Good pitching will always beat good hitting, and vice versa. Yogi Berra's words were often confusing on purpose because baseball can be confusing. So it is with pitching in MLB The Show 25. But there's one pitch that has been the center of debate for a while: the inside sinker.
Landed on the inside edge of the side a batter is swinging from, they are money and have been for years now. Some of the changes made to Diamond Dynasty this year appear to have made them even more powerful. Last year, they started passing out 99 overall cards at launch. They've scaled that way back this year.
And how do most of us build teams? We're playing fantasy baseball and racing to get guys that can bash 50 homeruns a season at every position. Those guys tend to be slower. Sinkers are designed to keep the ball on the ground, generating double plays. So the pitch is working as intended. Also, I'm hearing many people reporting that exit velocities are down at launch. If your sluggers aren't reaching the fence, you've just built a lineup tailor made for twin killings.
Once you've mastered the precision of pinpoint pitching, it's even easier to land those sinkers inside where the batter gets jammed up. The Show has really excellent tutorials and practice options for you to work with. But at the end of the day, if you're more comfortable with another method of pitching you might want to start with that and practice pinpoint until you're confident. Or, if you're happy with your ERA and Ks per 9, keep doing you.
Sinkers also tunnel really well with sliders. If you're not familiar, tunneling is the strategy of using pitches that appear similar until or past the point at which a hitter has to make a decision on swinging. In real life, there are a number of variables that we don't have in a video game. In MLB The Show 25, as long as your button inputs are correct or close, your pitcher's motions and delivery will look exactly the same each time. The onus is then on the batter to react.
Baseball is a game that already favors the pitcher, as even the worst's best batters fail 70 percent of the time or more. Every step you can take that increases the advantage makes it even harder for batters to get one over on you. Right now, the inside sinker is one of the best advantages you can exploit.