Honestly, pretty good for the early attempts. 5/6 goals in that first match is, quite literally, almost as good as you can ask for, and the match itself wasn't dreadfully long. I managed to get Big Play pretty painlessly afterwards, which I wasn't expecting at all.

But this is not the end for this category, oh no. If you saw me pitching strangely during the bottom of the 3rd inning, it's because I was trying to manipulate the AI into bunting so that Toadette could get Big Play as the pitcher! I've managed to achieve this with savestates and it with a little bit of luck it's totally doable.

The AI will only bunt under very specific circumstances: Only if the score is close (the teams are within 2 runs of each other), only in the bottom of the 3rd inning or later on Star (or the 4th inning or later on Special), only if there are 0 or 1 outs, and only if there is a runner on first or runners on both first and second. I engineered this route to make sure that I would be up only 1-0 or 2-0 going into the bottom of the 3rd- 100% intentional.

Even when these conditions are met, the decision to bunt is a percentage based calculation, with Star-level CPUs of Technique type (Peach, Toadsworth) opting to bunt 20% of the time and Balance types (Daisy, all of the Toads) bunting 15% of the time. You can see that I played things just right to give myself three "dice rolls" of bunting, and I went unlucky on all three. So it goes. I was a little disappointed, but I also know that it's probably going to take a fair amount of grinding to make everything line up right for this run. Good thing it's still a pretty short category, all things considered!

Side note- I know better than to bunt against Toadette, and if the run had went precisely as planned I would have beaned her right as the bottom of the 3rd began. Trust no one, not even yourself...

Single Match Toadette will happen in the future. Tonight, I'm just proud of my favorite pigtailed Superstar.