MLB 2K10 showcases numbers in 'Stats & Splits' trailer

That's funny because I feel the same way about the NFL.

They referenced specific in-season performance numbers. That doesn't guarantee that the career number will update dynamically, but at least the in-season numbers will.

haha and what was with that corny music? 2K10 looks pretty meh... Already have my preorder of MLB 10 The Show in!

It hasn't been released yet.

Oh I'm an idiot. My friend told me about the perfect pitch thing last night, so I went to the official website. On there it said "get it now at...."

You're 100% right.

But i think the problem is that everything in baseball seems like so much luck to outsiders. There may be a level of background skill involved, but it's so small that it's rarely evident over one game, or even 3 or 4 games. The differences between a great batter and an average one only become statistically noticeable over a whole series of statistics.
In most other sports the difference is often immediately noticeable, even to someone who's never watched the sport before.
Maybe that's why it often seems baseball fans are more interested in stats than in what's going on on the field.

An honest question, as someone who's never really watched: Can batters actually place the ball? Can they look for a weak point in the fielder's setup and exploit it? Or is it just swing, connect, and hope it goes somewhere? Because to be honest that's what it always looks like to me.

@TM

It's hard to say. There are certainly some players who you could say that about, Ted Williams for one.

A lot of it has to do with swing timing, the ability of the player, the wind, the stadium they're in, air pressure from elevation, etc.

But certainly, there's a lot more going on than most people realize.

Yeah, there are a few rare guys with excellent bat control. There are many good players who have some bat control and who have a chance to do that, but it is difficult. The old saying is that one of the hardest thing to do in all of sports is to hit a round ball with a round stick. Now how do you control where the ball goes when you are just trying to make solid contact with the ball traveling 90 mph towards you? Along with good bat control, you have to have a good eye for what type of pitch is coming at you too. I saw a game once where El Duque was pitching for the Yankees against the Texas Rangers. Alex Rodriguez was at bat for the Rangers. El Duque had been throwing his Eephus pitch about once an inning to buckle the knees of the Rangers hitters. It's a slow moving junk ball that starts about eye high and drops to about knee high as it crosses the plate at about 50 mph. He threw one to A-Rod and as usual, it was taken with no swing. Then (big mistake) he threw a second one in a row to see if he could catch A-Rod off guard again and A-Rod saw it the whole way. The ball ended up about 5 rows back in the left field bleachers. El Duque didn't throw it again during that game. But having just seen the pitch and figured out the timing and location of the ball, A-Rod had no problem sending that one out of the park. Ichiro has probably the best bat control of any current player. He will slash the ball into the ground between the infielders and use his speed to try to make it to first even though he knows they will get to the ball. He can control which side of the infield he hits it to. Between third and short gives him the most time to make it to base. BUT if that's not what in the best interest of winning the game, he will just adjust his swing and rope a line drive into the gap between the center fielder and right fielder. If they don't get to it quickly, he'll be standing in second without a chance to throw him out. He could hit for more power, but his game is to get on base and use his speed to make things happen for the power hitters behind him in the lineup.

Ok, that's probably more than anyone wanted to hear. Suffice it to say, there are players who have a very good chance of controlling at least which side of the field their hit will go to and with how much power they hit the ball.

That's an irrelevant fact. When you're dealing with gladiator sports (where huge masses of bodies are regularly crashing into each other), the amount of body-contact HAS to be short. Else, 90% of the league would be paralyzed. As it is now, most running backs can't play past the age of 30 years old.

Baseball, on the other hand, has a similar "ball-in-play" minute ratio, but there's rarely any heavy body contact (if any body contact at all). And most of the delays are just "traditional down-time" as opposed to absolutely athletically necessary.

That article is written as if the whole world didn't already know american football was all standing around and replays. Is this new information?

If you want a real standing around game, you should try test cricket. Though even then at least 2-3 guys are usually running around.

The stupid sportscasters in real life do that, too.

It's not? If someone hasn't been hitting well in their last 20 at bats, it gives you an idea of how that particular at-bat will go.

No, it doesn't, and it's not. It's too small of a sample size to be statistically significant. You can ask any sabermetrician (baseball stats guru) like the ones at FanGraphs.com and they will tell you the same thing.