18 games into my first Super Mega Baseball season, and my Sirloins team of “extreme power hitters” has already drawn 221 walks, netting an average of 12.3 walks per match. The most-walked team in Major League Baseball last year, the Oakland Athletics, averaged 3.6 walks per game.

In a video game where all the athletes have gigantic heads and hold gargantuan bats, seasoned sports gamers might expect Super Mega Baseball's long ball statistics to be a bit inflated; but three weeks in, and the game's small ball stats are what appear surprisingly off-mark.

The downloadable title's single difficulty slider (labeled “ego”) doesn't seem to be influencing its unusually large walk totals, as I've batted against computer clubs as low as 39 ego and as high as 99 ego, encountering similar behavior from every pitching staff.

It was a “99 ego” game against the Blowfish, for instance, where I saw a freshly entered CPU reliever walk seven straight batters before finally being sent to the showers.

Sometimes, the walks are inexplicable, like in the abovementioned link. More commonly, they are a result of pitchers with low stamina/low mojo being left on the mound for far too long. The computer-controlled skippers in Super Mega Baseball seem completely ignorant of the appropriate times to take the ball away from a failing pitcher.

I've seen a starter get shelled for nine runs in the second inning before she was mercifully relieved.

I've watched exhausted relievers soak the mound in sweat, throwing meatball after meatball, while a healthy closer sits unused in the bullpen.

Essentially, the computer managers in Super Mega Baseball seem to be watching these games with pencil erasers stuffed in their ears and peanut shells covering their eyes.

When you consider how tiny clubs' bullpens actually are -- just two relievers and one closer –- Super Mega Baseball gives its managers no room for mistakes. Wasting even one of the four available pitchers can create catastrophe by the time a game reaches inning eight or nine. If a contest enters extra innings, it's a safe bet that the CPU side will eventually collapse from pitcher attrition.

Teams have the option of bringing two other members of their starting rotation out of the bullpen at any time, but it's a move that I've never seen the computer make. Super Mega Baseball's sadistic AI would rather watch its closer fully deplete his/her energy and get absolutely wrecked for a 10-run inning than substitute a precious starter.
 

How should Super Mega Baseball solve these problems? Here are three suggestions that would improve the game's imbalanced single-player experience:

1) Add a long reliever and a set-up man to every bullpen, expanding their size from three pitchers to five.

2) Give each coach two “mound visits” to use at any time during a nine-inning game. For five-inning games, only one mound visit would be allowed. Mound visits would partially restore the current pitcher's mojo, boosting it by 20 percent of the present value.

3) Smarten the CPU's evaluation of whether or not to remove a pitcher who is tired or is performing poorly. Also make the AI more likely to leave in successful starters who have lots of stamina left, instead of pulling them for no reason around the sixth or seventh inning.