My point is that you can always use the manual plunger if you want to shoot the ball with less power (such as keeping it short of the lanes to roll down the right side loop lane and collect a lit free ball for instance). When you normally want to start a ball, you want to (and the auto-plunger should) always make it into the juke box saucer. That gives you a shot at the VIP pass, or as I prefer, the Super VIP pass. When the auto-plunger misses the juke box, it causes a mad scramble to light the correct lane and collect the VIP pass and totally eliminates your chance for a Super VIP pass.
As treborlicec pointed out - you do know the lanes change with flipper buttons right. You can light all three lanes even if the ball never goes down any lane but the E lane.