[leiterfluid1227]

As someone who works in independent baseball, I just want to say kudos to everyone on the inclusion and realism of the independent leagues. I've only played through spring training and about a month of regular season games, but I'm blown away at how the dynamics mirror that of the real life indy process. Here are some notes I exchanged with a friend who works for another independent team. He's never played OOTP, but is now planning on buying:

It’s called Out of the Park Baseball. Text/strategy sim, so there’s no graphics, but you can do pretty much everything else you would do in real life (negotiate contracts, trades, arbitration, Rule V draft, amateur draft, full minor league system—there’s even a winter meetings period). This year, they added all of the indy leagues with real rosters (even figured out the Can-Am interleague play, which I gave them a lot of credit for).


It’s only $40. I buy it every year (the 2015 version actually just came out this morning). Well worth the investment in my opinion. At this point I look at it as supporting the developers who make the game better and better each year. They are based out of Germany. Curt Schilling and Pat Neshek are among the notable players/ex-players who promote it.


In years past I’d pick the Mets or another MLB organization and play through a bunch of seasons. The best part was watching guys you drafted work up the chain. It actually shed some perspective on how tough it really is for a farm director to make decisions and why guys end up in our league that are overqualified. The “numbers game” is definitely more than just a cliché. I also should have pointed out that you can manage the individual games pitch-by-pitch or batter-by-batter in addition to all of the GM stuff.


There is also an option to add the major international leagues (Japan, Korea, Mexico, Cuba, Austrailia, etc. with real rosters and schedules). I added those along with the indy leagues and decided to just concentrate on Winnipeg. So basically, the MLB is running in the background and I have no idea what’s going on unless I check their page. It’s literally an entire world of professional baseball.


Another realistic dynamic that guys like you and I could appreciate is how the free agents’ asking prices come down. You start in late March and all of the free agents from all of the leagues I mentioned are in one pool. Naturally, ex-MLB guys or ex-high minors guys have asking prices way out of the price range of the American Association salary cap. However, once the MLB/MiLB season begins, the market begins to correct itself, and guys that are of similar calibre to the MLB guys we’ve seen in the AA in real life are willing to sign for much less. With that being said, MLB teams can still purchase the contracts of indy guys (although there is no warning when this happens and there are no reversionary rights). Another realistic element is that they don’t just focus on your “best” players. For example, I signed Raul Ibanez who was still rated as having the ability to contribute to an MLB club, but he was passed over for my SS (who never played in the Majors) and assigned to High-A due to an organizational injury.


I guess the fact that my biggest gripe is lack of reversionary rights speaks to the realism of the game. There’s also a bunch of options and add-ons to make the game more aesthetically pleasing (jerseys, hats, logos, etc.).


Another great thing you can do is start in any year (literally from dead ball era to 2014) and play back through the present day. You could go back to 1940 and re-write Dodgers history. All of the “future” players will gradually show up in the subsequent drafts, so you could take Sandy Koufax or Jackie Robinson.


There’s also an option to dump everyone into a pool and begin a fictional league where Babe Ruth plays on the same team (or against) Clayton Kershaw. I’ve never done this as I’m too much of a purist, but it’s a neat option if you’re into the “what if” angle. You can also create a 100% fictional league, but those require a bit more work.


I had to make some tweaks to get the salary cap to work, but those are fairly easy in the financial modifier. There is no cap when you start the game, but there is an option for “minimum/maximum player salary” and “maximum player expenses”. I believe our cap is $115,000 with the top guy only counting as half. I just set it to $120,000 since the game doesn’t have the algorithm to calculate the highest paid salary.


It also gives you the option to set standard salaries for each calibre of player. It lists average salaries for super star, star, above average, all the way down to poor players. You just enter the real life values (I did monthly salary x four months) and it corrects the market on asking prices. Since the contracts are yearly and not monthly, I was worried how that would affect the cap as you make transactions. However, the cap is based on the total value of the guys you presently have signed. So if you cut a $10,000 player in June, it clears $10,000 off your cap space. It’s not a perfect reconstruction, but the overall numbers and methodology work the same.


There is also a new feature this year that easily calculates a players expected value. Each player has listed ratings (overall and the five tool categories). This year, they added a drop down menu listing all of the leagues in your world, providing a general idea of how a guy would perform at higher or lower levels.


Oh, and as far as roster size, you can set it to 22 (or whatever you want). You can also set an expanded roster size to 23 (or whatever you want), and set the precise date of the trade deadline/roster expansion.


Yes, the game itself runs on a 365-day calendar (another great feature I like compared to other video games or simulations...there’s no “day off” on the job), but you don’t have to match that up with real life. You can play through 10 seasons in one day if you’d like. The release date just happens to coincide with MLB spring training.

You can also set/restrict the contract and extension rates. For our league, I set maximum contract length for 1 year and enabled contract extensions, meaning it’s impossible to extend a guy for more than one year. It’s not precisely the “one year + option” the AA has in real life, but it more or less accomplishes the same thing. You can enable option years on contracts (team and/or player), but the minimum length has two be 2 years for that. If the current system I’m using isn’t as realistic as I hoped, I might toy with the option idea.


Again, great job everyone!