Maximizing Chance of Getting a Third Pitch?

[Seviien]

Short of cracking open the player editor, I know that there can't simply be a button to add a 3rd pitch to that stud prospect with two good pitches and high stamina... thereby making him a legit starter. But after combing through the forum's search function for an hour, I've yet to find any solid information on how to *maximize* the chances getting that third pitch. I'm not looking for "maximize" to equal 100% probability or anything, but it'd be helpful to know how the game is setup so that I can play it the "right way."

The best info I have found is that work ethic and intelligence might factor into it, and it's more likely to occur in the lower minors than in the majors. I'm guessing age is a factor too, but that's just a guess.

Could someone in the know please confirm/expand on that please? Your wisdom would be greatly appreciated.

[Ambermonk]

If you are in Commissioner mode, you can click on a player's 'edit' tab and simply add however many pitches you want. They're all listed in a table.

[bobdenverscat]

I'll be watching this. I have 4 absolute studs, all with 2 pitches. Making me a very nervous guy at the moment and I dont want to spoil it by using the editor.

[billethius]

Originally Posted by bobdenverscat

I'll be watching this. I have 4 absolute studs, all with 2 pitches. Making me a very nervous guy at the moment and I dont want to spoil it by using the editor.

If the 2 pitches are great, he should be fine as a starter. I've basically got a young Randy Johnson clone that I drafted because he had the stamina, had 2 great pitches (fastball, slider) and had a high GB%.

Both his pitches are now rated as 20/20, his stamina has increased a bit over the years, and he's been a very good pitcher. He tends to run a low-3s ERA despite having the occasional outing where he won't get out of the third inning.

[Seviien]

Originally Posted by Ambermonk

If you are in Commissioner mode, you can click on a player's 'edit' tab and simply add however many pitches you want. They're all listed in a table.

Won't help in an online league...
Plus it's kinda cheating

[endgame]

Currently, there is no right way or path you can take with any expectations, even small ones. To the best of my knowledge, it's completely random. There is current discussion about whether adding any ability to intervene in the slightest measure, e.g. through the skills of coaching staff coupled with player INT, etc.. have any merit, but that exchange seems relatively divided. Perhaps you could offer up thoughts or suggestions about what you and/or the mainstream might prefer that would be in keeping with both the ambition to focus on this kind of development and staying within the confines of real development parameters in a realistic mirror of baseball.

[BusterKing]

It should be related to how good of a pitching coach you have to make this interesting.

The higher rating of the pitching coach to more of a chance that a few of his pitchers will develop new pitches.

[Seviien]

I'm not sure if I'm "mainstream" or not, but what feels right to me is if a pitcher is more likely to pick up additional pitches (1) when he's young and (2) if he has a high work ethic.

The latter is probably self explanatory. The youth argument is essentially that baseball players (and people in general) are more likely to experiment with their work at a younger age, and that they become more set in their ways as they get older. The older you get, and the more your career advances, the more pressure there is to perform rather than learn, so you stick with what you know to the extent it's strong enough to help you get by.

Taking that "enough to get you by" argument one step further, we could also explain older pitchers developing a new pitch as their velocity drops off and they struggle to stay at the dance. IIRC, Clemens didn't throw a splitter until he went to Toronto. So maybe a pitcher should be more likely to develop pitches from say 18-23, or once his velocity has dipped below as certain % of where it was originally?

Either way, I think there's a case for keeping things passive. So rather than something OOTP players can *do* to help a pitcher develop a third pitch, there should be things they should look for. Like youth. Or work ethic. My thinking here is that the game is sooooo customizable, that tying pitch development to something like minor league level could produce unintended results. What determines minor league level for the calculation? MLEs? The level of the league you specify (AAA, AA, A, international, etc) What if someone wants a league with only 1 tier of minors? That league would run out of starters if that minor league were too high. Same thing with coaching. The possibilities for interactions are just enormous.

Whatever the case may be, it'd help if we knew whether it was truly random or not. Not so we can have expectations about a player, but, again, just so we know what to look for.

[Seviien]

dola...
Not to hijack my own thread, but as far as to if Work Ethic or Intelligence should have a more material impact, here's a little thought experiment:
1. Take someone at random from MIT and give them an afternoon where someone teaches them how to throw a split finger fastball and maybe a week to practice as much as they like.
2. Take someone of comparable athletic ability as your MIT student above, give them an afternoon of instruction, and have them throw 50 splitters a day for a month.

Who do you think will be better?
Personally, I think the willingness to do the repetition is a much bigger driver than intellectual capacity given the same basic physical gifts.

[endgame]

Originally Posted by Seviien

Whatever the case may be, it'd help if we knew whether it was truly random or not. Not so we can have expectations about a player, but, again, just so we know what to look for.

Thanks for you earlier comments. This part I can respond to with the most confidence. I have seen nothing that indicates there are any controls in place at all other than being totally random. Look for nothing, other than the occasional appearance of a new pitch. On the flip side, the occasional disappearing one wouldn't surprise me either.

