After years of playing RBI, you know what? I've finally come to the conclusion that the center fielder just flat-out sucks at throwing.
I have no idea why this is the case. But it seems that the left or right fielder can make a pretty bad-ass throw if you do the timing correctly for a "quick throw." The center fielder? Never. No matter what base you're throwing it to, it's a duck. The occasional powerful throw from a CF will come on a ball to the gap, where he's fielding it near the wall way over in left-center or right-center.
There's probably not even a good explanation for this. Does the ball travel faster left-to-right than up-and-down? Damned if I know. But basically, I hate the center fielder, and I hope he breaks his neck.
I believe any ball thrown straight tends to be slower. An example could be when the catcher throws the ball to second when someone is trying to steal.
Yes, the north/south throws look very shitty, but alot of it is a matter of perspective. Since the game is not shot directly overhead, the distance from home to second seems alot shorter than the distance from first to third. As any baseball fan knows, these two distances are the same (applying the Pythagorum theory, its roughly 127.3 feet).
Obviously, the following theory, would be something for Nightwulf, but me thinks that somewhere in the code, it takes this into account so you can't chuck a ball to second base any faster than you could make a third to first throw. However, it looks like they overcalculated this amount and as a result the north/south throws look like they are being made by Timmy Lupus most of the time.
Yeah, it's all a matter of direction - vertical throws (at least in the 2d field) don't have the low angle of horizontal throws. If you took the center fielder to the same spot as the right fielder and threw (or vice versa) the results would be much different. So it ain't the fielder, it's the spot on the field...
That's what I'm saying. The center fielder only makes good throws when he's well out of position to the right or left. Obviously, it looks like left-right throws go faster (at least apparently). But the CF is almost always in a position where the throw will be vertical.
Which still means the same thing: The center fielder sucks.