It might not be perfect, but it is certainly very fun... and that is what gaming is about after all, isn't it?
My first impression is this game looks gorgeous, and it certainly does. The players look down right real, especially when they come up to the plate and the game zooms way way in on their faces and you can see every detail on them, all the way down to the stubble on their faces. The parks are also extremely well modeled and looked very accurate to the real world ball parks they are imitating. During my first game I don't believe I got more then one or two hits the whole game, which brings up an important point in this game. Even on Pro difficulty, which is the second difficulty from the easiest, this game can be pretty tough when your at bat. The swing scheme (if you wish to keep it on... you can revert to an old school tap A when you want to hit the ball) involves one to pull back on the stick, hesitate, then either let go of the stick to hit a contact hit, or push forward to swing for the fences. Needless to say this definitely takes practice, which is why I selected the maximum learning curve time for this game. Not to mention the time it takes to get used to the players movements/timing with diving/jumping catches.
After you get good enough where your actually scoring a few runs, this game plays an extraordinary good game of baseball. The presentation is straight out of a TV announcement, with the pitcher's camera angle being that you see on TV and replays and statistics being thrown out to you periodically as if you were watching the game. The animations are all superb, and the ball physics as well as the player movements are well done and don't feel too slow or too rushed. There are a lot of neat little features in the game to spice up the gameplay, such as the "Baseburner mode" which is more or less a mini game within the actual game for stealing bases. Also, picking off stealers takes more then just hitting a button, as you have to time and place your throw (quickly of course) as accurate as you can or your throw will be too wild and he will be safe. It's things like that that make a difference though.
The pitching is very well done, and uses a "two button press" system, one which dictates how hard you are going to throw it and the second is how accurate. The harder you throw, the harder it is to be accurate. Perhaps it might be a little too easy, as I have thrown a perfect game, and average about 7 or 8 strikeouts a game (with various pitchers). But if you don't like any aspect of the game, there are a slew of variables that you can change in the options. I was impressed, especially since sports games might give you just a handful of sliders for the difficulty. This one gives you pages and pages of sliders to tweak the game to exactly to how you see fit, although I personally think the game plays fine without any tweaking.
All the teams and rosters are there, and updates to the rosters can be downloaded off of Xbox live for free via game updates. There are season and franchise modes, online gameplay, and homerun derby in the game, so it's not always just a straight up game of baseball if you don't want it to be. Other then the batting being difficult to pick up, there are a few quirks with fielding, and it seems like outfielders pick off too too many homeruns by jumping the fence (something that is rare in real life). Also sometimes outfielders catch some balls by contorting their arm in a rather uncomfortable looking way, but that is just an aesthetic thing more then a gameplay issue.
Overall it's a solid baseball game that plays great, looks even better, and is the next best thing to going out there to play some ball for yourself.