This happens all of the time. You have a good baserunner who steals second base. Sometimes with fewer than two out and sometime with two out you watch your potential run get thrown out trying to steal third. Especially in a tie game or down one run late I find my guy on second with two out and then erased at third when he was already in scoring position.
Note: I do not have my settings on aggressive nor do I select steal more for an individual player. They are usually on normal or conservative.
My wish is that we have the option to prevent our good basestealers from swiping third.
Eddie - this is a long standing challenge documented by many. We can only keep talking about it in hopes that SOM is able to see the frustration and make some development changes to the engine.
Agree. We need an option to turn off stealing third. I never choose the option to steal more or steal aggressive because I fear I will end up trying to steal third even more than the game does now.
Alternatively, SOM could come up with a more realistic steal third rule where you are far less likely to be able to steal third but much more likely to make it if you're able to.
In general, I agree with the initial post, but I think the general issue is the lack of more complex, game situation preferences, especially for the offense.
E.g. when to try for the extra base? May depend on score, inning, # of outs, who's on deck? Similarly for when to pinch hit or when to steal or bunt.
I understand that covering all situations is out of the question, but attempting to break down a few of the options and situations into a "advanced offensive preference grid", would be a worthwhile experiment.
To answer the original question though--the only way I've found to avoid stealing 3rd (especially with two out) is to set stealing to conservative, and don't check those good stealers to steal more--I get it down to about 2 or 3 attempts a season that way---and those come with high + pitchers usually.