In my opinion coming out with so many 99s day 1 really undermined alot of the gameplay improvements sds implemented this year. The biggest one the claimed was defense now matters because you really feel it when guys have lower rated fielding. The problem is almost all the players on everyones teams have gold or diamond fielding day 1 so we never really got to expreience that trade off in 9 inning games.
Second was how much more varied the hitting engine is this year. Again, how many cards day 1 had pretty much max power both ways which has kept it homerun derby.
It just seems like they screwed up what could have been seen as a real great launch with this baffling content decision imo.