance to still generate power. Plus there's still all the other things they did right to generate the necessary bat speed to hit the ball far enough to go out. Hitting is extremely difficult and there's a ton of things that go into a good swing. So when a guy is "early" he can still do a ton of things right that generate a good outcome.

None of that can be emulated in a video game where there's only two things you have to do...move the PCI to the right spot and time your swing button. And when you do 50% of those things wrong, you shouldn't be rewarded with the best possible outcome.

For every real life "early" swing HR that you can use to justify it in the game, there's 50 examples of guys who got out in front of a pitch and made weak contact exactly BECAUSE they were "early".

On AS yes the foul balls are outrageous. HOF + it still exists but far less of a problem imo.