(This may seem like unexpected content on my personal site, but I really wanted to write it and this seemed like the most sensible venue!)

Before You Take My Advice

Know that I play a lot of MLB The Show in my free time. And I’ve spent a long time thinking about and working on hitting, as it’s the part of the game that comes least naturally to me.

Now, I don’t have a ton of online bona fides to point to to make you take this as bulletproof advice, but if you’re reading this I suspect you’re just looking for a somewhat experienced player’s perspective.

I’ve had some success in Ranked Seasons, but I just haven’t focused on it (much less Battle Royale). I mostly enjoy playing offline, and I beat the CPU on Hall of Fame difficulty quite reliably.

I’m going to offer my insights on what works for me, and hopefully it will work for you. Or at least some version of it will work for you, as some of the settings I’m going to share are somewhat personal from player to player.

But remember this: the single most important aspect to improving is simply playing the game. You need to practice to be able to develop the muscle memory, reflexes, and so on required to excel at the plate. You’re not going to be great immediately. But hopefully my tips can save you some frustration as you grow as a hitter in MLB The Show 19.

Before the Game

Let’s start with settings (“User Settings”), and the most important one of them: “Hitting Interface” (under “Batting & Baserunning”). This guide is about Zone hitting, so change the setting to that if you’re not already using it. (Keep in mind that there’s really no shame in using Directional hitting. I think it’s pretty underrated, but I find it’s both more effective and more satisfying to use Zone.)

Next, I recommend using “Buttons” for “Input Type”. Some folks like Analog; I don’t use it and a lot of my advice is extremely “Buttons”-specific.

“Plate Coverage Indicator”: “On”.

“PCI Appearance”: this one is somewhat personal, but I strongly recommend “Reticle”. It does a nice job of showing you where the PCI is, without being in the way (more on that later).

For “Hitting View”, this is another somewhat personal thing, but some variant of “Strike Zone” is pretty key. You want to be able to see the ball and see the ball well. Nothing else is as important, if you’re concerned with results.

Let’s R1/L1 over to “General” settings now.

This one may sound a bit odd, but set “Strike Zone” to “Off”.

Here’s the thing: the Strike Zone overlay is basically a big screen covering up the most important part of your view. Not only that, but it fades out as the pitcher is delivering the ball, which I honestly find to be a huge visual distraction.

You don’t need it on all the time, and I think you’ll have better results turning it off. While batting, you can press R2 to temporarily bring the strike zone back onto the screen anyway (ditto R3 for pitching). More on that later.

Before Every Pitch

Now we have our settings ready, and we’re in a game. We’re at the plate, and we want to have a successful plate appearance.

Let’s start with the somewhat mechanical side of things. First, you’re going to want to know what your batter’s strike zone looks like; they don’t all look the same. So go ahead and briefly press R2 to familiarize yourself a bit with where balls and strikes are going to be called.

Outside of this brief familiarization, not having the strike zone on screen as often will, in my opinion, keep you from swinging at strikes that you should probably just be looking at. You shouldn’t swing at everything just because it looks like it will be in the strike zone, but you do want to have a decent idea of where the strike zone actually is for your batter. So don’t forget to peek with R2.

Next, move the left stick around. Move it in broad circles in order to create a connection between your eyes and your thumb. “Trace” the strike zone with your thumb. This is to develop your hand-eye coordination so that when you see a pitch coming to a particular location, you’ve already had your thumb in that location recently.

Do all of the above before every pitch, and I think you will have a strong feel (and I do mean feel) for the strike zone without having the strike zone overlay distract you from seeing the pitch well.

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Before Certain Pitches

Part of being successful at the plate is having a plan. Here are the broad strokes of mine, some of them tactical and some of them “mechanical” (in terms of my hand/thumbs).

First thing’s first: I find that I have the most success when I start with the left stick at rest (and my thumb resting gently but firmly on top of it). I think a lot of growing hitters complain about how they slam down on the left stick and swing underneath a lot of pitches, and I think this often happens because these players have too much tension in their thumb as the pitch is released, and their nerves and anticipation just make them react imprecisely.

If you’re playing against a human pitcher who you’ve decided to try to exploit by always waiting for a particular location, you may want to move the PCI somewhere before they pitch… but I really think you’re going to see more success by leaving the PCI in the center and then reacting. It’s going to be better for developing your hand-eye coordination overall, anyway.

Now that we’ve got the left stick at rest (after “tracing” the strike zone!), we need to decide which kind of swing we’re going to use. Some players swear by only using normal swings (X), and it’s true that you can have a lot of success that way. But I think that, especially on lower difficulties, you’re sacrificing a lot of potential bases by not having a more robust approach.

But you need to be thoughtful about when you use which swing, and you will mostly be using normal swings, to be sure.

