[BBGiovanni]

This is a good question and the variety of responses will really be helpful to new players.

There are pros and cons to different approaches, but there's a VAST universe of options between "play out every inning" and "sim a whole season so you can get to arbitration again".

I play out most of my team's games via "one pitch" or simulating until RISP (runner in scoring position) at the beginning of a game. In Spring Training, I usually set the lineup and sim 3-4 innings. When the starting pitcher is tired, I pull him and manually sub in the next pitcher and whomever I want to get playing time at a position, and sim the rest of the game.

For most regular season games, I sim early innings until RISP, and then go batter by batter when the short men are in out of the bullpen. I usually do the same in early-round playoff games but usually play them out one batter at at time.

Finally, this all assumes I have a competitive team. If you are running an expansion team or take over a terrible MLB team for a total rebuild, you should sim games and weeks. I also "sim to finish" games where my team gets blown out, like an 8 run deficit in the 5th inning or something.

Also, without spinning this off-topic, I and others don't like how the AI handles pitchers. I like to have pitchers that give up a lot of runs keep going until they're tired, use long men out of the bullpen to save my short relievers, and so on. This isn't a dig at the AI/game, I just can't get the sliders and pulldowns to do everything I want them to do. So I sim early innings and when the starter tires I take more control so my closer doesn't pitch in the 5th inning of a blowout and so on.

So, TLDR try different approaches until you're happy! Rob Manfred isn't going to send you a free t-shirt if you play every inning of a Pirates 100 loss season :P

EDIT: I don't use animations either.