As is often the case with annual sports releases, MLB The Show 25 doesn’t have a ton of what you would call “new” features. It’s natural, then, that the handful of items billed prominently as being introduced to the game for the first time are bound to receive a great deal of scrutiny. One such feature is Ambush Hitting, which can provide a hitter with an advantage for guessing the location of a pitch correctly. Those who have played the series for a while will likely realize that it’s more than a little reminiscent of an earlier Guess Pitch feature in the series that functioned similarly. There was understandably some skepticism in the community then when it was announced because of how overpowered the ability to guess a pitch accurately could be in the past.
So, how does Ambush Hitting differ from that previous Guess Pitch mechanic? How does it work exactly? Is Ambush Hitting likely to stick around, and what could it look like in the future?
Let’s go over all of these questions in depth in assessing how effective the implementation of Ambush Hitting has been in MLB The Show 25.
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How Does Ambush Hitting Compare To Guess Pitch?
To better understand how we got to Ambush Hitting, it’s worth looking back at how that old Guess Pitch feature functioned and, even more importantly, the shortcomings that ultimately led to its demise. For starters, there were a few different ways that you could previously anticipate a pitch and use your instincts to your advantage. As with Ambush Hitting, you could guess whether a pitch would be inside or outside, but you could also guess that it would be low or high as well. By surmising the right location, you would get an indicator before the pitch showing that the pitch was headed in the quadrant that you selected.
You also had the opportunity to guess not only the location of the pitch but the type of pitch that was headed to the plate as well. A correct guess would provide you with a visual cue that gives you the knowledge that a fastball or whatever pitch you guessed was coming down the pipe. Of course, you could combine these two options to give you the biggest advantage of all. That’s right, if you correctly guessed the pitch type and the location of the pitch, you would have the ability to see exactly where the pitch was headed, so you could prepare to swing and send the ball into another time zone as it crossed the plate.
As you might imagine, just from that description alone, the trouble with Guess Pitch is that it stuck out like a sore thumb as a feature that belonged in an arcade baseball game rather than a simulation like MLB The Show. It was far too easy to hit the ball hard and far when you knew without a shadow of a doubt where the pitch was going to cross the plate and at precisely what speed. There was no way to rationally explain how the feature was rooted in any sort of realism, either, since hitters in baseball don’t typically have the ability to see a bright indicator showing where the pitch will be. Many players then just chose not to use the Guess Pitch feature at all until SDS eventually made the correct call to do away with it entirely.
What Is Ambush Hitting In MLB The Show 25?
That brings us to the introduction of Ambush Hitting in MLB The Show 25, which borrows the concept of Guess Pitch but thankfully maintains realism by showing some restraint. As with Guess Pitch, you select an area where you think the pitch is headed, but you are confined to just choosing inside or outside (not low or high). If you can guess correctly, your plate coverage indicator will grow in size slightly, and your timing window will increase to give you a better chance of generating solid contact. This provides a worthwhile bonus without ever going nearly as far as telling you the pitch’s exact location, as with Guess Pitch in the past. Conversely, if you guess a side of the plate incorrectly, your PCI size will shrink, and your window for good contact will become smaller. Of course, you can also just decide not to use Ambush Hitting at all.
It’s a simple bit of risk-reward that comes with potential benefits and pitfalls. It can come in especially handy when you’re ahead in the count and are trying to lock in on a pitch in a specific area. If you get a pitch in the location you’re looking for, swing away with Ambush Hitting. If the pitch is on the other side of the plate instead, let it go and wait for the next one. It can also prove useful in online games against opponents who try to spam pitches in one spot when they can see it’s giving you trouble. You can rely on Ambush Hitting since you know the pitch’s target and give yourself that little bit of a boost that can have you finally getting good wood on the ball. Once you’ve hit a rocket or two, any smart opponent is bound to adjust their strategy to start pitching to both sides of the plate or else risk getting shelled by the influence of Ambush Hitting.
The Future Of Ambush Hitting
The simple execution and subtle impact of Ambush Hitting leaves you wondering if this was perhaps only a soft launch with an eye towards expanding the feature in future editions of the series. For starters, it would be easy to see the possible locations get broken down into four quadrants again, as they were with Guess Pitch in the past, so you could also anticipate high and low pitches. There are no doubt hitters that like to sit on the high heat or low breaking ball just as much as others look to inside and outside pitches. Speaking of which, there’s reason to believe that there would be a way to incorporate a hitter expecting a type of pitch rather than just a location into Ambush Hitting to get a slight edge.
The key is for developers to not make the same mistakes that were made in the past with the Guess Pitch feature. They can do this by keeping any advantage gained by anticipating pitches and their locations correctly as a minimal one rather than the powerful one that Guess Pitch granted so often. There’s a good argument to be made that you can already get decent gains at the plate by looking for pitches in certain spots without even using Ambush Hitting at all. If there’s even a hint that the mechanic is becoming too overpowered, though, it won’t be all that hard to predict the fate of the Ambush Hitting feature. It will inevitably end up on the scrap heap alongside the old Guess Pitch one. Then, just as with so many other sports video game features, it will likely be revived five years after that in some newfangled incarnation.
Published: Mar 31, 2025 12:49 pm