HOW TO READ PLAYER ATTRIBUTES AND ABILITIES

This is page 1 of Dragons infielder Araki.

Line 1: At top left is his jersey number (#2) and to the right is his name spelled in Japanese.

Line 2: The yellow box displays his position (shortstop) and yellow will always be infielders. Outfielder will have a green box, catchers blue, and pitchers red. #78 represents how valuable the player is, with higher stars being better. This is important only in Grand Prix mode because you collect cards so this is like "Card Level."

To the right it says "Right Throws/ Right Hits." So basically if you see a little box under a "T" this means he's a righty. The text for lefties looks similiar to a capital "F". Switch hitters will have a short horizontal line at the top, followed by a big box underneath with some more strokes inside the box.

The colored letters represent:

• Overall Contact Vs. Right: C
• Overall Contact Vs. Left: D
  
• Overall Power: E
• Overall Baserunning: A
• Position Ratings: 2B (S), SS (B), OF (D)

The highest ranking is "S" - you might think of this as "Hall of Fame" caliber skill. The letter grades are ranked as follows with left being highest....

S > A > B > C > D > E > F > G

This page displays "Overall" ratings which take into account the actual ratings (which can be seen on the 2nd page of the player card) PLUS the player's special skills (page 4 &5). It is meant to give a quick summary of the player's abilities without going into too much detail.

You can see from the pic that Araki has a good overall contact rating against righties at C, but he average against lefties at D. He doesn't have good power but has excellent speed on the bases.

Inside the baseball diamond is the Position Rating. A letter will appear at each position a player can play (some players can play multiple positions) and this letter represents his RANGE & REACTION TIME. Araki is a top notch 2nd baseman with an "S" rating and a solid shortstop. You may have noticed earlier that he's assigned as the shortstop although he's better rated as a 2b. This is because the Dragons long-time SS Ibata is now 36 years old and has a dinged up shoulder. The Dragons felt more comfortable moving him the 2B and switching Asao to SS.

Catchers: To the left I included Dragons catcher Tanishige. The "4" next to his range & reaction rating represents the "Lead" rating. The higher it is, the less stamina it will take for the pitcher to throw to this catcher, so its important to have a good catcher if you want to have a very high pitch count. Before choosing a catcher you should also consider their Arm Strength and Throwing Skill ratings which is covered in the next section.

The Position Rating is VERY important as defense is heavily emphasised in this game. For example, if you have a 3B with a poor Position Rating, line drives and hard hit shots will just shoot by him before you even have a chance to move. This will cost you a lot of extra base hits down the left field line. Same thing for outfielders, if you have someone with a 'D' or below grade in center field, I'm afraid you won't get to a lot of flyballs that would be caught by a better rated outfielder. Bottom line: PLEASE SUB IN YOUR DEFENSIVE SPECIALISTS IN THE LATE INNINGS!

Page 2 features the detailed ratings for every category:

Contact Vs Right: D - 59
Contact Vs Left: D - 56
Power: E - 47
Speed: B - 77
Glove Skill: B - 73
Throwing Skill: E - 42
Arm Strength: D - 53

All attributes are rated 1 to 99. Most of these are self-explanatory but let me explain the last 3 defense-related
ratings.

•Glove skill is how well you make the catch (including dives).
•Throwing skill is how accurate and skillful you throw.
•Arm Strength is how hard you throw.

These are all independent of each other. You can have a guy with very strong arm strength but poor throwing skill leading to a lot of errors. You can have a guy with very good range and reaction time (Position Rating on page 3) but if he has a very bad Glove rating then he might botch the catch even though he got there in time.

Fatigue Recovery Rate: B - 74

Positional Ratings:

Pitcher: N/A
Catcher: N/A
First: N/A
Second: S - 92
Third: N/A

Short: C - 63
Left: D - 50
Center: D - 50
Right: D - 50

As mentioned previously, positional rating governs your player's reaction time and range, which in my opinion are the 2 most important factors in terms of defense.

