Just got done finishing a game that I played out in which I witnessed more than a few alarming problems. For the sake of organization and convenience, I'm going to put everything I noticed here. If screenshots will help for any of these, please do let me know.
1) With a runner on first base and no one out in extra innings, I had my batter try and lay down a bunt to sacrifice the runner to second base. He fouled off the first attempt to run the count to 0-1. I clicked the "bunt" button again, and to my horror, the count instantly ran to 1-2, and my batter still tried bunting. He pulled the bat back and took a strike three called. One out. Complete waste of an at-bat.
Now, in this situation, I would never have tried to bunt with two strikes. I'd rather the guy take his chances hitting the ball. I realize the smarter way to do this is probably to play the at-bat pitch-by-pitch, which I usually do anyway but didn't for whatever reason in this instance, so that I don't run into this situation. But even so, this is just common sense that this should not happen. If I order my batter to try and lay down a sac bunt during an at-bat, I should not see him by game default trying to bunt throughout the entirety of the at-bat up to and including two strikes on the count. I really don't know what to say for this one. Somehow, the count should be stopped to give me an opportunity to tell him to swing away once two strikes are reached.
I ended up losing this game in extra innings, and the optimistic side of me says had this not happened, I would have scored that run from first and won. Emotions are still kind of running high after losing a somewhat epic game, so forgive me if I say I feel like I was cheated out of an at-bat and a win by the game in this situation.
2) I ended up losing the game the next inning when my closer gave up a two-run double into the left field corner with two outs. However, when I looked at the final box score, I was perplexed to discover that both of these runs had been scored as unearned. There were no errors and nothing too unusual happened at all in the inning. There is no way to explain how these runs are unearned, so I must consider this just a plain old error on the game's part.
I say nothing "too" unusual happened, because something a bit unusual did in fact happen. On that two-run double to the left-field corner that ended up costing me the game, the ball animation showed that the batter had actually hit the ball far into foul territory. So you can imagine my horror, again, as I'm reading the PBP scroll and watching the ball drift into the stands along the foul line, expecting it to be a foul ball (I'm playing pitch-by-pitch mode at this point), only to end up seeing the PBP tell me the ball is fair and that I just blew the game. I actually cried out, "But that's a foul ball!"
I realize that the ball animation isn't always 100% true on every play. I'm sure some people have reported these types of errors, but this just seems too strange and coincidental, that I feel this is somehow linked. On the same play where the "double" hit into the left field corner is actually shown flying far into the stands, two earned runs are scored on the play, but the final box score shows that these runs are somehow scored as unearned with no explanation in the game log. Something is not right here.
3) Perhaps my third game error noticed is also linked to number two. On that same play, the batter who hit the game-winning double was thrown out at third base trying to stretch the hit into a triple to end the inning (I was the home team, for clarification). After the play and inning was over, however, the PBP informed me that my closer was injured on the play. Obviously, that's a lot going on on one play, so I don't know if all of this combined together to cause these errors in game play and the incorrect scoring of these two runs as unearned, but again, it just seems too coincidental to me.
But getting to my third point here, as I'm in between innings waiting for my team to get their last hacks in the bottom half, I'm forced to insert a new pitcher to substitute for my injured pitcher.
Now, I'm sure we've all been here before, where our pitcher or fielder gets injured, and the game absolutely does not let us progress without making a change. I inserted another pitcher, who never actually entered the game since I ended up losing in my last at-bat. But then this pitcher appears in the final box score and is credited with having appeared in an extra game.
Obviously, this is just incorrect. And I would like to suggest a change, if at all possible, where we're not necessarily forced to make a pitching change immediately after an injury until our next defensive half-inning comes around. Or at the very least, the final box score should not reflect a pitcher getting into the game when he did not actually do so.
I know all of this is long-winded, so I thank those brave souls who have stuck with this post and continued reading until this point. If there's anything I can do to clarify anything I've said here, please let me know.
Thank you for looking into this.