It has the distance, but is it fair?

I played this game hoping it would replace the old, outdated baseball game I used to play. I had heard about the options on it, and as a hard core baseball fan, I thought it would be everything I wanted.
Unfortunately, I was wrong. This game basically tries to do too much. It has lots of good options like season, franchise, and all star teams. The problem is, many of these things are not well thought out. For example, there are 2 types of all star teams: regular and hall of fame. However, the Hall of Fame teams feature players who played within the last 40 years. Most have played since 1970. I have played other games with HOF teams that had guys like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Ty Cobb on them. These types of players are largely absent from this game.
The game play is pretty good (except the hitting), though it can take a long time to play one game. If you warm up a relief pitcher, there is no good way to tell if he is warmed up. Plus, I think you can only warm up one guy at a time, though something tells me I may have my games confused here. Ultimately though, it was the batting interface that turned me away from this game. In order to hit the ball, you basically have to start swinging the second the ball leaves the pitcher's hand. How are you supposed to tell if it will be a ball or strike? Fastball or curve? You guess and hope you are right. Its the only way. Based on that alone, I would not get this game.
The franchise mode is interesting. If you play that, at the end of the season, you have to resign your players and sign new one. There is a sharp learning curve though. If a player rejects your offers too many times, you wont be able to talk to them anymore. The offers are made in a nonexistant currency for a number of years. It would be helpful if they made it in terms of one unit being about $100,000, but instead its a shot in the dark and we have no idea how much we are paying guys. Plus, there is a salary cap meaning you cant go buy everybody good. The AI is not well thought out though. If a player wants 15 for one year, and you offer him 14 for one year, he will never sign. What kind of negotiating is that? The game specifically calls it negotiating. What I found interesting is if I offered him 29 for 2 years, he still wouldn't sign. I find that to be highly unlikely.
Players get better or worse over the years, depending on their age. The create a player is the best I have ever seen, even giving you a sample stat sheet for a player based on what you have specified. This is very helpful when you want to create a specific player. There are some cards in the game, which doesnt really make sense. You get the right to open packs of virtual baseball cards based on things you do in the game. This game, like many others, soups up the offense in order to make the game more exciting, but also less realistic, a move baseball purists wont like.
In short, everything is there, it just needs to be worked on. But right now, the batting interface alone keeps this one from being a home run. Hopefully, they will work on this and ASB 2004 will be a HOF caliber game.