MLB The Show 22: High Sinkers Gotta Go

Coming off the tech test and gameplay livestream for MLB The Show 22, it feels like the right time to talk about my biggest long-standing gameplay pet peeve in The Show, and that is the high sinker. In general, specific pitch types that should not be thrown up in the zone – namely sliders, curveballs, sinkers (and by proxy, sometimes 2-seam fastballs), and even changeups – have been far too effective for too long.

MLB The Show 22 – High Sinkers Gotta Go

Why these pitches remain effective in The Show basically comes down to the accuracy and movement of those pitches. In short, where you throw a pitch does not matter as much as the execution of the pitch by the user. And that does make sense because you want the user to have more control, not less.

The Jacob deGrom Corollary

That said, to use someone like Jacob deGrom as the prime example, he’s the best starting pitcher in the world, and he lives up in the zone throwing 100 mph glove-side 4-seam fastballs. He became dominant in part by doubling down on this strength. Hitters know it’s coming, and it mostly doesn’t matter because his execution and trust in that pitch mixes well with elite stuff.

However, if you face Jacob deGrom online, you don’t usually run into a guy who is executing your face off with glove-side heaters. In part, that’s because you don’t succeed with deGrom at higher levels by using him like you would in real life. Instead, you throw a lot more 2-seam fastballs up in the zone, and you mix in a nice little chunk of high changeups because it’s more about speed differential and making people put their PCI in the wrong place than your own pitch execution.

There is a lot wrong with that from a “real” baseball standpoint, but again, it happens in part because some people are very good at hitting in this game, and so it’s more about mind games than pitch placement. To put it another way, in this video game it doesn’t really matter if you nail your spot at the bottom of the zone with a perfect sinker if the other person knows it’s coming and has the PCI in place. Sure, the end result might still end up as a ground out or a loud line drive out, but the point is the pitcher is going to lose that battle more times than not.

Even with that in mind, high sinkers should not be a good pitch. They are a mistake pitch. The same goes for high sliders, most high curveballs, and especially high changeups.

High Sinkers Didn’t Happen By Accident

But I want to be clear that while I’m arguing against high sinkers being too effective, I also admit that game mechanics on both the hitting and pitching side would need to change as well to make high sinkers less necessary to compete online. This meta did not happen by accident, but The Show developers have also seemingly become aware of it since they now give sinkers to pitchers who don’t throw them in real life, and I assume they do this in part to keep them in rotations online.

The bottom line here is that the Edward Cabreras of the world should not be the most used pitchers simply because they have a dominant sinker that can be thrown up in the zone. The Show would be a better game with more pitcher variety, and that starts by creating an environment where more pitching styles matter.

Designate “Zones” For Certain Pitches

First, I think it needs to be made clear to users where certain pitches are meant to be thrown. Hitter handedness vs. pitcher handedness matters, and then location overall also matters. If there were better onboarding and explanations for why a sinker should be thrown down but not up, I think this is the first step in the process of then explaining why these pitches are now failing more often once we get to the next part of this process.

After you select a sinker (or changeup etc.), I would then show the best spots in the strike zone to throw that pitch. You should be able to turn this on or off (maybe like hot zones vanish after the first pitch), but the point would be to make it clear where the pitch should be thrown. The changes to PAR in ’22 are doing this by changing the “perfect” area for particular pitches depending on where they’re thrown, but I think even more visual aids could be added.

The next step is explaining why perhaps a right-handed pitcher would throw a 2-seam fastball more often to a left-handed hitter than a right-handed hitter. This is the next level beyond the obvious, but it probably would not be a bad idea to implement these sorts of ideas via tutorials, in-game commentary moments/presentations, and so on. Teaching baseball can be done in a way that’s fun enough while not being overly intrusive.

Nerf The Movement

The first thing to do here is of course decrease the movement of the pitches when they’re thrown where they should not be thrown. The Show developers have tried doing this to some extent starting with MLB The Show 21. In the video I posted at the start of this article, I show off the movement via a pre-patch MLB The Show 21, a post-patch MLB The Show 21, and then the MLB The Show 22 tech test. I compare the videos and try to showcase how the pitching has changed (if at all).

The two phases of this tweak are the pitch selection sequence and then the actual movement of the pitches in real time. I’m not going to explain much more here in words because it’s better just shown off in the video at the start of this article. The basic premise here though is that sinkers need to majorly flatten out up in the zone, and the same should go for changeups and the like. I would exaggerate this as much as possible because even a sinker that is slightly moving tends to be better than most 4-seam fastballs up in the zone in this game.

Nerf The Accuracy

The accuracy tweaks are slightly more involved than just wholesale downgrading movement on pitches up in the zone. However, I think the same general concepts should still apply here. You should be able to decide what pitch you want to throw and where you want to throw it, but the game should make this hard on you. Pinpoint pitching was a good upgrade in ‘21, but some people (and I would include myself here) got so good at it that it only made the high sinker meta more prominent.

So I would simply start by making it all but impossible to “perfect” pitches in areas where they should not be thrown. This is perhaps the most important aspect of this whole adjustment because hitters do need to play a role in this change as well. It’s not just that high sinkers were good because they moved at the top of the zone, it was because people would use them a lot like a Maddux-level 2-seam fastball and run it back to the very top of the right or left corner of the zone.

