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Old 03-20-2018, 01:01 PM   #1
Birds71
Bat Boy
 
Join Date: Mar 2017
Posts: 4
Fix September call-ups and other suggestions

While I would love to see major additions like a functioning minor league system, more talent in the draft, and an international free-agent market, I have some other pet-peeves that seem to me like they could be simple fixes.

-- The biggest one for me is September call-ups, because it impacts the pennant races. The CPU-controlled teams always fill their rosters to the 40-man limit (which almost never happens, unless you're the 2017 Dodgers), and they almost always fill with position players. I noticed a team last season that had nine shortstops in September. It would be more realistic to add a third catcher, a few extra bench guys, and some extra long relievers. I have seen many examples of teams in a pennant race in the final days of the season starting some call-ups over regular starters. In one instance last year, two teams were tied on the final day of the regular season, and both had multiple call-ups in the starting lineup. You also get messy games with loads of pinch-runners, since so many guys are given max speed. The other by-product of this is that many young blue-chippers who are not ready yet get called up at age 20-21, and their free-agency clock gets started.

-- Interleague Play -- How hard would it be for the automated schedule-builder to rotate divisions for interleague play? I manage an AL East team, and every year we play the NL West teams. It should rotate like in real life.

-- Runners scoring from 2nd base with 2 outs -- I set my preferences to aggressive baserunning, but it's amazing the number of times a runner on 2nd will not score on a base hit to the outfield with 2 outs in an inning. With the runner going on contact, they should score almost every time, except in the rare instance of a hard-hit ball with a slow runner/strong arm. I get that the pxp description might not exactly match the situation, but it's frustrating when your tying run stops at 3rd on a ball hit up the gap with 2 outs.

-- Position player pitching/insert DH into field -- it doesn't happen often, but in the rare occasion of a blowout or long extra-inning game, I'd like to have the option in the AL of using a position player to pitch. Likewise, sometimes in emergency situations managers will put their DH into the field and forfeit the DH for the rest of the game. Maybe I'm missing something, but I'd like to be able to do both of these things.

-- Clean up the official scoring. There are some glitchy scoring plays, most notably earned vs. unearned runs. Another is when a batter is thrown out trying to extend a single into a double, he is credited with a double in the boxscore.
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