Out of the Park Baseball.

[Sergiu64]

Starting a thread for Out of the Park Baseball franchise: https://www.ootpdevelopments.com/

Anyone else playing it? Have you managed to succeed with small market teams?

 

[tindrli]

no. never played it before

 

[Sergiu64]

no. never played it before

Its like the Football Management equivalent for Baseball. You're playing as the Manager/General Manager instead of any individual players on the field. Can leave vast majority of your duties on Auto according to your assistant GM/bench coach personalities AI and just watch the game play itself if you want. If you like baseball and simulation - this game is great.

 

[IDtenT]

Iirc it is from the same devs as Football Manager.

Unfortunately I don't care for America's gay sport, when I can just follow the British gay one Cricket.

 

[Lone Wolf]

It's not from the same devs. OOTP Baseball is by the same guys who do Franchise Hockey Manager. FM is by Sports Interactive, who also - confusingly - do Eastside Hockey Manager.

 

[Jimmious]

I find baseball excruciatingly boring IRL, I can't even fathom why would someone watch a virtual version of it

 

[~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.¸-AIN'T]

Starting a thread for Out of the Park Baseball franchise: https://www.ootpdevelopments.com/

Anyone else playing it? Have you managed to succeed with small market teams?

Been awhile but this is what I remember about making a successful small market team:

• If you aren't in a position to reliably make the playoffs, have a firesale. You'll get good prospects from trades and high draft positions for a few years is nice
• Max scouting budget, especially when you're noncompetitive. Every year see what scouting directors are available and if there's one that's better than your current guy, hire him even if you're still under contract. Nothing's more important than having the best scouting director.
• Pay attention to your minor league coaches. Crappy ones can stunt player development and small market teams are absolutely dependent on homegrown talent.
  
• Ironically, the player development budget is mostly useless. You can probably put it at 0 though I usually throw a couple mil onto it.
• 5 star international free agents are the best deals. Yes, they are riskier in theory than signing a normal 5 star free agent because there's a bigger bust risk, but they are way cheaper and often end up being stars.
• Still, don't be afraid to make big offers for the Mike Trouts of the world if you're getting ready to compete and have the budget for it. Just remember to trade them when they get to 32-33 so you aren't paying for the bad years.
• For your homegrown stars, generally trade them away when they have 2 years of arbitration left. This gives you several years of stardom and generally will net you an up-and coming star.
• Always manipulate service time. Wait till May to call up big prospects so you get that extra year of control.
  
• With trades, always focus on quality over quantity. One 5 star prospect is way more valuable than 2 3 star guys.
• If you really want to extend a homegrown guy, at least make it a durable guy who plays a valuable defensive position. Those are the ones most likely to hold their value.
• Spend a decent amount of time trying to find good values on the waiver wire or the free agent list. You'll get a lot of busts, but paying <$1 mil contracts for guys isn't a big investment and sometimes these guys end up being key cogs. Especially with pitchers.
• Speaking of pitchers, movement is the most important attribute they have. Guys with crappy movement get hammered even with awesome K/BB ratios because they give up tons of dingers.
• For some reason even good scouting directors love to 5 star mediocre catching prospects. Take a very long look at their hitting potential before picking one of these guys with a top draft pick or getting them in a big trade.
• Abuse the crap out of the rule 5 draft. Especially when noncompetitive I'm usually taking 4-5 guys a year and generally at least 2 of them turn out to be useful players long term.

Very fun game. I should probably start playing again...

 

[Sergiu64]

I find baseball excruciatingly boring IRL, I can't even fathom why would someone watch a virtual version of it

The tension of it is great. It's cheap to go to actual games if you're near the stadium since they have 168 games a year when compared to something like American Football where they have 16 - so its a lot more accessible.

As for the virtual... If you like statistics, etc - it can be a draw to try to figure out which players to get, which players to trade away, etc.

 

[Jimmious]

I'm a big Football Manager fan so I know why one would play manager games... I just can't into baseball, at all

 

[Burning Bridges]

I would play it, but those graphics

.. it's not the lack of animation but the portraits of the players look so painfully ugly

It's on sale and I love manager games and I ike baseball but no 'sir, I can't play this

 

[Burning Bridges]

I'm a big Football Manager fan so I know why one would play manager games... I just can't into baseball, at all

watch a few matches on youtube and it should grow on you. It's actually a unique sport with a great history and many things that nobody except perhaps cricket fans ever heard of. Like that they score more homeruns in Colorado because of the height above sea level, sticky substances used by pitchers, rules to steal first base in certain leagues, in-field homeruns, all those statistics and hundreds of other things. Being a European fan who was into football all my life I'm not very knowledgeable but I must say it's highly interesting.

 

[Sranchammer]

Iirc it is from the same devs as Football Manager.

