The Recycle Bin

I decided to see how OOTPB 6.5 compared to OOTPB 2006 from a statistical standpoint. The numbers below in no way reflect in sort of scientific conclusions. My population is way too small to read into any significant conclusions, but I figured it would be fun for giggles. I decided to compare the results to the 1989 MLB season; no particular reason other than I graduated from high school that year. I ran everything with default settings (except for the pain and suffering of trying to get minor leagues setup in OOTPB 2006.

The first section is the real life results of the 1989 season, followed by the results of an OOTPB 6.5 simulation, and the results of an OOTPB 2006 simulation.

Feel free to post comments, questions, etc.

*Denotes the worst record. I have also taken the liberty to include Atlanta’s results.

MLB 1989 Season
AL East: Toronto 89-73 (.260 AVG, 3.58 ERA)
AL West: Oakland 99-63 (.261 AVG, 3.09 ERA)
NL East: Chicago 93-69 (.261 AVG, 3.43 ERA)
NL West: San Francisco 92-70 (.250 AVG, 3.30 ERA)
*Detroit 59-103 (.242 AVG, 4.53 ERA)
Atlanta 63-97 (.234 AVG, 3.70 ERA)

ALCS: Oakland 4 � Toronto 1
NLCS: San Francisco 4 � Chicago 1
World Series: Oakland 4 � San Francisco 0

AVG: K. Puckett (MIN) .339 AVG, 9 HR, 89 RBI, 11 SB
HR: K. Mitchell (SF) .291 AVG, 47 HR, 125 RBI, 3 SB
W: B. Saberhagen (KC) 23-6, 2.16 ERA, .961 WHIP
ERA: B. Saberhagen (KC) 23-6, 2.16 ERA, .961 WHIP

OOTPB 6.5 1989 Season
AL East: Boston 99-63 (.272 AVG, 3.81 ERA)
AL West: Oakland 99-63 (.262 AVG, 3.29 ERA)
NL East: Chicago 92-70 (.275 AVG, 3.72 ERA)
NL West: San Diego 84-78 (.271 AVG, 4.07 ERA)
*Atlanta 63-99 (.248 AVG, 4.45 ERA)

ALCS: Oakland 4 � Boston 2
NLCS: San Diego 4 � Chicago 0
World Series: Oakland 2 � San Diego 4

AVG: D. Smith (CHI NL) .372 AVG, 20 HR, 115 RBI, 21 SB
HR: H. Johnson (NY NL) .313 AVG, 59 HR, 128 RBI, 8 SB
W: C. Cary (NY AL) 20-11, 4.08 ERA, 1.20 WHIP
ERA: T. Mulholland (SF) 7-6, 2.61 ERA, 1.11 WHIP

OOTPB 2006 1989 Season
AL East: Cleveland 95-66 (.268 AVG, 3.89 ERA)
AL West: Seattle 93-68 (.288 AVG, 4.46 ERA)
NL East: New York 95-66 (.261 AVG, 3.83 ERA)
NL West: Cincinnati 93-68 (.265 AVG, 3.74 ERA)
*Detroit 60-101 (.249 AVG, 5.28 ERA)
Atlanta 86-75 (.250 AVG, 3.78 ERA)

ALCS: Cleveland 4 � Seattle 1
NLCS: Cincinnati 4 � New York 3
World Series: Cincinnati 4 � Cleveland 1

AVG: K. Bass (HOU) .345 AVG, 10 HR, 68 RBI, 26 SB
HR: M. McGwire (OAK) .241 AVG, 49 HR, 110 RBI, 1 SB
W: Greg Swindell (CLE) 24-8, 3.50 ERA, 1.24 WHIP
ERA: B. Saberhagen (KC) 20-7, 1 SV, 2.57 ERA, 1.03 WHIP

Notes: K. Pukett (MIN) .330 AVG (6th overall); K. Mitchell (SF) 40 HRs (3rd overall); N. Ryan (TX) 13-14, 3.31 ERA, 279K; A. Davis (SEA) 1B signed a 4-year contract valued at $62,320,000; C. Lansford (OAK) 3B signed a 6-year contract valued at $89,196,000.

I downloaded the game last night, and have been spending some time trying to get acclimated. I concur with Chris; the game is extremely complicated, and spending time with the manual and guide are a must. Of course I am stubborn, and just want to play, so I have not read either. They do look impressive, but reading is for later, while play is for now!