Greg Maddux, Two Seamers. #MadduxMonday pic.twitter.com/jrnYnqV0Ln

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) January 25, 2021

If these high sinkers are simply flattening out and ending up as balls because you can’t “dot” the corners anymore with “perfect” input pitches, then as long as hitters are doing their job and not chasing, high sinkers will phase out by default. I would say SDS is on the right track here with this aspect of things based on my time with the tech test.

Make Good Eyes Matter More

The biggest change to hitting in this meta overhaul would tie more into what I just mentioned about having a good eye at the plate. The Show developers toyed around with making it so the PCI could be moved even further out of the zone to swing at pitches in a patch last year, then tuned it back late in the year, and I would tune it even further.

Swinging at balls is bad. I would go to the extreme ends of the spectrum here for a competitive game. If you want to put in certain quirks for the Pablo Sandovals of the world that would allow them to move their PCI a little further out of the strike zone then fair enough, but the narrative behind someone like Pablo Sandoval should not be misinterpreted. Sandoval was not good because he would hit balls sometimes or swing at every first pitch. He was good in spite of those flaws.

People also always like to show Vladimir Guerrero (Sr.) hitting absurd pitches way out of the zone. I love those videos too! But Vlad also did have a good eye and was ultimately as good as he was because of how well he hit balls in the zone, not how well he hit balls out of the zone.

So I would make it so you basically can’t move the PCI outside the strike zone in any appreciable way, and I would make it near impossible to hit home runs on most low pitches below the strike zone. I think there is some tuning here so you don’t entirely eliminate those golf-swing homers off curves that happen from time to time, but I would tune it in so only certain types of hitters can pull that off.

I do imagine this is where some amount of push-and-pull would happen because some people already lose their minds when they have to wait more than two pitches to swing. Regardless, getting people to swing at strikes and take balls should be the goal for any simulation baseball game. Overall, it does seem SDS is moving somewhat in this direction by shrinking the PCI on pitches outside the zone for ’22.

Tendencies Need To Matter

I do think The Show tries to help bring this aspect out more these days. The quirks system is there to try and help both the virtual players and then the users themselves shine by using players the way they “like” to play in real life. Whether this is giving hitters a boost on first-pitch swings or giving certain pitchers better attributes for day games, the developers are trying to bring out the uniqueness within these players.

What I’m talking about goes a step beyond that in some regards. Returning to Jacob deGrom, let’s go a step further now and say you should have more accuracy and more control over his fastball if you’re throwing it arm-side. If you’re using Brandon Webb, then being able to spot a sinker at the bottom of the zone should be easier than most other pitchers. If I’m using Greg Maddux, I should probably have a little more ease throwing a front-side 2-seam fastball that edges back across the plate.

In part this shows up in hot zones for hitters and pitch ratings for pitchers. Still, these things absolutely could be more pronounced and simultaneously nuanced in terms of boosting the number of quirks to highlight these things more. If I’m Greg Maddux throwing a 2-seam fastball glove-side, I should absolutely have more control and movement doing that than I would trying to throw it arm side. It perhaps sounds insignificant, but this is how we make players feel more unique while also bringing out the “real” baseball.

The Unknowns

The biggest unknown here I have not brought up probably ties into the triumvirate of hitting windows, PCI placement, and foul balls. Part of the high sinker meta was people just trying to keep people off balance to avoid foul ball fests and giving up home runs. MLB The Show 21 did end up feeling like a home run fiesta a lot of the time, and hitters would also be rewarded with a foul ball a lot of the time when no part of their PCI touched the ball.

I think for any of this stuff to ultimately move the needle, PCI placement when hitting is still a massively important factor. As long as you still make contact a lot of the time because your swing timing was in the ballpark while your PCI was not around the ball at all, people are going to keep trying to find unlikely ways to throw hitters off.

Fouls balls are slightly more complicated because people have issues with them for varying reasons. Some people don’t like foul balls on perfect-perfect swings (which is fair). Others don’t like the excessive number of foul balls in general, and that’s more what I’m talking about here. If the swing windows are tightened up and the PCI placement matters more, then a lot of this solves itself.

Of course, this still isn’t perfectly tidy because the other part of that argument is that people will expect even better outcomes on good PCI placement. This could be a good or bad thing depending on how many “good” PCI placements really just mean hitting a home run. I want a renewed focus on keeping the ball down in the zone with the Brandon Webbs and Adam Wainwrights of the world. If good PCI placement means these down in the zone pitchers give up a bunch of line drives, that’s fine. However, if it means they just give up home runs even more often on down pitches because folks sit on them, I’m more skeptical much will change.

I would be fine with hitters sitting on pitches if pitchers become easy to read, but there is a middle ground between sitting on low sinkers and hitting six home runs on them.

Bottom Line

There is a give and take that will need to take place here with both hitting and pitching, but I do think at its core this high sinkers issue is a simple one to start attacking in a more aggressive manner. Pitches thrown outside their “normal” zones should be less accurate and have less movement. Once you “nerf” high sinkers, the process begins again of trying to refine the pitcher-hitter battle so both sides can try to find some semblance of “real” baseball tactics inside a system where pitches are once again being thrown where they should be thrown.