I’m going to opt for total transparency here. Originally, I set out to review the unbelievably detailed virtual baseball simulator Out Of The Park Baseball by taking over the dreadful Miami Marlins and turning them into a contender. Since OOTP gives you total control of a team’s personnel decisions and finances on both the major and minor league level, I thought this would be a good chance to prove my general-managerial acumen while also giving the game a pretty thorough check up.
For a while, it went well. I was beginning to grasp the ins and outs of the insanely complex game interface. Menus have sub-menus, and depth charts allow you to declare a player’s primary, secondary, and even tertiary role on the roster, but the complexity makes sense after a while and you quickly begin to learn where everything is located. Even my team was taking shape. My Marlins had added Manny Machado and Dylan Bundy as well as a whole host of secondary pieces, and were starting to look like a potential contender. I had simulated up through June 2014 and the team was doing well. I had some big plans for the trade deadline. Unfortunately, however, the next time I logged on to the game, it set the date at January 1, 2014 and all my big moves were undone. It was extremely frustrating.
Other than the big glitch, which erased my interest in retooling the Marlins, the game is really very good. Prospects develop as you’d expect (in case you’re wondering, Byron Buxton becomes an excellent big leaguer down the road, as do Miguel Sano and a few other current minor leaguers). Older players decline, sometimes very steeply. In my sim, Robinson Cano was a .240 hitter with moderate power just a couple of years into his 30s. OOTP offers everything an armchair GM might need, including the Amateur Draft, Rule 5 Draft, contract negotiations, in-game management options, September call-ups, options to the minors, and, of course, trades.
The game even allows you to view balance sheets, scout players, set in-game or organizational strategy, and mess around with international leagues like those in Japan and Korea. In fact, it’s all a little overwhelming. As I played, I was inundated with ’emails’ from scouts, advisors, and other teams. I lost track of who I’d put in high A vs low A, and sometimes players seemed to move on me without warning. (I kept finding this random, terrible middle infielder on my big league roster for no particular reason.) All in all, OOTP for the desktop computer is a great option for the fanatic who wants to micro manage every single aspect of an organization’s operations, but for those of us who want some control–roster moves, contracts, trades, etc–without having to set the depth chart for the Short Season A-ball Batavia Muckdogs (I swear that’s something I had to deal with in my Marlins franchise), it’s a bit overwhelming. Fortunately, there is another option.
iOOTP, the mobile version of Out Of The Park Baseball, is fantastic. It’s basically a streamlined version of the big game that allows you to manage a team of your choice, make roster and contract decisions, send players to a general ‘minor league,’ trade with other teams, draft amateurs, and even manage in the game. After you’ve built your team, you can play the actual games pitch by pitch, inning by inning, day by day, or week by week. I chose to simulate every half inning at a time, allowing me to make in game pitching changes but leaving everything else to the computer. Games typically take under 30 seconds each in this fashion.
I’ve been playing iOOTP on my phone for about 3 years and I love it. At first, I took the Seattle Mariners about 30 years into the future, managing to stay competitive nearly every season and only having to rebuild my franchise once. Currently, I’m playing with the Cubs and trying to win the World Series before Theo Epstein beats me to it.
As you play, you learn different tricks. For instance, I value players based on their rating for ‘potential’ ability rather than current ability. That way, I can build cheap, good teams and hold on to my players. I also tend to have a different backup catcher every season and most of my relievers turn over rapidly as well. The big thing that I’ve learned is to never give any player more than a three year contract under any circumstances, ever. In the game, I’ve been able to build perennially successful franchises–one’s that win 90 games every single season for decades and win championships–by not ever hitching myself to any one player for too long. I still go after good players in free agency and I’m aggressive in keeping my own guys, but only on short term deals. I’d rather pay a player $16 million for one season than $12 million a year for four.
The result is that I’m usually right up against the budget cap imposed by my ‘owner’ (the fictional guy that writes the fictional cheques) every season, but I always have great roster flexibility. Roughly a third of my team comes up for free agency every year, but I always have the budget room to re-sign the guys I want. I’m never stuck with a crappy, old, expensive player like real teams are.
Of course, to convince the virtual guys to come to my team for only a couple of seasons (yes, you actually have to negotiate with them, the game is that awesome) I sometimes have to pay a little bit more, but it’s worth it because I save money in the long run by avoiding bad deals. Maybe the real GMs could learn a thing or two from this strategy.
Unlike OOTP, sometimes iOOTP is a little simplistic. I wish that the Rule 5 Draft had been included in the mobile version and I really really hope that Qualifying Offers for free agents are added in the next update. All in all, though, its great fun and a quality app.
For some reason, I don’t think that a review can be complete without a rating at the end so I feel compelled to offer one. For OOTP the computer game, the points earned by the game’s impressive depth are offset by its overwhelming complexity. And the accidental deletion of my game was annoying. I give it a 6 out of 10.
For iOOTP, the phone version, I enthusiastically award it a 9 out of 10. It’s a great game and I’m looking forward to the next version.
-Max Frankel
I’d like to thank Out Of The Park Developments for providing me with a copy of the desktop version for the purposes of this review.
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