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Oh, I just now noticed now that there's a rating on the player profile page showing if they tend to hit flyballs, ground balls, line drives, or "normal". There doesn't seem to be a way to change it in the editor, and changing ratings didn't do anything either. There does seem to be a tendency for high gap ability players to be more likely to hit line-drives, and for high power players to be more fly ball hitters, and lower power to be groundballers.
How do people create their own new custom players to add to the game? Do they get to specify this hitter type rating then?
If we assume this rating doesn't change the number of hits, doubles, triples, or HRs, etc. of a player, then I think its main effects must be on what it means for the other runners. Or maybe also on the effectiveness of different defensive formations, such as infield shift having less effect on flyball batters. Maybe groundball hitters benefit more from hit and runs.
As far as the runners, what might the different effects be, if they exist in the game? Fly ball hitters might have fewer GIDPs and less chance of advancing a runner on an out, unless they are batting lefty with a good amount of pull to make sac flies to right field more likely. Line-drives sound good in theory, but if the result of the play for the batter is already determined by his ratings, not this line-drive tendency, then it would just change what kind of outs he gets, not make his hits any better. And line-drive outs seem just like fly outs, except a bit more dangerous for the risk of getting doubled up if the runner can't get back to the base in time.
It's interesting that there are 4 settings (ground, fly, line, normal). That implies that if there's are hidden values behind this rating, it's not on a single scale from ground to fly, since both normal and line are in there too.
I don't know what other value the hitter types (pull and fly/ground) could have to make it a useful piece of information, other than for the defensive and offensive strategies.
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