Originally Posted by Birds71
I have been an iOOTP/MLBM user for a few years now and greatly enjoy the game. I am a methodical user, in that I play the games out using my favorite team, and then check boxscores from the other simulated games. So it takes me a few months to play out out a full season, but I enjoy it better this way rather than just blowing through seasons quickly. While I would love to see major additions like a functioning minor league system and an international free-agent market, I have some smaller pet-peeves that seem to me like they could be simple fixes. In no particular order:
-- September call-ups -- The CPU-controlled teams always fill their rosters to the 40-man limit (which never happens in reality), 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. The 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. You also get messy games with loads of pinch-runners, since so many guys are given max speed. Also, 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.
-- 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.
-- Better talent in the draft -- I've seen this posted a few times, but it would be nice to have at least 4-star talent at various positions extend at through the first round, especially with position players. I would also like to see "late bloomers", guys sitting in the minors for a few years who break out into serviceable major leaguers.
|