Nine Ways to a Better Baseball Game

Posted by Nate Patrin at 6:45 AM Apr 01, 2008

Monday was Major League Baseball’s opening day (or at least opening day in North America, thank you very much Boston Red Sox/Oakland A's/Japan). And with this year’s opening day comes all kinds of questions: will the Mets finally reach the World Series now that they have Johan Santana in their rotation? Can Francisco Liriano fully recover from Tommy John surgery? Can Jacoby Ellsbury and Joba Chamberlain live up to the promise they showed as rookies last year? And why do baseball video games tend to be such a tedious pain in the ass?

Little did these mortal adversaries know that they would meet again -- in a Devil Rays-Indians exhibition game

No, it’s not because baseball's a tedious pain in the ass – baseball is, in fact, the greatest sport ever invented, especially if you're a math and/or history dork. It's because in the last five or ten years, video game developers have somehow got the idea in their heads that a game ten year-old children are capable of playing in real life using broom handles and tennis balls needs to be crammed with complicated controller manipulations, superfluous special features and half-hearted stabs at realism that only serve to make everything some ridiculous micromanaged slog through baseball's Uncanny Valley. I really wanted to like MLB 2K8 – I dug 2K Sports' last notable baseball title, The Bigs, a gleefully over-the-top arcade game that felt like the national pastime's version of NBA Jam. But 2K8 tripped me up at almost every turn: I couldn't pitch well, I couldn't hit to save my life, and I couldn't really do much of anything out in the field without feeling like some sort of bumbling dimwit. And I wasn't even playing as the Pirates. I logged in triple-digit hours playing the Tony LaRussa series back in the day and whomped ass at it -- what went wrong?

While not every game I’ve played since then has been a perplexing headache – EA's MVP Baseball series was a solid franchise before they lost the MLB license, and Konami's super-stylized, deceptively-kiddie-looking but super-in-depth MLB Power Pros was all kinds of fun. But they're not perfect, and they and just about every other baseball video game out there today tend to have the same frustrating problems. Sometimes a couple of these problems will be addressed and solved in the same title, but I've yet to see a game that really nails all of these important ones. And why are there nine in this list? Simple: there are nine players on the field, nine innings in a game and nine baseball video games I've quit playing over the last several years because they were approximately zero fun whatsoever.

1: Simplify pitching
While the whole "throw the ball and control the curve after the fact using the gamepad" method worked fine in the '80s, we've moved on from that – but that doesn't mean that every game has to involve some convoluted nightmare involving multiple aiming reticules, a special analog stick motion and/or some baffling utilization of catcher signals that you need to precisely follow to make your pitch count perfectly. Anything that actually makes it difficult for Jonathan Papelbon to strike out a late-inning benchwarmer defensive replacement hitting .212 should be thrown out the window, no matter how cool the description on the box makes it sound. Sticking with some variation of the traditional "golf swing" meter as seen in the MVP Baseball series would probably work best: choose where in the strike zone you want to throw the ball, hold a button down until the pitcher's power meter goes up to a certain point (making sure to pace yourself so you don't spend 5 innings throwing at full strength and then blow out your arm a'la Mark Prior), and then bring up a precision meter, where a little marker zips back and forth and you have to press a button once it hits the sweet spot that will cause the pitch to go exactly where you want it to go. Just make each precision meter and sweet spot a different size depending on whether you’re dealing with a Greg Maddux or a Steve Dalkowski, and pitching will feel like it's supposed to.

2: Make it easier to draw a walk
The irritating thing about baseball video games, especially when they're realistic simulation-minded titles, is that you – the guy/girl in the glasses with the 20" CRT TV set -- are expected to have as keen a batting eye as Ted Williams. Few things are as immersion-disrupting as playing through a full nine-inning game, facing a mediocre bottom-of-the-rotation pitcher with no control, and drawing exactly zero walks because it's impossible for the average person sitting at home on the couch to tell where in the strike zone that flimsy-looking breaking ball is going to wind up. This inevitably leads to the embarrassment of your real-mapped motion-captured Joe Mauer swinging at a strike three in the dirt – so much for realism. If you're at the plate controlling a hawk-eyed batter with a .425 on-base percentage and facing some kludgy middle reliever who makes it a habit of denting his catcher's shinguards, there should be an option – purists and showoffs can turn it off if they like – for the game to tip you off at an appropriate rate if a pitch is going to clearly be outside the strike zone.

MVP Baseball 2005: a game engine so powerful, it can simulate competence on the part of the Baltimore Orioles

3: Give the player better control of the fielders
Here is why I hate fielding in baseball video games: somebody hits a long fly ball that's headed towards the gap in right-center field. The computer decides that since the center fielder seems most likely to catch the ball, you’re given control of him the moment the ball's trajectory approaches the outfield, and so you start running to the right to track the ball down. But then the computer-controlled right fielder who was initially running to back you up somehow gets in a somewhat better position to grab the ball, or maybe the wind plays tricks on the direction the ball’s going, and before you can appropriately react the computer figures, hey, the right fielder's closer now, so why not give you control of him instead? But whoops – you're still moving that analog stick to the right because a moment ago that's where you were directing the center fielder, and in the split second it takes you to realize that the guy you're controlling now needs to head left to catch the ball, he's now traipsing off towards the right-field corner and the ball drops down for a hit. This is how outs become doubles and doubles become inside-the-park home runs. And even if that seems like something Manny Ramirez might do on occasion, actual legit gold-glovers shouldn't have to be susceptible to this kind of crap. Give the player control of one fielder and one fielder only during plays like this, and only switch which fielder the player's controlling once the ball's been caught.

