Version 1.88 is out. On the match screen you can now see who is pitching and who is batting, how hard the ball was hit, and which base each runner came from right where the action is. On the tactics side, changing your starter before the game takes far fewer steps, and the state where nearly every ground ball with a runner on turned into a double play has been reworked. The draft, the player editor and creation tools, and the off-season report all gained new items, and a long list of reported bugs is fixed.

More to see on the match screen

• A band below the field shows the current pitcher and batter, with the batter's line for today's game. You can decide on a pinch hitter or a steal without looking over at the lineup
• The at-bat log now shows exit speed. The same grounder to second reads very differently when it was a dribbler versus a rocket
• The bases are drawn larger and an occupied base is highlighted. Each runner carries a mark showing which base he came from, and runners move between the bases when they advance
• Deep fly balls take longer to come down, so you can follow whether it clears the fence or gets caught to the very end. Hard-hit foul balls get the same treatment
• A player's form now has an up or down arrow. "Average but trending down, time to rotate him out" becomes an easy call

Tactics and the flow of the game

• You can now change the starting pitcher from the pre-game screen. After a swap you see how the upcoming rotation changes, with each pitcher's condition, stamina and form. The same schedule is on the pitchers tab of the game-day view
• A "Take" sign was added to the batting commands: make the pitcher throw more pitches, or set up a count that favors a steal
• Ground balls with a runner on first and fewer than two outs almost always became double plays. That has been reworked: the faster the runner and batter and the weaker the fielder, the more often the play ends as a groundout that moves the runner up, or an infield hit. Infield fly-outs and line-outs are still under consideration
• How AI teams use their closer has been reviewed. A proven closer is no longer pulled early after a single run, and the same thinking applies to games you watch
• The commentary for a runner tagged out in a rundown now says "tagged out"

Draft and player creation

• While the draft is in progress, a round-by-round board of every team's picks is shown. You can see how the other clubs are drafting and what you have landed at a glance
• Past drafts moved to their own tab, with the career totals of every drafted player listed beside the pick
• Auto-drafting produced too many signing refusals; this has been toned down

Player editing and creation tools

• The position-player editor gains three batting tendency items: pull or spray, strength with runners in scoring position, and the knack for fouling off pitches with two strikes. These are not decoration: they shape where the ball goes and how long the at-bat lasts, so the player you picture is easier to build
• Existing saves and player CSVs bat exactly as before when these items are left blank. Newly generated players get their own tendencies automatically
• The bundled player creation tool (AbilityEstimator) has the same two fields. You can set them as numbers, and random generation gives a natural spread without extremes. The names match the game, and for batters "Focus" is treated as "RISP"
• The bundled CSV editor was updated too. Older player CSVs open with the new columns filled in so they can be edited, and column headers that were cut short are fixed. "Add players from CSV" inside the game reads these columns as well

Off-season and roster

• The off-season transaction report gains a Trades column. Every trade completed during the off-season is listed player by player with the team he left and the team he joined, next to the FA and free-agent signings
• The in-game defensive substitution screen now shows each bench player's position ratings, as a guide when you move players around
• On the schedule tab, the last week of a month could not be selected when the league format produced doubleheaders. This is fixed and the month display was tidied up

Settings and tools

• Settings gain a frame rate cap and a power saving mode (defaults: 60 fps, power saving on). They keep the load down on systems where the 2D screen pushed GPU usage high
• The Steam Workshop upload screen was reorganized into two columns, making it clearer what can be uploaded

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug where a newly drafted player could appear twice and replace an existing player. Affected saves are repaired on load when the repair is possible
• Fixed players who had reached the qualifying plate appearances or innings not appearing in the stat rankings, including the career rankings
• Fixed the standings screen counting ties in the winning percentage (it now matches the standings on the home screen)
• Fixed commentary that doubled up the result ("a hit to left for a hit"), and commentary that kept naming the previous batter after a pinch hitter came in
• Fixed seriously injured, long-term-out players being used as pinch hitters or pinch runners in preseason games
• Fixed the display when a squeeze play ended in the third out
• Made it less likely for farm-team stats to appear to vanish in the middle of a season

Thank you as always for the reports and requests. More to come.