Quote:
Originally Posted by Curve Ball Dave
An 88mph fastball with late movement so the batter can never seem to square it up thrown out of a deceptive arm angle that hides the ball well is far more effective than a 100 mph straight as an arrow pitch that the batter sees like a beach ball.
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just talking about ootp video game here... not real life possibilities..
in ootp if you make a 250/200 88mph fastball and compare to a 250/200 100mph fastball, you will see a vast improvement in results, i garuantee. i have no idea if the 250/88 is "good" or not, that was a guess. i would suspect it's not a great pitch relative to other pitches @250 and 88mph. it was only meant to give a concept to extrapolate out from based on op's question about individual pitches (i think i said it's not importnat if right/wrong for the example?)...
that was an example of how velocity may or may not be more important to a fastball than other pitches.. a guess, but probably true. the point is that different pitches with teh same exact #'s otherwise will have a different "profile" of results that can be used to describe expect trends of various pitches. some will have lower babip's, some higher etc.
knuckleballs most definitely have a lower babip than most other pitches @ ~200/200 rating, ceterus paribus. that's a real and true example. may not be true with a crappy-rated KB. the curve (depicting results) could do 'anything' for each pitch that they want it to, and it's easily implemented...
in real life, a ~90mph could arguably be good. is there 1 in the mlb right now? (consitently good, not just 1 year or 2) even if so, it's not common. there's fewer like maddux in the hof than a true power-pitcher (modern-day athletes). numbers don't lie. maddux-like pitchers translate poorly in the video game at the high-end for sure, but not impossible. rarely is a low velo guy as dominant as the high velo guys can peak. i've seen it before, but it's the clear minority of what's possible. cy young-quality guys, not just any old sp.
in real life i'd argue that a 100mph doesn't have to be a straight line, too. it depends on the pitcher... it is true they need a bit more angular momentum (spin) for a ball to move the same 'inches' in a shorter amount of time flying to the plate, but only in the strictes and most literal sense. the reduced reaction time far outweights the small distance it moves less in a particular direction relative to a few more mph and resulting movement. ineveitable when you consider ~90+mph vs a few mph that spin causes a ball to move in a particular direction.
physics - treat the forces caused by the angular momentem (descirbed as a vector) and initial direction and force the ball is thrown as a mutually exclusive forces in 2 perpendicular planes. in flight these are mutually exclusive forces when predicting flight-path. 84-100mph vs a few mph of movement perpendicular to a straight line to the catcher - this huge difference is important to evaluating what's going on. a few mph with a fraction of a second less time to travel results ina very tiny difference in distance moved, all other factors remaining the same. hence, power pitchers are in demand for a good reason compared to "junk" pitchers with a very small bit more movement. the good ones have just as much spin on the ball as anyone else. mathematical certainty
the 100mph guys that have no movement would have no movement at 90mph too, relatively speaking, because it would be such a small difference in time to the plate for the ball to move. it's not that they throw too hard, it's that they have no movement, which is a problem at all velocities.
100 - 90 is a 10% reduction in time. if a pitcher has crappy movement, 10% more or less isn't going to help them much. 10% of a healthy amount of movement isn't such a big deal. if a curveball figuratively drops off the face of the earth, an extra 1" or 2 is irrelevant. so, extra mph should be a net positive in nearly all possible contexts. for some it just might be a negligible difference. the rare instance someone is near a break-even point in game of good vs bad results related to this would be the only time it could be a net negative...
ie.. they have "just enough" movement to be effective and the equation somehow accounts for it and a few extra mph makes that margin too slim to be "good.... this is not a very good SP, most likely to begin with... and such a small slice of teh distribution to worry about.