Many people say hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in professional sports. When you first start playing MLB The Show 23, it can feel that way. Baseball is a game where hitters will fail 70 percent of the time, even if they have a hall-of-fame batting average. That doesn’t mean you need to be afraid to swing. We’re here to give you our five best tips to improve your hitting in MLB The Show.
Change your batting camera
MLB The Show 23 features an almost intimidating number of different presentation options. Those options include different camera angles to play with as you are batting. While the vast majority of the community uses some version of the Strike Zone camera angle because you can see the ball more clearly as it comes out of the pitcher’s hand, it’s much more important to find the camera view that you enjoy the most.
Lock (or unlock) your PCI Ancor
The PCI anchor was a mechanic introduced in last year’s game that helps players stop themselves from constantly moving around a PCI. You can lock it to any of the nine zones in the strike zone so that you don’t accidentally aim your PCI in the wrong spot at the last second. It’s a very useful tool, but sometimes you may fall into the bad habit of never swinging until it’s in the one zone you pick. It’s important to trust your ability to react and not just hope the pitcher serves up a meatball.
Practice Mode
MLB The Show 23 actually has a practice mode where you can set up a specific pitcher and a specific batter against one another and have the pitcher throw specific pitches to a specific part of the strike zone. This is great if you need to see the same pitch over and over again in order to get the timing down.
Related: MLB The Show 23: How to complete the World Baseball Classic program
Take the first pitch
In order to hit the ball, you need to let it get to the plate first. By not swinging at the first pitch, you’re allowing yourself to study how the ball moves as it comes in. Waiting for the first pitch will give you a decent idea of what the pitcher throws first, and you can use that knowledge later in the game when the pitcher tries to get away with fastballs down the middle.
Use Contact and Power Swing
If you’re playing in Diamond Dynasty, players can have hitting ratings up to 125. This means that some cards are going to be 125 in contact, but only 65 in power. This means that they are more likely to not hit home runs but rather score multiple base hits. In this instance, it may be better to use the contact swing to force the ball into play. This is more likely to produce a ground ball, but it could still go drilling past the infielders if things go right. On the other end of this spectrum, power hitters are more likely to swing and miss, but they also destroy pitches they do catch on to. Understanding which stats your current batter has is critical to every at-bat.