OOTP Baseball 16 App Reviews

In short: I’m definitely glad I bought it, and it’s lots of fun, but it’s not perfect. I just recently retired from a long amateur baseball career (watchu semi-pro?!) and currently work in user experience as a UI developer. I’m not saying that in a weak effort to brag; I’m saying that to make clear that I’m nitpicking here. First, the good: if you want to play GM or manager you’re not going to find a more realistic sim than this. OOTP has it all: options, waivers, international free agents, arbitration, deadline deals, scouting, development, all kinds of injuries, platoon issues, loyal and whiny players, etc., etc.., and not only that but it also gives you tons of options to either disable or let the AI (which is pretty good) handle whatever doesn’t interest you. The AI opponent gives a decent challenge, and there are tons of human leagues (people playing OOTP, not clones of the 80’s band). It’s fun. If you got this far you should buy it. Now the nitpicking. The UI is still a little clunky. Some elements don’t refresh properly, so you’ll see some drop-downs that won’t populate until you mouseover them. There’s almost zero keyboard support, and you will end up clicking and clicking and clicking (it’s a deep game!). They’ve never quite nailed the broadcast view (the in-game view) set-up, and you’ll have to spend some time messing with it to get it the way you want (which to their credit is an option, it’s just not implemented super well). There a few other minor bugs: if you click a player link in the post-game box score you can’t see it until you close the box score, etc., etc. None of these is a deal-breaker by any means; I barely notice them anymore. As for the issues with the baseball aspects of it there are also a few flaws. If you’re playing a game (you can also just sim entire games or blocks of games) you can’t just greenlight base-runners to steal, and your options for sending them on command aren’t great: steal, run and hit, and hit and run. Steal is “runner, go if you can get a jump; batter, take this pitch.” Run and hit is “runner, go no matter what jump; batter, swing if you want.” Hit and run is the standard. There’s no “runner, go if you can get a jump; batter, take your normal approach.” Your pitcher won’t throw over unless you tell him to. Further, you have to specify these to apply only for the next pitch. It has bunting for hits, but only with the bases empty. None of these things kill the game, of course, they’re just weird. The last thing that gets me is the hitting model. They measure Contact, Gap Power, Power, Eye, and Avoid K’s. IMHO it should be Contact (% of time you make contact when you swing), Aggressiveness (% of time you swing), Eye (% of time you accurately gauge ball or strike), Bat Speed (how hard you hit the ball when you make contact), and Swing Plane (% of time you hit groundballs, liners, flies, or pop-ups). OOTP is built on DIPS theory, and you can even set BABIP for your leagues, but it’s hard to figure how the sim engine combines that with something like having Contact and Avoid K’s for example. The end result is you’ll get some really weird lines on the fringes, like a guy that’ll strike out 15 times in 600 at bats but only hit .260, or a guy with 35 homers and 8 doubles. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s frequent enough that it’s a noticeable blemish on an otherwise believeable leaderboard. Flaws aside, this game’s worth a buy! Support is excellent, it’s built by a small company of people who love baseball, and it’s a great balance of keeping you interested/challenged without wiping you out.

This game is everything that I have been looking for in a sim baseball game!!!!! I can’t get enough.

This game has absolutely everything!!! From scouting international players to filling summer league rosters to July 2nd international free agent signings. So much depth, so much fun. How have I not heard of this game before??/

Beautiful and deep gaming. Gets better every year.

I am always looking for a great sim/strategy game and I have finally found it. The realism and thought that went into this game is truly amazing and the attention to detail was great. If I had one complaint, it is that the game is based a little too heavily on sabermetrics. While this statistical data truly has revolutionized baseball, it is not fool proof and does have its flaws. Even then, OOTP 16 is the greatest sim i have played on an computer on any system in the 20 years I have been playing games. Keep up the good work, and I would HIGHLY recommend this game to anyone.

love this game helps with my daily fantasy!

Excellent and super-detailed game. It genrally runs smoothly with few or no glitches despite all the content. Speaking of the content its great! You can control everything from basic things like lineups and rotations to Single A rosters, coaching staff and budget. It is annoying when players, coaches and owners get mad at you but thats just part of the game. It is also unpredictable. 5 star players can go down with career-ending injuries, struggle and be outperformed by 1 star players. Example: CC Sabathia (2.5 stars or something) has a sub 2 ERA through 15 starts while Tanakas ERA is near 5. Stephen Drews low batting average is realistic though. I would be happy with just this but you can do so much more. You can manage a team from the 1800s or create your own league. Everything can be customized. Overall OOTP16 is an excellent game which is worth the money!

For the past few years I’ve enjoyed playing the IOS version of OOTP. I knew the OSX version was more realistic, but I couldn’t believe how much more powerful and detailed this program is. Not only is the game simulation realistic, but roster rules, contracts, and drafting are all recreated in their full glory. You have to hire coaches, handle players’ promotions and demotions through the minors, and set your 40-man roster, consistent with Major League rules. Some players can’t be demoted to the minors because they’re out of options, others have and enforce no-trade clauses. Sometimes players you draft decide that they’d rather go to college than sign with your team. There’s even a fog of war element, as the quality of your scouting director can warp your team’s opinion of a player’s quality—some scouts will love a free agent you’re thinking of signing, while others will think he’s a bum. Add to that the full support of MLB—no generic team names or star outfielders named “Pete Bass” instead of Mike Trout—and this is a great baseball sim. The OSX version of the game includes past seasons, so you can go back to 1908 and replay the last 107 years of Cubs baseball if you want to, to see if you could do a better job than the GMs and managers the franchise actually had since their last World Championship.

I am a baseball junkie always looking for a game to stimulate me…this replaces the old Strat-O-Matic…you can manage you can be the general manager. You are in charge of every aspect of the game from the major league team all the way to it’s single A minor league team. You can play international teams from Japan Korea. You decide the line up you decide the rotation you decide who gets sent down to the minors. You watch and see how your players are feeling how they respond to team mate, its amazing to play, oh yeah you can manage teams of the past, 1961 SanFrancisco Giants with Mays, McCovey, Marichal. I can talk forever you have to see it to beleive it…hurry with OOTP 2017

New to the game…read a lot of the reviews before purchasing. haven’t had any issues. The experience has been fun and enjoy the game. I am not a technical person, so any issue would probably have kept me from playing. None to report! I recommend this game.