Losing 3-1 Top of the 8th, with Bases Loaded and 0 Outs. Bottom of the Lineup coming up-

7-1959 Roger Maris OF

8-1959 Bob Schmidt C

9-1959 Pitcher

Recently acquired hitting Star 1959 Vada Pinson arrives at Ball Park Late and is on the bench. Sparky sends in Pinson as a Pinch Runner and Team loses 3-2. All players were checked off for Pinch Hitting and Pinch Running. Wouldn't it be much more benefical to have used Pinson as a Pinch Hitter?

Two things come to mind (though my friends often claim that nothing comes to my mind).

If you had a particularly slow runner on base, maybe Sparky assessed the more immediate need to be a pinch runner. You wouldn't have needed Pinson to pinch hit for Maris, so maybe he was pressed into emergency service as a pinch runner before the pitcher came up, the point at which his pinch hitting services would have been most obviously needed. I think Sparky tends to make his decisions based on his immediate decision tree and isn't necessarily great at looking ahead.

Since you mentioned Pinson was recently acquired, the other possibility may be that he arrived too late for all your settings to be entered for the game in question. Sparky "found" Pinson because he had registered as being part of your line-up even though neither his availability as a pinch-hitter nor a pinch-runner was entered in time for the game in question.

Dick Stuart 1959 was the potential go ahead runner at 1B, who Sparky had Pinson Pinch Run. And maybe Sparky was confused by Pinson's arrival in the middle of the Game.