Still the Best, But...

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.

Catch22er about OOTP Baseball 16