I plan to post some updates later, but tonight is date night; kids at mom’s house, so the impressions may have to wait for later. I have seen some interesting news items in the historical league I am running. A closer signed a contract; the news item showed that he had 43 saves, but no save opportunities and had never been called in from the bullpen. Not really that significant, but it should be interesting to see what other strange announcements pop-up in my historical league.

The major issue I am having right now is that many minor league teams just do not have enough players. This keeps stopping the simulation, which is a pain. I have to go into each league and set rosters to be filled with fictional players. Seems to work, but I have not had time to check to see if this messes up any of the minor league statistics, lineups, rosters, etc. So far I have only seen this problem the first few days of my first season.

This game not only looks interesting, but should be one heck of a challenge. Serious learning curve and all. More to come later.

I simmed 12 seasons in OOTPB 2006. Total size of league file? 957 MB!!! I will do further analysis to see what is actually essential to keep on league web sites, but no way is 957 MBs going to make it to most FTP servers. Or, Sports Interactive is getting a cut back from the now drooling web storage providers. You heard it here first!

Overall, I am very happy with OOTPB 2006. Is it perfect? No, and hopefully patches will bring it closer to perfection. But SI made this game for guys like me. And you if you read this blog for my text-gaming comments.

An internet buddy of mine asked me earlier, “Have they finally made our game?” The answer is a resounding YES!

I spent the evening hours yesterday messing around with the hits, HRs, and doubles modifiers, and am happy with the sim results. They pretty much reflect the same statistics (or close to them) for our OOTP 6.5 results. I changed hits to 1.060, HRs to 1.080, and doubles to 1.080 and ERAs went up, hitting average, HRs, and doubles were within standard deviations from previous IOSBL OOTP 6.5 sims.

I’ve been reading that bookmarks are the way to ease some of the interface issues. So I will mess around with those next. But my main concern is satisfied – I can get OOTPB 2006 to produce accurate results.

OOTPB 2006 is intelligent gaming. Sorry folks, but you will have to read the manual, read forum posts, and devote a significant amount of time to understand game mechanics. When I reviewed for Games Domain Review, we always did our Championship Manager review in the strategy game section (as opposed to the sports section). OOTPB 2006 is a complex sports strategy game.

The complexity will turn some people off, but there are other options out there if you don’t want to worry about tracking everything you need to in this game. PureSim Baseball is a fine product and even Baseball Mogul will satisfy those who want to quickly get into a game and see what happens. Heck, continue playing OOTP 6.5. I don’t think people complaining about this or that missing realize just how different OOTPB 2006 is from the older versions. It is almost a completely different game.

OOTPB 2006 is a baseball universe simulator. And I like it a lot.

Forgot to post these:

(1) HRs seem a tad bit low. Three players hit 40+ HRs (highest was 44) across both leagues. This could account for the scoring issues. Markus must have programmed a post-steriod era modifier.

(2) Highest averge was .319 across both leagues. The league hitting averages also seem a bit low, with the number nine average across both leagues at .309.

(3) Pitching is officially unbalanced. The league leading ERA was 1.16, and the number nine SP on the combined list came in at 2.11. Everything else seemed ok as far as strikeouts, etc. goes. Pitching is overpowering hitting in the IOSBL.

I ran the first test sim with player development off. I created a new test sim file to do multiple seasons and turned player development back on. Here are some observations about the 2017 season, all computer GMs running the show, 1-10 talent scales:

(1) Sharks hit .248 as a team (7th in the AL) and had an ERA of 3.30 (6th in the AL). The batting average continues to be a very low, but the ERA is about right based on past team performances in OOTP 6.5.

(2) A couple of players were placed on waivers in January 2017. One player (a 2b) had ratings for contact and avoid Ks, but no ratings for anything else. Don’t know if that was an import glitch or not.

(3) AI is actively claiming players off of the waiver wire. Nine players were waived by Jacksonville and all nine were claimed.

(4) Sharks traded 1b Mitch Gray ( a 27 year-old 10/8/5/7/9 hitter) to Houston for 26 year-old Richard Campuzano (6/6/9 talent, 5/6/8 ratings). Don’t see the logic in that trade. However, he did finish the season 13-12 with a 3.86 ERA, 226 IP, 41% QS, and 1.27 WHIP. Gray hit .292, .341 OB, .402 SLG for Houston. So maybe the AI knew what it was doing.

(5) All sorts of releasing and moving players activity by the AI. Much promotoing and demoting in April 2017.

(6) AI signed a number of free agents for the Sharks.

(7) AI signed a .247/.349/.342 1b to a three-year $28 million deal. His rating are 5/5/6/8/3. This makes no sense, unless he had a steep talent decline during the season.

