[Papa3]

I may have the perfect recommendation for you. I felt exactly the same as you until I began "watching" each of my games.

What I do is set the play by play to instant/short. Then all I do is tap the spacebar for each batter. I get through a game in about 3-5 minutes, but I find I get to learn my players A LOT better as well as the other teams around the league.

I don't control any in-game decisions. I just see each result as quickly or slowly as I feel like. I see when runners are on base and I see if my cleanup guy is struggling to drive them in. Maybe I'll move him to the #5 spot and give another guy a shot for a handful of games.

It's those types of subtle decisions that feel waaaaay more hands on when I quickly watch each game instead of just simming a couple days or a week or a month at a time.

I highly recommend giving that a shot for at least 10 or 15 games in a row and see if you feel much more connected to your team and decisions.

My reasoning when I first tried it was "The GM sits in his luxury suite every game, but doesn't focus on every bit of minutiae the way the manager does." Maybe he's entertaining a celebrity for a couple innings. Or maybe not.

However you want to imagine YOURSELF up in the luxury box each night while your players work their butts off on the field. A GM knows basically what's going on all the time, but he lets his guys do the work while he wanders off from time to time.

Give it a shot for a couple weeks and see if you become attached the way I did.

Let me know if you have any questions. Hope it helps!

EDIT: This will naturally slow your pace down and you'll come up with things to do every now and then.