[Bobble]

Originally Posted by Seviien

I'm not sure if I'm "mainstream" or not, but what feels right to me is if a pitcher is more likely to pick up additional pitches (1) when he's young and (2) if he has a high work ethic.

The latter is probably self explanatory. The youth argument is essentially that baseball players (and people in general) are more likely to experiment with their work at a younger age, and that they become more set in their ways as they get older. The older you get, and the more your career advances, the more pressure there is to perform rather than learn, so you stick with what you know to the extent it's strong enough to help you get by.

Taking that "enough to get you by" argument one step further, we could also explain older pitchers developing a new pitch as their velocity drops off and they struggle to stay at the dance. IIRC, Clemens didn't throw a splitter until he went to Toronto. So maybe a pitcher should be more likely to develop pitches from say 18-23, or once his velocity has dipped below as certain % of where it was originally?

Either way, I think there's a case for keeping things passive. So rather than something OOTP players can *do* to help a pitcher develop a third pitch, there should be things they should look for. Like youth. Or work ethic. My thinking here is that the game is sooooo customizable, that tying pitch development to something like minor league level could produce unintended results. What determines minor league level for the calculation? MLEs? The level of the league you specify (AAA, AA, A, international, etc) What if someone wants a league with only 1 tier of minors? That league would run out of starters if that minor league were too high. Same thing with coaching. The possibilities for interactions are just enormous.

Whatever the case may be, it'd help if we knew whether it was truly random or not. Not so we can have expectations about a player, but, again, just so we know what to look for.

I agree with everything else you said but I think I would like it to be something the OOTP player can initiate. It may not (probably wouldn't?) work but I'm a little frustrated not having the influence on my organization that I should have. If it was real life, I could certainly say, "Johnny Armstrong is a HORSE! Someone teach him a freakin' slider." He may not ever "get it" but at least I know it was attempted.

Right now it's a logical disconnect. To paraphrase Mugatu, if this guy learns another pitch, he's a stud! Doesn't anybody notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!

[Seviien]

Originally Posted by endgame

Thanks for you earlier comments. This part I can respond to with the most confidence. I have seen nothing that indicates there are any controls in place at all other than being totally random. Look for nothing, other than the occasional appearance of a new pitch. On the flip side, the occasional disappearing one wouldn't surprise me either.

Say it ain't so!

Just thought of a quick test we could run in commisisoner mode:
1. Turn injuries off
2. Create/edit a 20 year old pitcher so that he has two solid pitches and starter-level endurance.
3. Set all personality traits to average.
3. Copy that pitcher so that his clones fill every starting spot in every "single A" team, and lock his role. Maybe a 20 team league. 40 would be better. (horray for the copy player function!)
4. Quit out and make a copy of the league folder, called "Test Base.lg" Load the original league
5. Sim two years and count how many of the clones picked up a 3rd pitch

7. Copy "Test Base.lg", load that new league
8. Edit the clones so they have max work ethic
9. Sim two seasons, count the number of clones with a third pitch

Repeat 7-9, subbing intelligence for work ethic

Anybody got 3 hours to kill?
I'm happy to figure out if there's statistical significance if someone is willing to get me the data

[injury log]

Only Markus knows for certain, but I think it's determined at random who learns a third pitch. Learning a new pitch is essentially a 'talent boost', so it also only seems to happen to younger pitchers. If Intelligence or Work Ethic play a role in determining who receives talent boosts (and I don't think they do, but I don't know for sure - my understanding was that they only influence the direction of small ratings changes), I imagine they probably also play a role in determining who learns new pitches. In any event, it's a very rare thing in the game, so don't count on any of your pitchers developing that killer knuckle curve.

Originally Posted by Bobble

I agree with everything else you said but I think I would like it to be something the OOTP player can initiate.

This came up on beta, as endgame mentions above, and I made my case against:

* Right now, we can have a perfect development model, since the user can't intervene in player development. The instant you give the user control over how players develop, we get away from real player development and into fictional player development.

* We also, with the new pitching model, finally got away from an issue that plagued earlier versions of OOTP: it used to be that a guy's Stamina would creep up over time, and you'd have a lot of good relievers who became starters later in their careers. That's pretty rare in real life. If you can train people in new pitches, that's going to start happening all the time again.

* For gameplay reasons, there needs to be some disadvantage to training a new pitch; otherwise you'd just have every pitcher in your system working on that screwball. What could that disadvantage possibly be? What real life data do we have to base this on?

* As someone pointed out in beta, the user can't determine whether a player develops his bunting skills, or baserunning skills, or control, so why should he have the option to determine whether a pitcher learns a forkball?

* This would add yet another exploit to the game; the human user is likely to be able to determine more intelligently than the AI when it will be profitable to train a guy in a new pitch.

* I also think that adding this kind of control completely changes OOTP from a baseball sim into something more like those fantasy games where you might train your dwarf character in archery, winemaking and herbalism. That's not the kind of game I want to play when I load up OOTP.

