[t-bone shuffle]

I'll start by establishing that I'm a great fan of this game, been playing since the first edition, and on a 1-10 scale this bothers me at about 6. But it bothers me at a level of 10 when I actually see it. It's been an issue as best I can remember since the rebuild after 6.5. So please regard this as constructive criticism, not an attempt to start anything.

Simply put, the AI replaces my injured 2B (Collins) with a player (Diaz) with ratings at 1B only, and leaves my utility guy (Ash), who's best rated at 2B, in at 1B where he started the game. Obviously, Diaz should have entered as 1B, with Ash moving to 2B, not rocket science.

The utility guy is listed as Utility 1 for all 4 infield positions, see below.

If this is my fail for poor lineup/utility prep, I'd love to know what I should be doing differently.

But I've been seeing this for years, and even railed about it in beta years ago to no avail. I'm certainly open to the idea that this doesn't happen in every case, I stopped watching for this years ago, but I'd wager it happens more often than it should (which is essentially never).

Bottom line is that this is a "little" thing with regards to individual instances. But, IMO, it's a big thing when we are looking for "realism" where it comes to the In-Game side of things. Disappointing to still be here in version 18.

Thus ends my every couple of years rant regarding this.