The fielding animations are a good thing imo. It's some of the throwing animations that need to be fixed and/or eliminated. One of the reasons the Show is so great is the presentation. The little things that make it look like you are watching a real baseball game.
I actually like animation driven fielding at times. You shouldn't be able to run full speed to pick up a ball at the wall. The fact that an animation slowed him down while he picked up the ball was much more realistic, adds to the atmosphere and just screams real baseball. Would people rather take a player and run him at top speed into the wall without penalty and have the player just automatically pick up the ball in 2/10 of a second and turn a fire a bullet to the cut off man? Not me.
At other times there are shots hit down the baseline where a player in real life has a split second to react to make the play. A third basemen's quick back hand would be impossible for the user to create manually but beautiful to watch as an animation based on a player's attributes. Other animations to feature errors, juggled balls, etc. are also needed to make the game more like true baseball.
I agree that the Show needs to fix some things is in the throwing department. Once I have fielded the ball, the button press should determine how hard a ball gets thrown and not an animation. Predominately the infield throws that end up going slow even though we pressed the button hard and costing us outs. The fix to the short throws and other things look good to me so far. I'm sure the community guys will elaborate in a week for us!