Fatigue Recovery Rate will not affect you in exhibition but it is very important in
Pennant/Season. Fatigue will slowly build up and if your character has a low
recovery rate (like an E) he'll need to rest after 5 or 6 games or he will very easily
get injured on the field.

Page 4 & 5: Here you will see the player's special skills. For translations please head to the Special Skills section.

Page 6: Displays the player's stats from last year:

Batting average
Games Played
Total at-bats
Homeruns
RBI
Stolen Bases

This is pages 1 & 2 from Dragons pitcher #41 Asao:

Top line: Jersey number (41) and player name in Japanese text.

Line 2: A Red box designates pitcher for easy reference and the text inside the box states "pitcher." The #97 represents how valuable the player is, with higher stars being better. This is important only in Grand Prix mode because you collect cards so this is like "Card Level." To the right of this you will see the pitcher's throwing arm which states "Right Throws" followed by "Right Hits." Basically if you see a little box under a "T" this means he's a righty. The text for lefties looks similiar to a capital "F".

Asao is a right-handed pitcher who can reach a blazing fast 156 kmh max on his fastball (97 mph.) Both page 1 and 2 show the type of pitches he can throw. Some pitchers can have two breaking balls in the same direction, such as Asao here. The better pitch will show up on page 1 and the weaker pitch will be on page 2. The pitch in the Up (12 o'clock) location is always the fastball.

Each pitch can have up to 3 attributes. The big letter on the left is the sharpness (how good the stuff is for this pitch.) The smaller letter on the right is the control. Finally for breaking balls, there is a bar that can go from zero to 6 to show how much break/movement the pitch has. Now let's use Asao here as the
example and go through his pitches together:

Starting from the top on page 1, going counter-clockwise:

Fastball = C Sharpness, B Control
Slider = C Sharpness, B Control, Lvl 3 Break
Forkball = B Sharpness, C Control, Lvl 3 Break

Page 2:

Palmball = D Sharpness, C Control, Lvl 4 Break

From his pitch grades we can see that he has a nasty fastball and slider (especially when you factor the grade + speed.) He also has one of the best forkballs in the game which is a good compliment to his palmball because it also breaks down and has good movement.

If a pitcher is rated E, F or G you should consider only throwing it when you're ahead in the count and make sure it goes far outside the strike zone. Poorly rated pitches are very hard to time on release; and their poor sharpness rating means that even if you release them perfectly, the pitch will still look like an easily hittable "beach ball" to the hitters.

Note the text located above or below each of the pitch selections. Memorizing these will be usefull because when the CPU brings in relievers it will state the percentage he throws each of his pitches. These are also translated on our Pitch Descriptions page.

Page 3 from top to bottom:

Fatigue Recovery Rate = S 94
Pitcher's Base Stamina = A

Fatigue Recovery Rate works the same as hitters. It is how fast you recover from the overall fatigue you build up in Season Mode.

Pitcher's Base Stamina is your basic in-game pitching stamina like every other baseball game.

Pitchers Role Compatibility: This is explained in detail at bottom of page. Basically Asao is...

• Ok as a starter (Triangle)
• Perfect for Middle relief (Double Circle)
• Good closer (Single Circle)

Since he's good for middle relief or as a closer he makes a perfect setup man. This is his primary job this year because the Dragons already have an established closer.

Pages 4 & 5: These show his Special Skills. Please refer to the Special Skills pages of this site for translation.

Page 6: Pitchers stats.

New in 2011 is the Pitcher's Role Compatibility. It is listed on the 3rd page of your player card.

• Double Circle = Pitcher is perfect for this role.
• Single Circle = Good for this role.
• Triangle = Ok for this role.
• Minus = pitcher not suited for this role at all.

In the images above you can see that pitchers can be suited for multiple roles but they are usually most skilled at only 1 role (except in the second picture where Nelson is perfecty suited as either a starter or reliever). Players can use this compatibility chart as a reference when constructing your pitching staff.