I don't doubt at all the sincerity and passion of the developers, some of whom I have had pleasure of interacting face-to-face in the past... if anything that makes it more difficult for me to criticize the game, out of common courtesy.
Given the nature of internet forum as a public dump ground of complaints, I understand that overall negativity is fairly depressing... but for those with constructive feedback, I still think it would be better for us to be totally honest about what we think about the game, rather than worrying too much about how the developers feel.
They'd know how not to respond to bad feedback and I'm sure they have thick enough skin if they care enough to come read a forum like this to begin with... The worst thing that can happen is people not responding because they don't use the product.
In posting to this thread, I wasn't actually meaning to complain about specific issues, as I tend to think game logic issues (as opposed to bugs and slight game balance issues) are not something that have high chances of being addressed effectively in a patch... and I think AI issues tend to be logic issues.
I was just curious the developers actually have shown explicit interest in how we have been responding to the new CPU manager implementation on managing pitchers... both good and bad.
Personally, the bullpen management took a step forward in eliminating some glaring issues that had existed for years, but also took a step backward in a sense that the new implementation has introduced new quirkiness by not addressing the underlying issues that have persisted around CPU manager AI. (Without elaboration, I think it comes down to the lack of organic elements... but that's for another discussion.)