Sony San Diego gave us the biggest look yet at MLB The Show 26's new features in a livestream on both YouTube and Twitch. Let's dive in and see what new wrinkles this year's baseball sim will throw at us!
Bear Down Pitching
This mechanic represents a pitcher putting a little something extra into a few special pitches per game. These pitches will have heightened control and velocity, and are earned by performing well on the mound. They're tied to your pitcher's clutch rating, which makes sense. The league's true aces would logically be better at it, as they are at just about everything else. I went a little deeper into the feature in this piece.
Big Zone Hitting
As MLB The Show Gameplay Director Chris Gill noted, the pitcher generally has the advantage in baseball. So every time the pitcher receives a new tool in the game, they have to make sure batters get something as well.
The developers believed they needed something that was a middle ground ,with elements of the ambush hitting unveiled last year. Big Zone Hitting allows you to pick one of nine quadrants you think the ball might end up in. Gill said if you're good at zone hitting already, you'll want to keep using it. A big weakness of Big Zone Hitting is that it cannot generate a "Perfect Perfect" hit result.
Fixed Zone Hitting will allow you to move the PCI, then remove your hand from the analog stick and leave the PCI there. The developers believe this will reward players who seek consistency by avoiding zone drift.
New Attributes
There are more statistics in baseball than there are snowflakes in Antarctica. Still, MLB 26 has added a couple more that they believe will help players play more like their real-life counterparts. The Hits per 9 stat has already been in the game for a while, but this year will feature H per 8 splits that are left and right-handed.
Catcher Pop Time used to be a quirk given to the game's elite backstops. Now it will be an attribute, rated from 0 to 99. The best defensive catchers (think Cal Raleigh) will make it a huge risk to run on them, even with 99 speed.
Fielders attributes will also make note of whether they are better going to the left or right. Like I said, stats on top of stats. Speaking of fielding and how it goes right or wrong, the team has added several new home run animations. Yes, balls can bounce off your dome ala Jose Canseco.