tales from the multi-verse

Walking a fine line: GMing the San Diego Padres

June 23, 2017 by OOTP Staff

The ability to call the shots on and off the field for any Major League Baseball team is a huge part of the appeal of Out of the Park Baseball 18, so T.J. Lauerman, OOTP’s Baseball Community Manager, leapt at the chance to run a team on the game’s weekly Twitch stream.

He recalls: “Last year on the weekly Twitch streams, I had set out to turn the Atlanta Braves into World Series champions by 2020 and failed miserably. This year, I wanted to see if I would have better luck. I left it up to the fans and put a poll on our Twitter account with the options of the Chicago White Sox, Minnesota Twins, Cincinnati Reds, or San Diego Padres.”

GAF Online Baseball League Gives Thanks for OOTP

December 22, 2016 by OOTP Staff

A portrait of the commissioner as a young man.

Brent Long, commissioner of the GAF Online Baseball League that came together on the NeoGAF forum, discovered Out of the Park Baseball with last year’s version 16, but once he did, he was hooked. “When I play any game that tries to simulate a sport, I’m always most interested in the long-term development of my team,” he says. “You get to see what would happen if you were in control and, right now, OOTP probably does that the best out of any game that I’ve played.”

He joined the GOBL not long after its inception and soon became the commissioner. “GOBL brings me into the game every single day,” Long observes. “There’s a lot more intrigue when you know you’re competing against other people and not just the CPU.” (The league has a few openings, so anyone who’s interested in joining should see the thread on the NeoGAF forum and contact Long (he’s “brentech”) for more information.)

Tales From the OOTP Multi-Verse: What if the 2015 Trading Deadline Deals Happened Before the Season Started?

October 13, 2015 by Brad Cook

While everyone is enjoying the playoffs (we’ve given our predictions for the two AL and two NL Division Series, and will do so for both League Championship Series and the World Series), we thought we’d indulge in a little “What if?” scenario, since this season’s trading deadline saw some big name players switch teams. The Toronto Blue Jays went all-in (and saw it pay off) by acquiring Troy Tulowitzki, David Price, Mark Lowe, and Ben Revere, while the New York Mets sought to bolster their offense in a trade for Yoenis Cespedes.

The Chicago Cubs and Pittsburgh Pirates gave their pitching rotations boosts by bringing in Dan Haren and J.A. Happ, respectively, while the San Francisco Giants grabbed Mike Leake but failed to see that deal help bring them a playoff spot. And the Los Angeles Dodgers, Miami Marlins, and Atlanta Braves completed a 13-player deal that set up the first team for the rest of the season while positioning the other two for their rebuilding projects.

But what if the players involved in those and other trades this season had been with their teams on Opening Day? Out of the Park Baseball 16 lets us answer that question, thanks to a recent roster update that’s current as of Sept. 1. (Visit our forum to learn how to get the update and enable the changed rosters when you start a new game.) We set up a new game, enabled commissioner mode, and let ‘er rip. (Want to download the league and continue where it left off? We’ve uploaded it for that purpose. (Warning: The file is over 300MB.))

Tales From the OOTP Multi-Verse: Bo Jackson and What Could Have Been

July 1, 2015 by Brad Cook

Out of the Park Baseball provides a wonderful “What if?” laboratory for all kinds of experiments, from “What if free agency existed in Babe Ruth’s day?” to “What if baseball started expanding sooner than it really did?” It’s also great for seeing how underachieving players’ careers could have turned out, and the inspiration for this blog post hit me while watching ESPN’s “30 For 30” special about Bo Jackson.

Jackson’s baseball career was impacted by the awful injury he suffered while playing football, and he was never the same when he attempted his mid-90s comeback. So what if we rewound the clock to 1986, his rookie year with the Kansas City Royals, and took a look at what could have been? (Want to suggest a player or scenario we should use for a future “Tales From the OOTP Multi-Verse” installment? Drop us a line at info@ootpdevelopments.com.)

To set this up, I took a cue from Questdog, a user on our forum. He suggested basing potential ratings on career peak seasons in step one of the historical season setup wizard, as well as turning off recalc and using talent ratings and the OOTP development engine in step three. Recalc is normally on by default in OOTP’s historical seasons – It recalculates player ratings based on their actual stats that upcoming season, when the in-game calendar turns to January 1, so their performance is more in line with reality.

In this case, we want to base Jackson’s career performance on the potential OOTP gives him in 1986, when the possibilities are vast. However, the Kansas City Royals didn’t seem to feel that Bo knew enough to have a career with their organization, since they traded him in April or May of 1986 in every sim. After the first sim, I eschewed the minor leagues and went with the reserve roster, per Markus’s suggestion, so I suppose with guys like Willie Wilson and Lonnie Smith patrolling their outfield, Kansas City didn’t see room for Jackson on their club. He also started every sim as a highly touted prospect (usually #11 or #12 in all of MLB), so I guess his team figured he was worth more as trade bait.

bo-jackson-start — Here’s how Bo Jackson begins his career. (Click to enlarge.)

I simmed Jackson’s career five times. Here are his stats from each sim, along with a composite of the five. Below you’ll find more in-depth information about each sim.

Tolkien Baseball: One League to Rule Them All

December 16, 2014 by Brad Cook

Númenor may have come to an unfortunate end in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, but that hasn’t stopped it from getting a baseball team in Solonor’s Groovy Computer Baseball League, also known as SGCBL or, simply, Tolkien Baseball. The Númenor Kings play in the Mordor Conference with the Weathertop Witch Kings, the Minas Morgul Slayers, the Dead Marshes Uruk-Hai, and other teams in the Orc, Goblin, and Troll Divisions.

