Broken Bat - Help: Bat Control

Forum >> Help >> Bat Control

Post ID	Date & Time	Game Date	Function

#27064	11/18/2015 9:28:01 am
Crazy Li Joined: 01/25/2015 Posts: 879 Inactive	I'm with Seca on what you want depending on order. As I understand it, hitting is only your likelihood of getting a clean hit (line drive) when making contact. Bat control is your ability to put the bat on the ball with good timing and getting it on the sweet spot. Power is how hard you hit it. Hitting only is occasional weak liners and bloop singles Bat control only is occasional grounders in holes but also a lot of well-timed swings that are easy outs. Power only is fly outs (not to mention the strikeouts) Bat control with power helps you put hard hits in play with better home run timing. Hitting with power gets you harder line drives and gappers that can go for extra bases Bat control with hitting gets a higher number of singles in spots outside the defensive range All 3 should serve for strategic pull/spray hits away from outfielders or playing the park to homer at the shortest distance. That's all just what makes sense to me anyway and is purely guesswork. I may be entirely wrong of course :p

#27067	11/18/2015 10:21:38 am
Spoonerific Joined: 01/17/2013 Posts: 339 Inactive	I agree with @CrazyLi in all aspect except that low hitting effect strikeouts far more than low power. At least according to the numbers I have analyzed. Those do not involve any upper tier [LII+] teams at all though (since it has no effect on my team as of right now.) Bat control seems to help in H&R spots as well as bunting [if you're into that kind of thing}.

#27068	11/18/2015 10:25:40 am
Seca Joined: 05/05/2014 Posts: 5197 Waterloo Dinosaurs Legends	Bat Control is still the factor I don't really understand. Near as I could tell from prior conversations, Hitting = Ball Placement, while Bat Control = Contact. But the definitions seem to swap places when your talking bunts vs. hits in the field. I view BC as a "second chance" stat (fouling off a tough pitch). If all the hit / pitch / defense data comes up empty, you get a BC "savings throw" for another chance. Part of why I like it for middle of the order power guys. I believe you are right it is a first chance stat for bunting.

#27075	11/18/2015 2:19:05 pm
Crazy Li Joined: 01/25/2015 Posts: 879 Inactive	I didn't say low power increases strikeouts if that's what you meant... Much the opposite. I believe high power will increase the number of strikeouts. Now I don't have proof of this of course... but in real life, power hitters tend to strike out the most. Logically speaking, this is due to their tendency to have a greater focus on hitting home runs and thus they maybe swing at pitches they shouldn't be. Obviously good hitting and bat control will off-set this. I also doubt the impact of power on strikeouts (if there is any) is all that significant.

#27076	11/18/2015 2:25:09 pm
Rock777 Joined: 09/21/2014 Posts: 9589 Haverhill Halflings III.1	Well the manual states Hitting: ability to hit the ball and put it in play. Bat Control: ability to make contact with the baseball, especially important for avoiding strike outs and successful bunting. So it explicitly calls out bunting. But it also specifically says contact, yet for bunting, control is really more important than contact. People usually "fail" on a bunt when they don't put it down in the right location. So my theory is that Control is Hitting, while Contact is Bat Control. And in the game engine contact is just being overvalued for things like bunts and hit and runs. IRL a guy with great contact and bad control(aka placement) is going to be a bad choice for a hit and run because he is most likely to hit into a double play. In the game engine the whiff is more critical then hitting into a DP, so Steve rates contact as more important than control... Just my interpretation. Bat Control = Contact + Ball Control on bunting and hit and runs Hitting = Placement/Ball Control on all hits other than bunts and hit and runs

#27079	11/18/2015 3:06:14 pm
Spoonerific Joined: 01/17/2013 Posts: 339 Inactive	@CrazyLi I was saying power has no correlation with striking out at all. [Actually my numbers showns a minute trend towards lower power hitters but most of those hitters have low hitting as well... removal of hitters with 11 Hitting or less showns no real trend. Although I don't have a ton of ABs for ML players with those skills.] When I have time of Thanksgiving break I'm planning on grabbing Legends numbers from last seasons but I am not going to have true skills (from weekly training) so the data won't be entirely accurate.

#27083	11/18/2015 3:36:33 pm
Crazy Li Joined: 01/25/2015 Posts: 879 Inactive	I disagree with a bit of what Rock said. Contact is indeed what you want on a hit and run. Sure, control helps... it always does, but if the game engine values contact more, I feel the engine is correct. It's very hard to hit into a double play with a hit and run on due to the early run. Good contact but bad placement probably gets an out at first and no play at second. In fact the easiest way to fail a hit and run is actually on a line out. The runner would have trouble getting back to first. Higher hitting may even promote line drives. Not sure.

#27086	11/18/2015 3:57:50 pm
MukilteoMike Joined: 08/09/2014 Posts: 3294 Inactive	Yes and no about double plays. A tailor made double play can actually be easier to turn on a hit and run because the defender is already on the move to second. Granted, the defense has to be very lucky that the grounder is hit to the bag or sharply to the other middle infielder. In all other cases, though, I agree with you. That's one of the many base running things I've brought up that drives me a little crazy; more often than not, a hit and run here might break up the double play, but it usually awards the batter first, not the runner second. It's backwards. It seemed like that occurred a little less frequently last season, but I don't have any data to confirm it. I've never seen a line out double play here. That doesn't bother me for some reason, though. I suppose that's the case on all things that happen in real baseball that don't appear here. Other examples are pickoffs, balks and the extremely rare triple play. When things happen in Broken Bat that don't happen in real life, though, I get outraged. The best common example--force outs to third on grounders hit to the right side. Updated Wednesday, November 18 2015 @ 4:02:34 pm PST

#27087	11/18/2015 4:06:27 pm
Balbinjj Joined: 05/27/2014 Posts: 213 Appleton Foxes III.1	Thanks guys! But, any suggestion on what numbers should I look to see the effectiveness of BC?

#27088	11/18/2015 4:52:29 pm
Rock777 Joined: 09/21/2014 Posts: 9589 Haverhill Halflings III.1	Yeah IRL, its a different kind of double play. You're runner at 1st is going to make it to second more often, but when its a liner he's in trouble. A bad hitter is more likely to hit a liner out which will turn into a double play in a hit and run, while it would only be a single out normally. I don't know the exact percentages as to which is more likely, but both contact and placement are important to a hit and run. Its more with bunts that it bothers me. Making contact on a bunt is not as hard as directing the bunt. Given Steve seems to use Hitting for ball control/placement, it seems backward that Bat Control (contact) is given higher importance for bunting. But honestly this is all speculation and I really have no idea what's happening behind the engine. @Balbinjj, not really sure. I haven't been able to figure it out myself. I am of the opinion that good BC without good hitting isn't good, while good hitting without good BC seems to yield inconsistently decent results. To me BC feels a bit like the Pitcher's "Control" rating. It helps with consistency (again all speculation).