An unpolished baseball game with hardly any features.
First of all, Inside Pitch suffers from a horrible lack of features. The season mode is pathetic compared to most games, and there just isn't much to do with it. Some games let you design your office, design stadiums, and even control the prices of your concession stands. Inside Pitch allows you to control a team and go through a simple season. Although it does have a home-run derby mode, even that cannot help much. It seems like the developers gave up halfway through the game.
Inside Pitch also lacks some of the features that every MLB game should deliver to its players. For one thing, you can only pick off base runners if they are on 3rd. When a baseball game lacks an average play-making scheme, there is definitely something wrong with it. Another thing you can't do is hit batters. Sure, that might not be a major problem, but you should be able to do it because it can happen in real life. One last feature that didn't show up was instant replay. That just makes you wonder, "Did the developers know anything about baseball?"
Inside Pitch has very good batting controls, which allow you to control the height that you swing the bat at. You can even check your swings if you go for a ball outside the strike-zone. However, some of the actions just seem silly at times. Base runners and fielders seem generally clumsy and sluggish, and throwing from base to base just isn't a pretty sight. Also, when you dive for a fly ball, you really have to anticipate the dive because you will fly about 10 feet more than what you'd think would even be humanly possible. One last troublesome action was the throwing control. To throw to 2nd base for example, you have to press A and UP on the d-pad simultaneously. When in the field, the X, Y, and B buttons do nothing, and it would have been much easier to make A home plate, B 1st base, Y 2nd, and X 3rd. That is how it is in most baseball games, and it was absent minded of Microsoft not to take advantage of that layout.
MLB Inside Pitch isn't completely horrible. There are a few cool features, such as the batting and pitching control, but nothing really stands out. The graphics are good for the time, and the stadiums actually look pretty good. If you are looking for a solid baseball game, this is not the right choice for you. But if you want an ok MLB game for less than five bucks, or a game with Nomar Garciaparra in Red Sox uniform on the cover, then you might just want to give this game a try.