Diving Catches

[vxm]

Will the high amount of diving catches and the 1st baseman dropped throws be addressed in the next update?
Thanks

[Garlon]

I have played 75 games and have not seen a 1Bmen miss a catch yet. There are plays where the 1Bmen does not make a scoop but those are throwing errors in the other infielders. A 1Bmen making an error on receiving a throw I have not seen.

[Johnny Case]

Agree with both Garlon and vxm: almost zero dropped 1B throws, but a zillion diving/sliding catches.

[Syd Thrift]

IME sliding/diving catches come from 4 and 5 star plays. I prefer the on-screen feedback, although if there is data on the frequency of diving/sliding catches that we could present to the devs to calibrate it, that would be OK as well.

[Vezna31]

Seems like line drive outs to infielders, or a diving/sliding catch is every other play.

[Jasper70]

I don't have a problem with diving catches in the outfield, but I do have a problem with the range most outfielders have now. A typical CF has the type of range only Willie Mays would be envious of. I'm in spring training and balls that are hit in the gap <hard contact> that don't hit the wall are being run down, even by guys with lower defensive ratings

[Dorfmann]

There are way too many diving catch animations in the outfield. The play-by-play usually indicates that it was a fairly routine play, or maybe one the he "reached" for. Either the play-by-play or the animation isn't matching what's happening in the simulation.

Also, and this may be a small sample size, but through about 25 games, I've noticed that every single infield diving stop as noted by the play-by-play results in a throwing error.

[swoboda]

Originally Posted by Johnny Case

Agree with both Garlon and vxm: almost zero dropped 1B throws, but a zillion diving/sliding catches.

Same here

[locuspc]

Originally Posted by Dorfmann

Also, and this may be a small sample size, but through about 25 games, I've noticed that every single infield diving stop as noted by the play-by-play results in a throwing error.

It was like that in previous versions but I've actually noticed this being a lot better this season. There are still the diving stops that lead into errors but there are also lots of diving stops that are just good plays. The ratio may still not be perfect but it's better than it was.

[Garlon]

I have no issue with 1B play. Errors by 1Bmen are typically the result of not fielding the ball cleanly or making a bad throw and this is what we see in the game. We should not be advocating for 1Bmen not being able to catch throws from other infielders.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Johnny Case

Agree with both Garlon and vxm: almost zero dropped 1B throws, but a zillion diving/sliding catches.

I will say that I saw a 1B do a Bill Buckner style move where he allowed an easily catchable ball to scoot under his glove for a base hit and when I watched the reply it confirmed that it was indeed a 1 star play.

I would rather see the game handle fielding errors without the “guy falls down and then throws wide” play but I expect that will get removed as we get more animations added to the game. With the dives, I do see infielders dive to make stops all the time; in fact, I think the only ones that are obviously going to be errors are the ones where they “dive” at a ball well within their normal range, hence my “falls down” thing.

Again, I really like the feedback the big plays provide. I’m guessing that the amount of high risk plays are properly calibrated, at least for modern baseball, because they pulled the stats they use from FanGraphs and they do check on those. If people are playing in leagues or eras with lower K rates, there may be more high value plays because there are more balls in play in general and on top of that BABIPs were lower in the past too. You can either take the path of somehow messing about with the relative frequency of hard plays according to BABIP, which strikes me as very hard, or churn them out at the same rate but increase fielders’ chances of making them, which strikes me as much easier since the range LTM pretty much already does that.

And in practice I do see 50/50 balls fielded successfully about 60% of the time in my league that’s currently in 1973.

[Pelican]

Probably a third of OF catches involve some sort of slide or dive in the animation, even if the text does not mention it, or suggest a tough play. And some of the slides and dives look like Savannah Bananas tricks on routine balls. LOL.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Pelican

Probably a third of OF catches involve some sort of slide or dive in the animation, even if the text does not mention it, or suggest a tough play. And some of the slides and dives look like Savannah Bananas tricks on routine balls. LOL.

The proof of this isn't to check the text but to hit F10 and check the hardness of the play. If it's a 1 or 2 star play I might go so far as to log that in the Movement thread. A 3 star play I guess depends on context.

[md40022]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

The proof of this isn't to check the text but to hit F10 and check the hardness of the play. If it's a 1 or 2 star play I might go so far as to log that in the Movement thread. A 3 star play I guess depends on context.

You've mentioned this F10 thing in a few separate threads. I tried this and saw that it gives a replay of the previous play. Where is the text part of it that you've refer to though? And if it's somewhere that's not super obvious can you give me a dummy-proof of how to find it?

[dishnet34]

Originally Posted by md40022

You've mentioned this F10 thing in a few separate threads. I tried this and saw that it gives a replay of the previous play. Where is the text part of it that you've refer to though? And if it's somewhere that's not super obvious can you give me a dummy-proof of how to find it?

I think they mean Shift+F10.

[md40022]

Originally Posted by dishnet34

I think they mean Shift+F10.

Like I said, you got to dummy-proof it as much as possible for me

[Jasper70]

Originally Posted by Garlon

I have no issue with 1B play. Errors by 1Bmen are typically the result of not fielding the ball cleanly or making a bad throw and this is what we see in the game. We should not be advocating for 1Bmen not being able to catch throws from other infielders.

Most of the dropped balls by 1b are actually throwing errors by infielders that the system (AI) reads as a dropped ball

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by md40022

You've mentioned this F10 thing in a few separate threads. I tried this and saw that it gives a replay of the previous play. Where is the text part of it that you've refer to though? And if it's somewhere that's not super obvious can you give me a dummy-proof of how to find it?

When you hit F10 (or Shift-F10) to replay a play, the game copies a bunch of text into your clipboard the same way you do when you select a bunch of text yourself and hit the "copy" button in your browser or hit Ctrl-C. What I'm saying for you to do is to go to the Movement thread, start a new post, and hit Ctrl-V to paste that information into the message text box.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Jasper70

Most of the dropped balls by 1b are actually throwing errors by infielders that the system (AI) reads as a dropped ball

Nah, that's not how the game engine works. The engine determines that the 1B made an error on the play and then generates appropriate play by play and 3D graphics afterwards. The "system" isn't really reading anything except that it's (probably) incorrectly assigning too many muffed-throw errors to first basemen (although at that people are now saying that they never see these anymore, which is encouraging).

[GDawg]

I think the issue is there just aren't enough animations at the moment to cover all the different situations that can occur on a baseball diamond (though they seem to be pretty well represented in the textual play by play).

There should be animations for things like 'normal outfield catch' 'spectacular outfield catch1' 'specatcular outfield catch 2' and so on and those should be assigned to the right situation. The problem is of course, if a 5 star defender makes a spectacular catch, would a 3 star defender make the same catch? or would he miss it? would a spectacular catch for a 3 star defender be a normal catch for a 5 star defender because of better positioning? etc.