[NoOne]

there's very little you can impact once a PA has begun.

throwing to first doesn't change out any of the random seeds, so it in effect does very little if not nothing. if the verbage used tips off intent of the AI in some correlated way, then it can be useful to change defenses accordingly. otherwise, it still does nothing, because the AI is still equally likely to do all the things they were likely to do before the pitch out, but relative to a change in count since then.

the defenses have an effect, but not sure if it is large enough to notice with your eye.

the bulk of the game is built at a PA-incremental resolution (that's teh step it takes each time it calculates probabilities of results). some things have since been added that may or may not work in shorter increments within the PA... from what i understand defenses can be mathematically proven to have an effect and somethign you can toggle mid-PA.

but, if you had rolled a clunker seed to start that PA, it really doesn't matter what defense you pick or anything else (clunker - relative to pitching or batting, 2 sides of same coin). the negligible effect of your available choices won't impact many outcomes on their own.

seldomnly, you'll be within that thin threshold where a slight bump or decrease that an available mid-PA toggle might cause will impact the result. while things will come out in correct proportions doing it like this, it's not quite a model/simulation.

they are dials hammered and duct taped into place to give some sense of control where very little exists..

you shouldn't stop using it... but, you shouldn't feel you are missing out if you are not, either. it's really no big deal either way. maybe, if you pick correcrtly often engouh, it'll give you a few more percent likely to succeed? maybe it just gives peace of mind for those that want a more hands on approach?

if you understand the abuse of the game, you can understand how it works through deduction along with normal play and observation. the game throws a baseball error every x% of the time regardless of your PA seed, for example, it is the only saviour for a supremely bad RNG roll -- that's likely impacted by fielding ratings of where the ball went, of course, not some flat % to all teams. but, very little, because 1/60 and 1/40 is difficult to see the difference, which is the type of differences between an okay fielder and a horrid one or so. As far as how fielding is applied, i doubt it even gets that detailed, based on how other things work, but may also be the simplest route to easily allotting who gets teh error, as opposed to forcing where the ball goes in some propotional way whne the error is triggered.