Unfortunately I don't care for America's gay sport, when I can just follow the British gay one Cricket.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Sranchammer can you tell me why the players spit all the time?
I actually become worried they could dehydrate because when the camera stops on a player he usually spits and then after 3,4 seconds he spits again. How can someone make 10 spits a minute and why? The trainers do it too, and if all the fans do it the whole stadiums must swim in human fluids.
And I assume with so many spits, spitting on each other happens and is not a big deal? As they seem to be actually rather civil and only very rarely get penalties from the umpire (I have seen only once that aplayer was sent off for swearing)

 

[Sranchammer]

Sranchammer can you tell me why the players spit all the time?
I actually become worried they could dehydrate because when the camera stops on a player he usually spits and then after 3,4 seconds he spits again. How can someone make 10 spits a minute and why? The trainers do it too, and if all the fans do it the whole stadiums must swim in human fluids.
And I assume with so many spits, spitting on each other happens and is not a big deal? As they seem to be actually rather civil and only very rarely get penalties from the umpire (I have seen only once that aplayer was sent off for swearing)

Chewing tobacco - very popular among Americans from small towns and the South (which is where majority of MLB players come from)

Take notice that New York and New England are terrible places for producing baseball players.

 

[Burning Bridges]

that's gross

 

[Sergiu64]

Yeah... they get mouth cancer from it too sometimes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Gwynn

 

[Sranchammer]

that's gross

You haven't lived until you've made love to a Southern Belle with dip in her mouth

 

[Burning Bridges]

Yeah... they get mouth cancer from it too sometimes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Gwynn

I remember there was a tall nigro who scored homeruns and he had such a strange lump on chis cheek. I actually googled if he had tumor or something.

 

[Burning Bridges]

has somebody played this?



looks like seriously the "best" baseball game right now, if you ignore EA and the like

 

[tsiforb]

has somebody played this?

looks like seriously the "best" baseball game right now, if you ignore EA and the like

I only have experience with SMB1, but I really enjoyed it. The ego settings basically act as an auto assist, which left a bad taste initially until I upped the difficulty and things started to feel right. I think I topped out in the mid 80s and was consistently getting fairly close, challenging games with the best teams and pitchers being a real handful. Pitching and hitting, especially power hitting felt satisfying. Games are fast paced and don’t waste your time with replays and pointless cinematics - a 9 inning game can be played in about 20 minutes. Games felt fair - I don’t recall feeling cheated by anything that happened, the cpu will still homer off good pitches, especially high in the zone, but there’s nothing that feels railroaded like it does in EA games sometimes.

In terms of negatives, the small bullpens occasionally led to some pretty comical situations, especially in extra innings situations as there was nobody else to turn to but the guys in the regular rotation who were already drained of stamina. I liked the dynamic of always having to be careful with the relief to avoid burning them out for the next game but ymmv (I think they added a couple relievers to each bullpen for the sequel). There were definitely some occasional stupid moments where the ai was not designed to fully grasp the strategy of certain situations. Player faces/heads are rather Prosperous but they are a bit less cartoony in the sequel.

Given that this is an OOTP thread, I should mention that management is very minimal. You can only play single seasons, no trades etc, there are a few bench players with different strengths/weaknesses you can swap out, and some buffs/tradeoffs you can get by hiring staff (I think they changed this system for some sort of development based off form in the sequel), but that’s it. Pretty damn good arcade style game, but if you want anything more it’s not going to deliver.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Don't worry bro I just barely understand what bullpens are and still need to learn most about baseball.

If I understand you right it might be that you end up without pitchers? I have seen this in a real match where they were in the 13th inning or so and had still 3 pitchers left but the coach kept changing them within the same inning so he ended up with the absolute last pitcher. What happens then? He plays the remaining match even if its another 8 innings or what? I really didn't understand why in a game where a team has like 12 pitchers or so, you wouldnt keep at least 2 in reserve during extra innings, because matches could go endless. I still remember a tennis match between Becker and McEnroe where they also had no tie breaks. I fell asleep at 1 or 2 and went up the next morning to check who won and they were still playing. How is that in baseball?

 

[tsiforb]

In the game you only get two middle relievers and a closer, and they don’t have much stamina. As stamina decreases so do pitching related stats so the likelihood of runs being scored and the game ending increases, but every once in a while you’ll end up with some very depleted starters trying to finish it off. I think if you get to the last pitcher they just stay in til the end.

IRL they would also just keep going, but could use position players if necessary. Sometimes they put them in to spare the bullpen for an inning or two in a blowout.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Ah oh ok that's what I sort of excepted that position players can also pitch, like the pitchers can very often bat too. The extra inning situation would be a bit similar to football then where a field player can occasionally also become goalkeeper, though they are pretty bad they have blocked penalties and such.

 

[Comte]

OOTP is great if your into sports sims or baseball. Man I have sunk more time into this then RPG's the last two years. Recently though finally got burnt out on it and have been more into rpgs. Also I am wary of the microtransaction pay to win part they added last year "Perfect Team". Well its interesting I hope it doesnt take away from the development of the main sim.

 

[Falksi]

"OOTPOXX"? Sounds like something Geralt picked up from one of the brothels.