That isn't quite true. Baseball HAS officially approved Out of the Park Baseball. That is because of its quality as a simulation. It has no pictures  except the most rudimentary little simulcast of 2-D figures moving around, and has fake pictures for players that are not their real faces. It is true that the data sim options include more realistic outcomes depending on the settings, but realistic here means less normalization, not necessarily how it woulda gone down in real life. 

No, we are not wasting our time here. 

Here is an example of wasting our time:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/21/books-interview-david-graeber-the-utopia-of-rules