I’m not a big fan of baseball, but baseball sims are to die for and Out of the Park Baseball 2006 looks like it could be the mother of all baseball sims.
One of the things I’ve always liked about previous OOTP games is the ability to create and customize leagues in any number of ways. But the 2006 version looks to blow away its previous incarnations when it comes to customizing,
But the best is that you can have AS MANY LEAGUES AS YOU LIKE in your baseball universe. I think this may be the right time to bury the saying ‘how’s your OOTP league going?’ – it’s got to be ‘how’s your OOTP baseball world going?’ from now on.
So what does this all mean? It means that you can set up your virtual baseball world the way you always imagined. How about a world with a league in every country of the world, with 16 teams each? You can do that. And each of these leagues can have as many minor leagues attached to it as you want. Then you can add any historical season to your world, via importing from the free Lahman Database. Or if you want to mirror the current real life setup (including all minor leagues down to rookie ball), you just need to click a single button. Then add the Japanese league, Korean league, Cuban league, some winter leaguesÂ… you name it.
And if that’s not enough, the developer is vastly expanding the range of statistics that OOTP tracks,
So far, so good. Lately when you watch a baseball game on TV that has a statistically educated commentator (sorry Mr. Morgan, that doesn’t include you), you hear terms like ‘this guy is a tough out, batting almost .270 even with 2 strikes on him’ or ‘he has been successful at night this season, hitting 30 points higher than in day-games’. OOTP can do that as well, and even better, for every statistic of the basic stats sets tracked during the current season. Here are the splits that are supported in OOTP:
Overall, Vs Left, Vs Right, This Week, Last Week, by Month, Allstar Game, Spring Training, Playoffs, Home, Away, Grass, Turf, Day, Night, Pinch Hitting, Close & Late, Inning 1-3, Inning 4-6, Inning 7-9, Inning X, No Outs, One Outs, Two Outs, Runners in Scoring Position, Bases Empty, Runner at 1st, Runner at 2nd, Runner at 3rd, Runner at 1st & 2nd, Runner at 1st & 3rd, Runner at 2nd & 3rd, Bases Loaded, Two Strikes, First Pitch, Count 0-1, Count 0-2, Count 1-0, Count 1-1, Count 1-2, Count 2-0, Count 2-1, Count 2-2, Count 3-0, Count 3-1, Count 3-2, Behind in Count, Ahead in Count.
OK, thatÂ’s pretty cool already, right? So you can check out how your shortstop batted on the road this season. Or how many doubles your favorite pitcher gave up in June. Or the batting AVG of your cleanup hitter when heÂ’s up there with the bases loaded.
. . .
Anyway, I felt the more stats, the better. And it doesnÂ’t slow the game down! Also, all player lists can handle these stats, so you can check who leads your league in hitting with runners in scoring position against your own team.
That’s my kind of baseball sim developer. There is absolutely no such thing as too many stats.
Man, I can’t wait until this is finally released sometime in the next couple months.