Virtual Baseball Season/Franchise Updates

Fascinating.  Funny you mention Peavy, he's the third starter I couldn't remember.  Maybe I'll find room for Drew in the starting lineup if he's so solid... does he play anything other than outfield?

High Heat... fun stuff.  The pitches seemed so slow because of the default 'zoom' camera.  Changed to low, it's much more normal.  Ted, if you get this working, I recommend 'low' batting cam, turning off the 'action' fielding camera (it's disorienting) and enabling vibration, since any sense of oomph is hard to come by when making contact.

MLB 2k9 FTW?

Got in four games late last night in my season...

Final game against Tampa Bay: Nick Neugebauer my fifth starter had 2 great starts so far.  Not this time.  A-Rod homered and Tampa won it 10-6 and it was never close.

First of three against Baltimore (last year's AL East Champs): Tim Hudson was not sharp, and gave up 6 runs in 5 innings.  I tried out a few call-ups in the bullpen and it got completely out of hand.  Luis Brown (their fictional #1 starter) scattered 8 hits and we had by far our worst loss in our 5-season franchise, 16-0.

At this point, I seriously considered tuning the game down a bit, as our pitching has inexplicably been getting absolutely rocked lately.  But I decided to stick with it for at least one more game, and...

Second of three against Baltimore: Mark Mulder, our ace right now, was once again fantastic and just shut Baltimore down.  We had no hits for four innings, but managed 4 in the fifth and scored 2 runs.  Mulder had shut them out for 8 innings on 4 hits, but was tiring in the 9th.  They managed three hits and a run.  Colby Lewis came in to get Richie Sexson on a key foul out, followed by a pop fly from Miguel Olivo to get the save.  Sox 2, O's 1.  Mulder is now 3-1 with an ERA in around 2.30.

Final game against Baltimore: Adam Eaton pitching.  Last season he was really good, but so far this season he's been battered in all three starts.  If he pitches bad in this one, he's out of the rotation.  It looked bleak after the second batter homered to make it 2-0 early, but then he was really strong.  We finally came to life offensively, and blew it open in the late innings.  Eaton pitched into the seventh, Will Cordero hit 2 HR (his first of the year), and we won it in a laugher, 12-3.

So now we're 6-12, still 6 GB in the East.  We're doing OK after the poor 2-8 start, but we still need a nice run to get back toward .500.  The next two games are against the White Sox (who have a worse record than us), then three with the Yanks who lead the AL East.  That'll take us about to the halfway point of the season.

I may have to give those sliders a try because the ONLY thing bothering me with 2K9 is the outfield play - every other aspect of this game is so much fun, including the infield play. My issue is not with EVERY fly ball to the outfield - it seems like it's just the ones that I don't have to run for.

What I find myself doing is playing my own type of mini-game in the fielding practice option - I play one hundred total pitches and try to get the best hit-to-out ration I can. So far I've held the batter to 30 hits and 70 outs twice.