4: Give the player a little more control over baserunning
If I'm going full throttle stealing second with Jose Reyes, why is it that all I have to do to slide is hit a button, and that's assuming it's not controlled automatically? Granted, this isn't something that has to be all that complicated, but a little meter that factors in the runner's speed, the catcher's arm and the infielder's ability at covering the bag would be cool, adding a little tension and forcing you to make a precise bit of button-press timing in order to best avoid the tag.

5: Either include real minor-league players, or don't include the minors at all
Most baseball games nowadays have a franchise mode, which means that they usually have at least a couple levels in their farm system (usually AAA and AA) you can call hot prospects up from. But aside from some of the more well-known or major-league-experienced AAA players, these rosters are typically filled out with generic, randomly-generated clone players that don't actually exist in real life. And while downloadable roster updates (and the game's usually-rudimentary create-a-player function) can sometimes fill in the gaps, it's kind of irritating to realize that you can't call up Nick Blackburn and will have to settle for all 5'9", 240 pounds of knuckle-slurve specialist Horacio Nakagawa instead. Whether the inclusion of fake minor leaguers is due to time constraints, disc space or some arcane licensing weirdness isn't clear, but if you can't get Baseball America to fill in the gaps, don't even bother.

6: Get some real sabermetricians to tinker with the stats and player ratings
Maybe you're one of those traditionalists that likes to judge a player's ability by baseball card stats like wins and RBI, has a soft spot for mediocre hitters with "heart" or "grit," and like to dismiss sabermetric constructions like VORP or WARP as a whole bunch of slide-rule compu-nerd basement-dweller garbledecrap. Well, when you're putting together a computerized simulation of baseball, why not consult those compu-nerds who’ve spent so much time compu-nerding that they can actually break down just about every single statistical aspect of a player and utilize it in a realistic projection of how that player compares to other players in every single situation imaginable? Developers should call up Bill James, consult PECOTA, subscribe to Baseball Prospectus -- anything that prevents a Dodgers-Astros game with both team’s aces on the mound resulting in a 12-10 slugfest, or Derek Jeter being rated as highly for his defense as Adam Everett.

MLB Power Pros: No wonder Howard won the MVP; he hit like that without any freakin' legs

7: Ease up on the unlockables
Baseball video games typically last the average player about a year and then, in the hallowed tradition of every sports franchise everywhere, a new edition comes out and the focus winds up shifting to the updated version. This gives most people a limited amount of time with the game, which means that they may never get around to fulfilling the weird, time-consuming requirements that will allow them to unlock Sandy Koufax or the Polo Grounds or the 1977 Toronto Blue Jays road uniform. Making it too easy to unlock bonus stuff would take a bit of challenge out of it, but if you award multiple unlockables at once (say, a package of alternate uniforms, a legendary player and maybe a classic stadium) and tie it in with some special but non-time-consuming accomplishment – shutting out the Yankees with the Red Sox; hitting four home runs in a game with the Twins; completing an entire nine innings as the Florida Marlins without weeping – it gives players more opportunity to mess around with all the fun extra bonus stuff before the 2009 edition comes down the pike.

8: Legends of Baseball
This needs to happen yesterday. If they can do it for the NFL (see: All-Pro Football 2K8), there is approximately zero reason to not do this with a roster of Hall of Fame baseball players so we can get a chance to see what Babe Ruth could do against Bob Gibson. This could be done any number of ways: start the game with a fantasy draft and build yourself a league of mix-and-match all-star teams (Ozzie Smith and Brooks Robinson, together at last), have each franchise represented by an all-time team (imagine Ty Cobb, Hank Greenberg and Alan Trammell in the same lineup and try not to cackle maniacally), or just have each club represented with its greatest incarnation – the '27 Yankees, the '55 Dodgers, the '75 Reds, the '91 Twins, the '04 Red Sox, the… uh… 2000 Devil Rays.

9: Make a quality baseball game for the DS (for once)
I hate to keep picking on 2K here, but… well. There is approximately one baseball game on the market for the Nintendo DS as of today. It is Major League Baseball 2K7, and it is generally regarded as being complete and total garbage. By the end of the month, there will be a second baseball game on the market for the Nintendo DS, also released by 2K; it's called Major League Baseball 2K8 Fantasy All-Stars and it will apparently attempt to atone for all the problems with the DS version of 2K7 by turning everything into an eye-searing cavalcade of cartoon cheesiness. But a straightforward, simple, well-thought out and reasonably realistic baseball game on the DS would be a no-brainer: playing with the stylus would be a total blast. You could command your pitcher to throw a breaking ball and then trace its planned trajectory to deliver it, have batters swing by tapping the screen at the exact place you think the pitch will go, sweep the stylus across the screen to make laser-beam throws from the outfield to home plate, sketch quick darting lines to pull off 4-6-3 double plays – just leave all the kiddie contrivances out of it, and this would rule beyond belief.