(8) Sharks drafted a pretty good second baseman with the 23rd pick in the draft. Nice collection of different position players and pitchers drafted.

(9) Realizing its mistake earlier with Gray, the AI traded a 3b, prospect, and $3 million to Mississippi for a power hitting 1b at the trade deadline. This trade I like.

(10) Batting averages are too low in the AL. The top hitting team hit .262 and the lowest team hit .232. There were too many teams in the .240 range.

(11) Fielidng % looks ok across the league.

(12) I am not sure about this yet, but there doesn’t seem to be any way to track player development in the game. I turned off scouts and coaches for this sim (since the IOSBL will probably not use them). There’s one SISA scouting report for the player during the season and that’s it as far as player development forcasting goes.

(13) Moving from player profiles back to the roster screen is painful. Again, not sure if I am missing something, but there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to get out of the very comprehensive player profiles back to the roster screen so that you can look at another player (quickly).

That’s it for now. I do not see scores for spring training games on the schedule, so not sure how that is handled. My general reaction is that we are losing some of the tools necessary to track player development. Many online leagues used BOSI to assist with this, but at a minimum we had development reports. OOTPB 2006 has development reports, but they only reflect major talent changes (and my highly paid 1b did have a huge talent drop). Actual ratings changes that we could track with BOSI are gone. This is made even more painful by the absence of a star system. You will have to comb through 100s of players to find ratings changes in some non-intuitive fashion.

The OOTP Game Guide has an excellent set of walkthroughs for a typical season. So if you’re a solo player or online league owner a bit overwhelmed by what needs to be done during the season, pages 334-335 explain the exact sequence of a solo/online season.

In addition to the manual, a 350+ page game guide is available for download at the OOTPB 2006 web site. Those not familiar with the Football Manager series and how the interface uses filters to ease information display will have a hard time getting comfortable with OOTPB 2006. It’s harder to do some things (like the initial draft) but easier to do other things (like the information shown during year long sims).

Me, I’m still worried about some of the sim results. I also have no clue about park or weather effects in the new version. We may have to modify the default settings to get results consistent with OOTP 6.5 leagues.

Just ran a year test sim for my imported league. The Jacksonville Sharks hit .254 as a team and that was fifth in the AL. They had a team ERA of 2.99 and that was 4th in the AL. I am a bit concerned…

The game creates its own logos and the logos from OOTP 6.5 do not import into the game. If you want to customize team colors and import new logos, take a look at this thread from the OOTP forums.

So far so good. I haven’t started simming games because I fear some fatal flaw will be revealed in this so far impressive looking product. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Here are some more:

(1) Retired players import fine.

(2) Make sure you go to game options during league import and click display player development – at least if you want it displayed.

(3) One of the crack beta team members pointed out that you have to manually edit the league names to get the correct abreviations.

(4) You need to check the rules and options for each level in your import universe. So major league rules must be set, in addition to AAA, AA, A, short season, and rookie levels.

Here are some initial impressions for those of you importing OOTP 6.5 leagues:

(1) Import interface is a bit painful to use if you have multiple folders to go through to get to your league file. Not intuitive at all and very slow to find the new folder you click on. You may want to move the league file to the OOTP 2006 folder since it defaults there.

(2) Opening day means opening day. Leagues can only be imported when you are ready to do the opening day sim. The game won’t let you import at any other time.

(3) Once you spend the time to get to your league folder, the import took a few seconds to complete on my AMD 4.0 Mghz computer.

(4) You have to add minor leagues to your import. If you do not do this, there will be no minor league system in place. The game will then create minor league teams in various cities and for all the levels you designate and assign them to your franchise.

(5) Although you create a manager, make sure to create the game in commissioner mode for you online folks.

(6) I do not understand how to assign human managers to teams. When you import, the commissioner is the only manager. I am assuming that I must hand create each human owner and assign his team to him. Will he be able to set his own password for his assigned team? I do not know the answer to that question.

(7) The game assigns the league name “IPL” to the minor league teams. Even though I created the game identifying the IOSBL as the major league level, the league home page lists “IPL” as the major league level and is the place where I found my major league franchises. The actual league name, IOSBL, appears on the news screen, but the drop down buttons at the top of the screen go “IPL”, “IPL Teams” for the major league team lists.

(8) Pretty cool new stories when you take over the team and the previous GM is fired.

(9) Team histories (won loss) do not import.

(10) Draft histories do not import.

(11) Positional histories do not import.

(12) Batters and pitchers registries do import.

