Completely unrelated things

Virtual me: I finished out the 2011 season at AAA New Orleans, dropping under the .200 mark again, and have been sent down to AA Jacksonville for 2012. Still a backup 3B. I'm not sure this version will ever make it to the bigs. We'll see.

I exhausted my trainer in Wii Fit Plus today. I did the first two levels of the Plank Challenge (20 and 40 seconds) and went to do the Jackknife Challenge (don't remember where I am on that, probably 50). She declined: said she was a little "off" today. I think that was Wii Fit's way of saying "too much today". w. So I did my jackknives through the regular menu instead. Wii Fit Plus is nice. I like that it carries everything over from Wii Fit so that you aren't starting from scratch, and some of the new activities are definitely fun, although some are challenging too.

Tecmo Super Bowl is now available for the 360 as Tecmo Bowl Throwback. Unfortunately, it's not the NES version, which I know to be totally awesome. This is the SNES version. It's been getting good reviews, so I'll have to check it out. After all, there is a thriving community of TSB fans out there ...

MLB 10: Up to AAA

After a miserable year in AA, the Tigers kept me there in 2011. I was a bench guy, barely getting a plate appearance per series, until they traded me to the Marlins. I started to hit well in Jacksonville (unfortunately I can't see how well because it doesn't split your AA performance by team), and in August they called me up to AAA New Orleans. I'd guess I was probably hitting something like .270 in Jacksonville, considering I got my average up from .10x to .184 overall.

Lucky for me, the starting third baseman hurt himself, so I jumped straight into a full-time role. I was Player of the Game in my first game, going 3 for 5 with 2 doubles and a game-winning single. I doubt it'll all be that easy, but at least for now I'm moving ahead.

MLB 10: goal fail

Well, over three or four advancement periods, I didn't do very well. I had a nice post about this saved, but Blogger lost it. Thanks.

I was brought in as an emergency catcher once. Catching is interesting, but as in the field, MLB 10 doesn't want to burden you with what you should actually be doing. For example, on a ground ball to the left side, you aren't supposed to back up the throw to first, even though the sim catcher does. You should stand at home plate in case, well, I don't know.

Anyway, I got pushed back to a backup role, then started again almost immediately when a guy in front of me got hurt. And now I failed at another set of goals (although I am hitting better), but they don't care as much because I'm just a "backup".

Sometimes it's interesting to see the different areas in which you're expected to improve, but honestly they're all pretty much related. If you do well, you can improve just about any attribute; struggle, and you'll not get enough points to improve your attributes. Basically, the more goals you have, the greater success/failure you'll have.

It's fun so far, and I'm learning about how to do things, but I'm not making a lot of progress yet. Maybe next year.

MLB 10: current goals

So here's something they do: they give you a set of goals to achieve in a certain amount of time. Some of them are stat-related (get 6 hits in 8 series). Some are attribute-related (improve your contact vs. right-handed pitching by X). At the end of the period, you're evaluated. If you do well, your manager and general manager are happy, and you might earn a promotion. If not, well, let's find out ... the manager wasn't happy. Good thing it was the "first time".

I had 8 series to do six things. Two of them were failures: draw a walk (hey, it's hard, they have to throw balls) and strike out fewer than 15 times (18 ... good thing they increased it from 8 halfway through). The other four were reasonable. I increased my contact vs. LHP and RHP (they're tied together, so that wasn't hard), got the hits (11), but didn't improve my bunting enough (why bunt? bunting is for weak bats).

Next goals: in 7 series, improve contact vs. RHP (no problem), plate discipline (no problem), get 28 total bases (hmm) and have an OBP of .360 or higher (uh). Oh, and draw 5 walks. Right. That would be 5 more than my career total.

Virtual me, baseball style

I broke down and got MLB 10: The Show, partly because its create-your-own-player thing was really good and, well, partly because my friends enjoy the create-your-own-player thing.

So I made a me, a 21-year-old third baseman (about half my age, but who cares?), and put him in the Detroit organization at AA Erie.

Hitting is hard. I strike out a lot. But I finally figured out that I need to start looking for specific pitches (when you guess a pitch correctly, you know just before it leaves the pitcher's hand, so if you know the pitch and you see where it starts, you can tell where it should finish). I struck out twice in three PAs early in the game, but I ripped a 3-2 pitch down the line in right for a double in the seventh, and in the ninth, with none out and the tying run on base, I guessed first-pitch fastball and put it down about 350 feet away, just over the right field wall. 4-3 Erie victory. (Somehow I wasn't player of the game.)

You get training points for good things and lose them for bad things (like throwing to the wrong base – grr, not my fault ... well okay maybe it was). Of course I got no bonus for the game-winning hit because the manager didn't need me to get a hit there, but lost points for the two times I struck out instead of driving in a run. (It's a cool way to do things, because sometimes you'll get credit for a small thing in a big situation. It's just funny right now.)

More to come later. Hopefully I'll learn a little more and move up to AAA Toledo soon ...