Some OOTPB Love

As much as I’ve bad mouthed Out of the Park Baseball 2006 I think it’s only proper to give credit where credit is due. I am having a blast with Spring Training in my online league. It opens a whole new game play dimension over previous OOTPB versions. I can track individual Spring Training splits to see who is doing what on the field and on the mound.

I had to make some decisions about a couple of older players versus AAA prospects to see who was ready to play and who needed to be moved or cut. I have two weeks of data on the prospects, so I can start shopping the older players I want to move before the season starts. Now we have the scenario in OOTPB 2006 of older players being invited to camp and then let go or offered minor league contracts for the regular season. I like this a lot.

Another scenario – I had to make some decisions about who would play catcher for me. I gathered data for the first two weeks of Spring Training, didn’t like what I saw, so brought up some borderline prospects to take a look at. Fun stuff.

The other very nice addition is that players need to actually play new positions during Spring Training to learn them.

These changes make Spring Training much more exciting in online leagues. Getting to Spring Training is painful because it takes so long to sim from November to March. But once you’re there, the season really “feels” like it’s beginning. It helps our league that we have a development report utility that adds an incredible amount of depth to an otherwise complicated and tedious built in system.