i had realized this myself some time ago, but unless some form of rng manipulation is discovered with blue yoshis questions, going to peach will likely remain the better route. admittedly, i may not have tested it as much as i shouldve and i may go back to testing this at some point as honestly, there is some potential
Yea I’d also like to play around with it, however I don’t have a device to run save states so it’ll be a long process. This game’s gone a bit cold and I’m down to do some optimizing because I’m sure there are still time saves. The thing that makes sluggers unique though is the rng involved in BJ and bowser that causes more time loss than there are time saves in the previous segments. There has to be some sort of rng manipulation in one way or another for some parts.
only issue with that is some items cause a lot of lag making any time save basically nonexistent, so you would have to hope you dont get any of those. any hit to the outfield thats recovered quickly (which can be hit fairly consistently with enough practice) would not be much slower, if at all, than a bunt, item or not
That's why you might only bunt it if you see if you're going to get a good item, which is a very small time window
i tested out the yoshi route and it appears to be about 30 seconds slower than the toad route. i wrote down the beginnings of all the questions in notes so i would remember them and be able to put the answers quickly. even if you managed to do some kind of rng manipulation i think it would still be slower than going for the toad route.
EDIT: this was on wii doing the “don’t let the ball drop” magikoopa mission. it may be closer if you do the pitching mission instead.