Based on the original game, the anime itself is a promotion for the game. The theme of the anime is obviously friendship, baseball, and cute girls. First of all, the comparison people make to Love Live is definitely way off mark here. If you expecting love live here, then this is not for you. if you are expecting hanebado, then this is not for you. This is actually much more like Girls un Panzer. The premise isn't anything new, the over arching story is nothing outstanding, each episode vaguely focuses on one/group of characters that fleshes out their back story. The anime is pretty grounded in reality,there isno special power or anything like saki/hanebado, but all of it is based on handwork of training. You can't just overcome obstacles with friendship, but as a team sport, trusts is definitely something that a team needs.

You can definitely tell the animation drop in quality at certain spots (usually dialogue heavy scenes), but the actual baseball scenes are above average in most cases.

To the people who said the story is bland, they probably just watched the anime on the side while doing other activities and didn't really watch watch. Because there are several subplots that actually is well written such as the main character and her best friend.

Not the best anime, but definitely have a "fresh" feel to it and overall enjoyable.