I think using a normal swing for 0-0 and all one-strike counts is pretty sensible, with the exception of 3-1. You may want to go for a power swing (square) on 3-1 if you have a particularly powerful hitter at the plate.

I wouldn’t recommend using a power swing if you’re not ahead in the count, though. And even 1-0 is probably premature. On 2-0, 3-0, and 3-1, go ahead and get ready for a power swing, if you like.

On a two-strike count, you’re generally just trying not to strike out (which has an added penalty in MLB The Show due to pitchers’ confidence meters). You’re basically playing defense and trying to force the pitcher to increase their pitch count without getting you out efficiently. On a two-strike count, I use what I call a “hybrid” approach to swinging, which requires some mechanical discussion. I’ll get to that below when discussing what to do as the pitcher begins their windup.

There are exceptions to this. There’s not a ton to gain from using power hitting with a player who doesn’t have much power (say, Ichiro), and if your pitcher is up to bat I recommend using normal swings where you would otherwise power swing and using defensive swings (O) where you would otherwise use normal swings (or “hybrid” swinging).

During the Pitch

There are two vital things for me during the pitch: my right thumb placement and my visual focus.

The latter is pretty simple: you want to be able to watch the ball as it leaves the pitcher’s hand and approaches the plate. This is why we chose a Strike Zone-style camera, and this is why we removed as many visual distractions as possible. Some folks like to focus on the release point until the ball is coming towards them; some folks like to watch the pitcher’s throwing hand through their whole animation… it’s all pretty subtle, so just find a visual process that works for you.

Right thumb placement is pretty undervalued, though, I think. And just like how the count determines what kind of swing we might select, the count also determines where we place our right thumb.

As you might expect, these two things are closely related. But I do have some tips you may not expect, regarding the specific placement of your right thumb.

When you’re hitting with 1 or 0 strikes, I strongly recommend not resting your right thumb on the controller. Instead, hold it maybe a quarter-inch above the button you expect to use for your swing. Before the windup, tap (don’t press) the button repeatedly so that you have a strong feel for where it is (again, feel is important for me). Make sure your thumb is indeed in the air (not tapping a button) when the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand.

This way, when you see a pitch coming and are tempted to swing, you have more time to “check your button press” and therefore either check swing more successfully or avoid pressing a swing button altogether. You’ll draw more walks and get better counts this way; I promise. You’ll also avoid swinging at strikes that weren’t necessarily worth swinging at.

But the above is only for 1 or 0 strike counts.

With two strikes, you want to be able to swing readily, with what I roughly call “hybrid” swinging.

Maybe my thumb is exceptionally wide, but I find it very easy to have part of my thumb on the X button and part of my thumb on the O button. With two strikes, I think this is the best way to extend your plate appearance make the pitcher work to get you out. Unlike with 1 or fewer strikes, you want to go ahead and rest your thumb on both the X and O buttons when you have two strikes, being ready to rock your thumb to one side or the other in order to do a normal (X) or defensive (O) swing. This is the “hybrid” approach I’ve been mentioning: you actually have your thumb on both swing buttons at the same time and rock your thumb rather than pressing straight down on one or the other.

Even though we’re pretty eager to swing with two strikes, if a pitch really looks like a ball, obviously we want to take it.

But if it looks like it’s likely a strike, you want to swing somehow. Now, you don’t have a lot of time to decide how (which is why we have our thumb ready and resting on two swing buttons at once), but if you’re feeling fairly confident about how you’re seeing the pitch, go ahead and use a normal swing. If you’re not confident in how you’re picking up the pitch visually, just rock your thumb to the right to use a defensive swing, and try to waste the pitch. Fouling off is better than striking out, and (some baserunner situations excepted) making contact is generally better than not when you have two strikes. (If you really want to avoid grounding into a double play, consider cheating the left stick down and just resting your thumb on the X button instead of in the “hybrid” position.)

Finally… after the pitch is in the air… all there really is to do is use your hand-eye coordination to swing with the PCI on the ball when it’s over the plate. There’s not really a trick to that outside of all of the above tips; you just need to practice.

Conclusion

I’m sharing all of this because I think I’ve come to it through a lot of trial and error that I’m hoping to save other folks from the guesswork of. I really hope it helps, but I can’t stress enough that you’re just going to need to spend time with the game to improve at it.

But that’s not so bad! It’s a fun game, especially when you’ve set yourself up to succeed while hitting… because hitting is largely an exercise in failure! If you’re batting .350, you’re still failing most of the time (but it’s way better than batting .150).

So keep at it, don’t get frustrated (it’s just a game!), and don’t feel like any of the above can’t be changed according to your tastes. I just hope it can be a springboard for a lot of players who aren’t having satisfactory results on offense in MLB The Show 19.

If you found any of this valuable, I’d love for you to give me a follow on Twitch, Twitter, or YouTube. I’d appreciate it very much. Cheers.