Over in the Shire Conference’s Elf, Hobbit, and Dwarf Divisions, the Erebor Eagles, Lake Town Archers, Mirkwood Marauders, and other clubs do battle. The league playoffs open with the Fellowship Series before moving on to the semi-final Two Towers Series and the championship Return of the King Series, and the year-end awards include the Gandalf Pitcher of the Year trophy, the Aragorn MVP Award, and others.

The league championship trophy, my precioussss

Tales From the OOTP Multi-Verse: Alternate American Baseball

May 11, 2014 by Brad Cook

“I’m not sure if it’s every baseball fan’s dream to create a baseball world of his or her own, but it certainly has been mine,” says Peter Cerling, also known as “cephasjames” on the OOTP forums. He not only created a world with seven major leagues and 22 minor leagues, but he also designed logos and uniforms for its more than 500 teams, with those designs changing across six eras.

Cerling even created two documents for his quickstart, one that covers the changes that occur during each off-season and another that follows each team from year to year. The end result is a monumental effort whose downloads can be found in these two forum threads:

FREE: Uniforms and logos for 500+ teams spanning 1871-present

Updating my fictional MLB uniforms and logos

Tales From the Multi-Verse: The Montgomery Brewster World Baseball Association

May 9, 2013 by Brad Cook

When George Barr McCutcheon wrote the novel “Brewster’s Millions” in 1902, little did he know that it would eventually not only be adapted for film ten times but also offer the inspiration for an online OOTP league. True, the Montgomery Brewster World Baseball Association (MBWBA) actually draws on the 1985 Richard Pryor film, not the book, and, yes, McCutcheon would have been hard-pressed to imagine something like a baseball management game, let alone the Internet, but it’s amusing to think that his work could reverberate across decades and find its way here.

“Having watched and loved the movie ‘Brewster’s Millions’ many times, I decided to use the premise of Montgomery Brewster shelling out money from his inheritance to form a new professional baseball league that would ‘defeat the baseball system,’ as he said in the movie,” explains MBWBA commissioner Matt Rectenwald. “Throughout the years we occasionally brought in MLB players as ‘defectors,’ given the premise was we were directly competing with MLB, but we stopped that practice in the late 1980s of our league.”

Tales From the OOTP Multi-Verse: Union League Baseball

February 7, 2013 by Brad Cook

Sports history is littered with failed attempts to compete with established professional leagues. The Federal League, which shut down in 1915, was the last such attempt in baseball, and in other sports, American football’s USFL and XFL were high profile failures. However, Out of the Park Baseball doesn’t have to contend with the economic realities of the real world, and thus players can create their own fanciful alternate realities, like Union League Baseball (ULB).

The premise of the ULB is that the 1995 baseball strike presented an opportunity for Fay Vincent, Michael Bloomberg, Vince McMahon of the WWE, Bill Gates, Nike CEO Phil Knight, and others to start a rival league. Fay Vincent is the ULB’s commissioner, and Richard McNeal plays that role, complete with an email signature that says “From the Desk of ULB Commissioner Fay Vincent.”

Tales From the OOTP Multi-Verse: The NHL-Inspired PBDL

December 17, 2012 by Brad Cook

The lockout that prevented the 2012-2013 NHL season from starting (and, as of Dec. 17, 2012, could cause its complete cancellation) has been frustrating for hockey fans, but one fan who also loves baseball has found an ingenious way to write some alternate history with Out of the Park Baseball.

“Alas, on January 14th, 2013, Gary Bettman (NHL Commissioner) announced that the entire 2012-2013 NHL season would in fact be cancelled,” Nicholas Genova, the commissioner of the PBDL (Premier Baseball Dynasty League), writes on a page titled “PBDL – How it all Began.”

The Classic Baseball Union: Building an Online Community Around 80s and 90s Era Baseball

October 12, 2012 by Brad Cook

(Editor’s note: The CBU web site has been removed since this article was originally published, and the Wayback Machine has no useful links, so the links currently produce “not found” errors.)

Many rival sports leagues have come and gone over the years, but few have survived. In baseball, the American League was originally an upstart competitor to the National League, and the short-lived Federal League existed from 1914 to 1915, but in all likelihood, we’ll never see a serious competitor to Major League Baseball.

Unless you count the fictional worlds made possible by Out of the Park Baseball, of course. One such world created by Jordan Gillis posits a scenario in which secret meetings take place beginning in 1985. The participants are unhappy with where Major League Baseball is headed. However, they decide to take a stealth approach, gathering resources and biding their time until the opportunity arises to announce their intentions.

Out of the Park Developments

Blog by Out of the Park Developments

tales from the multi-verse

Walking a fine line: GMing the San Diego Padres

GAF Online Baseball League Gives Thanks for OOTP

Tales From the OOTP Multi-Verse: What if the 2015 Trading Deadline Deals Happened Before the Season Started?

Tales From the OOTP Multi-Verse: Bo Jackson and What Could Have Been

Tolkien Baseball: One League to Rule Them All

Tales From the OOTP Multi-Verse: Alternate American Baseball

Tales From the Multi-Verse: The Montgomery Brewster World Baseball Association

Tales From the OOTP Multi-Verse: Union League Baseball

Tales From the OOTP Multi-Verse: The NHL-Inspired PBDL

The Classic Baseball Union: Building an Online Community Around 80s and 90s Era Baseball

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tales from the multi-verse