Awesome. Definitely not perfect, especially with those batting and Bob-Omb Derby performances, but this is an overall competent and clear demonstration of my solution for the Mario IL. A quick and efficient Jr. defense encounter for Big Play, followed by a 16 PA first-inning mercy with no heinous mistakes in the execution. Truth be told, I was expecting to be resetting for much longer...

I eventually settled on Monty for the pitcher during the Jr match because he seemed to have the easiest time beaning Jr, which is much faster than switching Mario's position a second time. Jr doesn't line out to SS or 2B hardly ever, either, so I gave up on trying to make Jr in particular work for me. Better to just roll the Bones again and be done with it. 1:08 is definitely on the faster end of Jr. encounters I was getting in attempts up to this point. Under a minute is possible if you can get the Big Play as pitcher against the first Dry Bones, who has a 25% chance of bunting. I still haven't gotten the bunt Big Play, but I believe it to be possible (Mario's just not as quick as Toadette and it shows...)

I used RNG manip to obtain what I determined to be the ideal Bowser Jr. encounter - runners on 1st and 2nd rather than fully loaded bases, and with Jr. moving as directly into my path on the overworld map as I could convince him to. To do this, you need to soft reset the game, go into the Exhibition Game's first screen, and then call for a random captain 7 times. This calls the RNG responsible for directing Bowser Jr.'s map movement 112 times, which is why I refer it as RNG [112]. Then just move up and right like I did, and you'll get the encounter.

I went back and forth between DK and Wario for my main match opponent, usually opting for Wario if Jr. wasn't blocking my path and DK if he was. I can't say why I decided to go for DK rather than Wario given Jr. wasn't in my way this time around, but suffice it to say I don't regret the decision in the slightest.