Tips
 

Does anyone have simple tips to succeed? Been playing OOTP for awhile and never have steady success.

More information needed. League type, baseball era (history), scouts coaches on/off, financials, are you GM GM+manager, levels of minors.

Different leagues set ups and history will come with different paths to success.

Thats how baseball go.

I go top heavy as far as pitching. Really good starting pitching really good bullpen . My thought is good pitching all the stops good hitting. Having a really great pitching staff will carry your team and all you need is decent hitters

I'd also pay attention to your minor league system. Keep track of your top prospects and disable the AI promotion/demotion. This way the AI won't jerk them around if there are injuries and you can decide when they're ready to move on. When you have a good farm system established, you can trade extra prospects, like having 3 great shortstops that are all the same age, to fill other holes through MLB-ready talent or prospects at another position. Developing your own talent also ensures you have cheaper pieces that allow you to sign free agents that might put you over the top.

For the major-league level, I like to build around a great starting rotation and bullpen. Elite relievers are almost a dime a dozen compared to other positions, but having an elite bullpen lets you shorten games and lock down wins, as well as steal you wins by keeping games close. I also believe in great defense and having a little speed and having players who have good contact/eye/avoid K's. Having a good combination of these lets you get players on base to score runs even when you don't necessarily have a lot of power hitters.

I also tend to avoid players with low work ethic, boastful personality or other trait that could mess with team chemistry. Get strong leaders in your clubhouse and it will run much more smoothly.

Modern era


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I agree that good pitchers are the way to go.. but don't forget to acquire a catcher with a very good 'catcher ability'. That will maximize the potential of your pitching staff.

Another tip:

Every few days, check the waiver wire. You never know who may end up there. It's a good rule of thumb to check the waiver wire at the end of every 3-game series. A serviceable bench-bat or middle reliever almost always shows up there at some point during the season.. and especially after the Rule 5 Draft after Christmas too.

Have Fun!

Tips
 

N

In no particular order:

If you are starting a new league with an inaugural draft, you can game the finances a bit by focusing on drafting veterans. Your initial budget and market size are determined by your payroll after the draft. The downside is that you will likely end up with a weak farm system initially, but you can try to trade away some of the expensive veterans for prospects and budget clearing purposes. Even if you can't get any decent trades, once the veterans retire you'll have a lot of budget room to play with. (I thought this might have a chance to skew things in challenge mode, but so far in testing with a real MLB league I have been unable to draft to repeat this in OOTP 18. I'm not yet sure if its because something in challenge mode prevents it, the AI drafting is better, or if I've just been drafting the wrong players).

If you are playing games out and having offensive problems, start taking pitches. You can go 'extreme' and always take pitches until you have two strikes. Or just do that for poor hitters or batters on a cold streak. Or maybe just the first time through the line up. This will help drive up the opposing pitcher's pitch count, hopefully getting him out of the game quicker. This can seem a bit 'gamey', since the AI can't easily compensate (though, anecdotally, it seemed like this was less effective in OOTP 17 than in previous versions).

Through OOTP 17 at least, the AI has been pretty weak when it comes to its reliever usage. Playing through games gives you a pretty decent advantage. To save some time, you could still sim the first 5 or 6 innings.

http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/201...-shouldnt-they has a lot of useful advice. Sabremetric stuff may still be controversial in meatspace baseball, but following the statistics in a statistic simulator makes a lot of sense. (I haven't done any empirical testing of the tactics and strategies that I borrowed from there, but can say anecdotally that I've seen more success since I read that page).

For my lineups, I mostly follow what is stated in that link, except to rank hitters I use OPS+ instead of wOBA. I think I started this out of laziness, because OPS+ was on the view I usually used and wOBA was not. It is also an easier stat to understand, working as something of a gap between the 'traditional' stats and the more complicated stuff.

For the first ten games of the season, I build the lineup solely on ratings. After that, I primarily use offensive stats, reviewing and adjusting every ten games. If two players are close offensively, then I'll use defense to choose, and I try to be consistent about making defensive substitutions anywhere I am weak from the 7th inning on. I dislike having to take defense into account when building lineups and playing out games though, so I try to build a roster with no significant defensive weakpoints in the first place.

When drafting and down to the lesser talented options, I start drafting solely based on personality. In the past, I would create a personality view, but OOTP 18 has been kind enough to include one already. I really only care about Work Ethic and Intelligence. I'll sort by WE, then work down the list looking for the highest intelligence available (I don't think OOTP allows one to sort on two columns, that would be useful here if so). The idea is that the random talent increase stuff is supposedly based primarily on those two ratings, so it increases the chance for a 'diamond in the rough'. I've always abandoned my attempts to track if this really works before gathering enough data.

Make use of the 'team needs' trading section to find pieces you need. The quality of the trade offers I've received have greatly increased since I started using that. They still usually require a bit of work, but aren't the typical useless offers that I was used to seeing.

I play more as a commish but if i was new and just starting and taking over a team. Then i would choose a good but not great team.
You dont want to take over 62 Astros right away because you might get frustrated. But you dont want to take over the 27 yankees or 76 Reds as you could be making bad choices but your team is so great they overcome it. I think a good team may give you a better idea of how you are doing.
That is just my opinion. Best thing to do is just try different things and make a note of what works for you. Some tips may work for you and some may not.

Any recommendations on a particular team I should take over? I want fresh ideas.


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You could pick any non playoff team with a winning record. Maybe limit it to below 90 wins but above 70.
You could take either the 90 twins or braves
And then try them in 91 and see what happens.
Best thing to do is try different ways and find out the best way that is enjoyable to you.

I like to exploit matchups and especially platoon batters, no matter how talented they are as it's more beneficial to combo hitters for a .300+ BA/30+ HR "player" at a position.

A prime example in a historical replay was OF Jim Rice starting in 1984 against LHP in 1984 & 1985 before injuries forced me to use him fulltime in 1986.

1984 LHP: .317/.331/.579 in 130 PA - RHP: .271/.311/.450 in 148 PA
1985 LHP: .342/.373/.532 in 83 PA - RHP: .258/.308/.406 in 169 PA
1986 LHP: .301/.354/.445 in 161 PA - RHP: .258/.297/.489 in 347 PA

Clearly an All-Star masher against LHP but horrendous against RHP, he made a more obvious platoon candidate. Utilizing that knowledge can very helpful in winning games throughout a season and can be extended to relievers who dominate RHP or LHP only.

Thanks for the input. Much appreciated


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Some of the tips in this post are worth using (if not all of them).

I picked up my starting shortstop on the waiver wire!

I would like to see an email sent to the GM when a new player is added to the Waiver Wire so it is not necessary to check every day. The message could be simple "New players have been added to the waiver wire". It does not need to get complicated and list the players although that would also be nice. Make it easy for the player to be aware of all the changes that occur.


I've developed a rotation of screens that I at the start of each day and the Wavier Wire is one that is in the rotation, but I start skipping it after a while because it is usually empty. I assume I've missed a few good players because of this.


Thanks.
Malor