I spent some more time with “My Player” this week…  To recap, I have a reliver in the Pirates’ system playing at AA Altoona.  I’m playing on the Pro difficulty level.

I’m all the way to the last week of games in my minor league season.  And, I just got called up to “the show!”  It happened the instant I achieved all of my promotion goals.  Basically, I just kept earning skill points until I improved enough to meet the given criteria.  It was a bit of a shock; I guess I was expecting to go to AAA first, or something.

Right now – and these are estimates, because I didn’t write stuff down – I’m 1-0 with 7 saves in 8 opportunities.  After “blowing up” for one game, I cruised through the rest of the season.   Here are my approximate numbers:  30.2 IP, 28 H, 5 BB, 25 K, 5 ER, about a 1.40 ERA and a 1.10 WHIP.  Of my 28 hits given up, I only gave up one extra-base hit – a double.  This is a common complaint from what I’m reading about the Pro difficulty level.  I’d been thinking about increasing the difficulty each time I was promoted, and vice versa if I was demoted.  That seems to me that it could be a reasonable fascimile of making the jump, combined with the much greater difference in player ratings.  I’m going to experiment a bit, but at the very least I’m going to bump the game up one difficulty level before I pitch in my first MLB appearance.  I’ll report how it goes…

So far, I’m still really enjoying this game.  I got 4 AB’s as a reliever, and went 1-4 with a K, a 1B, and a run scored.  I scored the run in the game in which I earned my first professional win, which was cool!  Baserunning was pretty cool, too.  I messed up a hit-and-run, which I’ll just chalk up to virtually missing a sign, LOL.

I’ve seen some cool stuff.  In one AB, I sent a fastball high and inside to the hitter, and he took a hack and broke his bat.  A few batters have bunted on me, and I had one guy steal a base.  I also failed to cover first a couple of times, to my own detriment.  Things I would like to see are the manager actually visit me on the mound, and more realistic goals.  For example, on two occasions I was told to get the batter out to acheive a goal, and he grounded into a fielder’s choice – no points.  Also, I was asked to get a first pitch strike, so I throw a pitch and the batter puts it in play – no points.  I don’t like how sometimes I’m asked to induce a flyout or groundout with no apparent benefit for such an out.  The good news is that if I do make a successful play, I get rewarded for it.  Lastly, I have yet to see an error in-game.

All in all, the batter/pitcher confrontation is excellent in this game, making playing as a pitcher pretty fun.  I plan on getting into more franchise stuff next week…