It would be a great idea for a game like ITP, I imagine (never played it), but I don't like it for OOTP.

[Faroo6]

I don't know what factors into the third pitch or if like people have said completely random but one thing that happens in real life is players teaching other players that pitch. I'm pretty sure that Tim Hudson taught Rich Harden a pitch when they were both on the A's. A veteran pitcher should have some influence on the possibility of a young player learning a pitch. Whether or not the young player can throw the pitch effectively is another story. Like others have said though everyone has more than two pitches. If I were to make myself in this game on a scale of 1-20 I would look like this.

Fastball - 10/20
Changeup - 6/20
Curveball - 2/20
Slider - 4/20
Knuckleball - 1/20

I can throw them but I would get battered all over a field.

[ike121212]

I think there's consensus in one thing: if you elect to develop a prized prospect as a SP in the minors he should have a better chance than he currently does in the game of developing a third pitch, and should have a better chance than if he were rushed to the majors as a reliever.

[superdaws]

Well ITP had the ability for pitchers to learn a new pitch, seems reasonable that a pitcher would want to expand their repertoire since it should make them more effective, but I do understand the points against having a button to direct a player to learn a new pitch, but here is an idea.

First, a player is more likely to try to learn a new pitch if they (in no particular order):

1) have a high work ethic.
2) are not pitching successfully with their current stuff.
3) Have a good pitching coach

Factors that would effect how well they learn the new pitch (again in no particular order)

1) their pitching coach
2) their work ethic
3) their intelligence
4) how often they pitch

So pitchers don't become supermen with high ratings and numerous pitches, if a pitcher decides to learn a new pitch the ratings for their other pitches will not increase. You can assume that they are spending their time perfecting the new pitch at the expense of the ones they already know.

And just to throw this in as well, why not allow us to determine what fundamentals a team should work on during spring training? You can have maybe three options for both pitchers and hitters. So if you want them to work on bunting, baserunning, and taking pitches then some of the players may improve in those categories. For pitchers you can have one of the options be to learn a new pitch. To make things a little more real, maybe pitching coaches can have a specific pitch that they can teach the pitchers. Like Roger Craig and the splitter. Just a thought.

[funkadillo]

Maybe the solution could be giving almost everyone more than two pitches, even relievers, however having many guys only have 2 decent pitches. Then instead of hoping for a miracle new pitch to appear you'd hope that high stamina shutdown reliever would develop one of his two bad pitches high enough to be able to start.

You'd still be hoping for a boost in his potential in those pitches, but developing a 3rd pitch wouldn't feel so out of the blue, and you'd be able to see his progress.

[Bobble]

Originally Posted by funkadillo

Maybe the solution could be giving almost everyone more than two pitches, even relievers, however having many guys only have 2 decent pitches. Then instead of hoping for a miracle new pitch to appear you'd hope that high stamina shutdown reliever would develop one of his two bad pitches high enough to be able to start.

You'd still be hoping for a boost in his potential in those pitches, but developing a 3rd pitch wouldn't feel so out of the blue, and you'd be able to see his progress.

This would make more sense to me. I understand Injury log's reasons not to make a button but this idea would at least let you know that a third pitch is "being worked on".

[SmoothGentleman]

Originally Posted by superdaws

Well ITP had the ability for pitchers to learn a new pitch, seems reasonable that a pitcher would want to expand their repertoire since it should make them more effective, but I do understand the points against having a button to direct a player to learn a new pitch, but here is an idea.

First, a player is more likely to try to learn a new pitch if they (in no particular order):

1) have a high work ethic.
2) are not pitching successfully with their current stuff.
3) Have a good pitching coach

Factors that would effect how well they learn the new pitch (again in no particular order)

1) their pitching coach
2) their work ethic
3) their intelligence
4) how often they pitch

So pitchers don't become supermen with high ratings and numerous pitches, if a pitcher decides to learn a new pitch the ratings for their other pitches will not increase. You can assume that they are spending their time perfecting the new pitch at the expense of the ones they already know.

And just to throw this in as well, why not allow us to determine what fundamentals a team should work on during spring training? You can have maybe three options for both pitchers and hitters. So if you want them to work on bunting, baserunning, and taking pitches then some of the players may improve in those categories. For pitchers you can have one of the options be to learn a new pitch. To make things a little more real, maybe pitching coaches can have a specific pitch that they can teach the pitchers. Like Roger Craig and the splitter. Just a thought.

I agree with all of this would add complete realism, and wouldn't get into a fantasy world. To say the staff of a team has no say in what a pitcher may work on is not realistic. Forcing a player to learn a a sharp Curveball isn't either.

Pitching coaches don't have unlimited time, so their should be a limit to how many pitchers they can teach a pitch two for an extended period of time.

[Killing Time]

Originally Posted by Ambermonk

If you are in Commissioner mode, you can click on a player's 'edit' tab and simply add however many pitches you want. They're all listed in a table.

+1 on that. The game makes obscene numbers of two-pitch pitchers. That's bad, but with a little effort it can be fixed.