Pull/Normal/Spray Hitter

[aewin]

Just wondering if there is any evidence out there as to what, if anything, these batter ratings affect.

An obvious thing would be if a RH pull hitter hit more balls to the left side (perhaps evidenced by more HRs in a park with a short LF fence, but I suspect that the park HR factor for RHB has more to do with that).

Thanks.

[StyxNCa]

Originally Posted by aewin

Just wondering if there is any evidence out there as to what, if anything, these batter ratings affect.

An obvious thing would be if a RH pull hitter hit more balls to the left side (perhaps evidenced by more HRs in a park with a short LF fence, but I suspect that the park HR factor for RHB has more to do with that).

Thanks.

I would think the way the game assigns that info has to do more with making sure the fielding numbers are more realistic, meaning the attempts/9 innings per position. That is just a guess.

[Kelric]

Fence distances and heights are purely cosmetic in OOTP right now. Park ratings are the important numbers.

[SteveP]

Not sure what exactly your question is, but one way of asking the question is this: does it matter to me what type of batter a player is, either when he's on my team, or on the other team.

I looked at this pretty carefully at one point, and my conclusion was that, no, it doesn't matter very much.

The table is set for something interesting here in OOTP, but IMHO, it isn't there yet.

[jmknpk2]

It seems as if it should matter, depending on the fielding ratings of the players on the right and/or left side of the field. Not sure if the game takes that into account when determining outcome of a ball in play, but seems it should.

[satchel]

Originally Posted by jmknpk2

It seems as if it should matter, depending on the fielding ratings of the players on the right and/or left side of the field. Not sure if the game takes that into account when determining outcome of a ball in play, but seems it should.

I'm pretty sure that the game recognizes the hitter's "type" and that this affects gameplay accordingly. A right-handed pull hitter will rarely go the other way, etc.

The main question here is not whether this part of the game functions as it should, but rather whether players' different hitting types would change a manager's strategy. It certainly could, if a manager was trying to take advantage of a weakness in an opponent's defense, or was trying to maximize park effects to his team's benefit.

[SteveP]

Originally Posted by satchel

I'm pretty sure that the game recognizes the hitter's "type" and that this affects gameplay accordingly. A right-handed pull hitter will rarely go the other way, etc.

"rarely" is, of course, a subjective assessment, unless you've actually collected data, which I haven't either. What I have done is study over the course of a number of games, whether or not batter types mattered as far as defense decisions (particularly infield shift and guard line). My conclusion was that it did not matter, that this part of the game design was more cosmetic than substantial.

OTOH, I did not attempt to assess this in relationship to park factors, because frankly one would have to do a lot of data collection to get valid results. In the absence of that, I'd be willing to take on faith the proposition that if the park had a strong bias toward one side or the other, and you had a bunch of pull hitters with that orientation, you would get a statistically significant result.