JPEG is fine as long I can minimize the NR and customized the color profile to my liking.
The JPEG engine and NR setting are very customisable, I didn't tried every cameras but coming from CaNikon I can say that Pentax cameras are much more customisable for theses things.
But as someone mention 1/10 hit rate is a killer.
There's worst than a 10 year old camera.
That was with a 50-135 though, the AF on this one is quite slow.
While I'm confident that a 80D or a D7500 will have a much better hit rate the pentax AF is not that bad once you know its limitations, like stick to one AF point at a time in AF C. Z tracking is okay with a fast AF lens (the 18-135 dc or the 55-300 PLM are nice choices for this), but the XY tracking is garbage so stick to one af point.
I must warn you that there are few fast AF pentax lenses, but if you are okay with third party glass sigma have a 17-50, 50-150, and 70-200 f/2.8 all with very fast AF.
I really like the Pentax for it's high ISO and DR though.
Or step up to the K1 and shoot in APSC mode for the reach?
The K1 is much more responsive in APSC mode but you loose the high iso improvements over the KP (in crop mode).
Frankly while I love my Pentax gear I'd rather advise you to get a D7500 or a D500 for night time baseball game, the 20mgpx nikon sensor is pretty close to the one in the KP, and you get much better burst rate, buffer, AF (fast AF lenses too) and video.
Speaking of video,
On a third note, is the video at 1080P that bad due yo heavy compression used?
Yes, from today standards its garbage but frankly I shooted many commercials and short films with canon 70D, 5D II, 7D and Pentax video is a little softer, gets a little more fuzzy when you have too much detail moving (like wind in vegetation) in the end the output is pretty similar. Nikon video quality is much better by the way, the 1080p I got from the D810 was stunning and I'm sure it still is the best in class even today.
Canon or Pentax you need to nail your exposure, white balance and color profile perfectly before shooting because you don't have much room for grading with theses cameras.
The video has some nice improvements on the KP (and maybe on the K-70), the noise at higher iso is much much lower than on the K-1 and K-3 (truly awful at iso 1600 and higher), and its said it has improved dynamic range.
That can't beat the comfort of working with downsampled 4K for grading, croping white balance, correcting your exposure or simply better detail and colors but it's doable, most people looks video from their phones or TV, and most TV are far enough so most user won't notice the difference with sharp 1080p.
I'll say it again, while I love my Pentax gear, if you are interested in video and sports you better look at Nikon.
