Joe12Pack
06-29-2009, 09:44 PM
This has been brought up many times in the past, I'm just throwing it out there again, as a bug. I'm not sure the programming of the game accurately simulates the effect of pitchers' hitting. I don't have any "evidence" ready and at hand, but I'd be more than happy to run some tests later this week when I'm less busy and post the results. Either way, I'm not the only one who has noticed this issue.
It seems even the best hitting pitchers (Owings) and the pitchers with the greatest power (Zambrano) don't do anything in the game even remotely resembling what they can do in real life. Beside that, pitchers don't even hit HRs anywhere close to the rate they do in real life. In God knows how many seasons (thousands at this point) of simming-only I've done, I can only recall seeing HRs from pitchers on my teams a very scant handful of times. Granted, I've hardly paid much attention to it, but that's mainly because I learned after my first year or two of playing BM that it doesn't really happen.
In roughly 25 seasons of doing every game in play-by-play, 162 per season, I have never, ever seen a pitcher hit a home run, either for me or for the other team. I also have noticed that pitcher BAs are generally far below where they should be.
It would be nice to see this issue addressed. It may not have a great deal of effect over the course of an entire season, and I get that it goes both ways... but if you have a "small ball team" with great pitching and below-average hitting, the lack of pitcher HRs is probably going to have a negative effect on you, to the tune of a game or two per season.
Others may be able to expand more on this. I know I've seen it talked about before, and I believe I've seen posts from people who have messed with pitchers' hitting abilities with no satisfactory results.
It seems even the best hitting pitchers (Owings) and the pitchers with the greatest power (Zambrano) don't do anything in the game even remotely resembling what they can do in real life. Beside that, pitchers don't even hit HRs anywhere close to the rate they do in real life. In God knows how many seasons (thousands at this point) of simming-only I've done, I can only recall seeing HRs from pitchers on my teams a very scant handful of times. Granted, I've hardly paid much attention to it, but that's mainly because I learned after my first year or two of playing BM that it doesn't really happen.
In roughly 25 seasons of doing every game in play-by-play, 162 per season, I have never, ever seen a pitcher hit a home run, either for me or for the other team. I also have noticed that pitcher BAs are generally far below where they should be.
It would be nice to see this issue addressed. It may not have a great deal of effect over the course of an entire season, and I get that it goes both ways... but if you have a "small ball team" with great pitching and below-average hitting, the lack of pitcher HRs is probably going to have a negative effect on you, to the tune of a game or two per season.
Others may be able to expand more on this. I know I've seen it talked about before, and I believe I've seen posts from people who have messed with pitchers' hitting abilities with no satisfactory results.