(13) I got an HTML error when I clicked on some players in the registry, but they eventually displayed.

(14) As promised, major league stats import. Minor league stats do not. And the league name was changed to “IPL” on the player pages. So a player would have “JAC-IPL” listed for his time with Jacksonville.

(15) Surprisingly, leaders boards import with no problem.

(16) As promised, award winners do not import.

(17) Forgot to mention that minor league teams are populated with minor league players. Some are from the import and others seem to have been generated by the game.

So far, things look promising. If the OOTP community can figure out a way to manually enter the missing data into the league history, I will have no complaints. A few minor irritants so far (like this whole IPL thing).

I will read through the 68 page manual before I try and start a league. This is something I learned to do with other SI products because things sometimes are not, shall we say, intuitive in their games. The download file is 33+ megabytes.

From the OOTP2006 forums:

“I played my final game of OOTP 6.5 today. On 7/9/2010 my Cardinals won a 4-3, 10 inning game over the Pittsburgh Pirates to improve to 54-36, 1.5 games behind the division leading Milwaukee Brewers. Fictional player Mark Melancon, my 2006 first round selection (29th overall) who is my 25 year old closer, got player of the game with 2 innings of shutout relief.

Goodbye Melancon (entered the majors the day he was drafted, led the league in saves with 46 in 2007), Pujols (never less than 32 homers, 107 RBIs, 105 runs, or .299 BA and usually well above all of those), Mulder (2007 Cy Young, 22-6 with a 2.50 in 255.2 IP with 5 CGs and 3 SHOs for a 0.97 WHIP), Yadier Molina (always seemed to come up with the clutch hit in the playoffs) and Scott Rolen (won a Gold Glove all 4 years in this sim). Goodbye to all the other times I took over the Cardinals, just to watch Pujols play.

Goodbye to all of those Red Sox teams I ran over the last two years. Goodbye Tigers, goodbye Pirates, goodbye Rockies, goodbye Cubs, goodbye Brewers. Your franchises have been good to me over the many, many, many seasons that I ran them.

Remember that time you Rockies surged from 8 games down in the last two weeks to capture the NL West in your second year of existence? Dante Bichette was a golden god that season, leading the league in homers by at least ten. I remember our #5 and #6 hitters had less RBIs combined than our #3 hitter, simply because Dante kept clearing the bases at the cleanup spot.

Detroit, remember that streak of 7 division wins in a row in the 2020s? Those Royals never knew what hit ’em. Historically, Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker were almost as good as their real life counterparts. They didn’t have quite the longevity, but they produced.

Hey, Pirates, remember the…. well, okay, you almost always sucked. But even I couldn’t do anything when George Brett, Rickey Henderson and Bert Blyleven all got career ending injuries over the course of two seasons. At least we never liked disco.

You Cubs… man, where to start. In one league you’d be mediocre for two decades, in another league you’d win me a couple of World Series, in another league you developed nothing out of your minor leagues aside from catchers and relief pitchers. I swear, every four years I had another stud catcher to play. Could I get a starter every now and then? A shortstop? Maybe a third baseman? Nope. Relievers and catchers, that’s all you gave me.

Ah, Brewers. Those late ’60s and early ’70s were so horrible. Nothing went right in the beginning of your existence. Those late ’70s were fun though. Remember Bucky ‘Friggin’ Dent? The Red Sox (the Red Sox!) offered him to us for some scrub minor leaguers and we desperately needed a shortstop. He was a career .250somethin’ hitter in four seasons and what did he do for us? Three straight All Star appearances and almost a decade of solid play. I almost didn’t accept that trade due to his real life transgressions, but we were desperate to fill that shortstop hole.

Goodbye to all of you fictional teams I played over the years. It wasn’t you, it was me. I just can’t love a team I don’t feel like I already know. I guess we really should have been friends first. Especially you expansion Salt Lake City Sundowners. I think I created you half a dozen times and it never lasted more than a few seasons at a time.

Last, but most definitely not least, goodbye to my beloved Red Sox. The seasons we spent together outnumber the stars in a clear summer sky. I look forward to meeting you in our next life, OOTP’06. You are my one true love and always will be. There were good times and there were bad times, online and solo, but in the end it was always worth it.

Goodbye OOTP4, OOTP5, OOTP6 and OOTP6.5. Goodbye old and busted, hello new hotness!

As the immortal Jimmie Dugan once said; “Uh, Lord, hallowed be Thy name. May our feet be swift; may our bats be mighty; may our balls… be plentiful.”

Time to uninstall and defrag before my last good night of sleep for the rest of the week.”