Reddit AMA Today at 1PM!

[dishnet34]

Good morning, everyone!

At 1pm ET today, Nicolino and others from the Out of the Park Baseball staff will be conducting an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on the r/mlb subreddit about the new version of OOTP, OOTP26!

If you want to submit a question/questions, the thread is open now! https://www.reddit.com/r/mlb/comment...t_of_the_park/

[Sweed]

Would there be a way to post a text of the AMA here after it's over for those of us that either can't be online for the AMA, or don't Reddit? If not is there a way to post a link that would let us read it after the fact on Reddit?

Thanks.

[dishnet34]

Originally Posted by Sweed

Would there be a way to post a text of the AMA here after it's over for those of us that either can't be online for the AMA, or don't Reddit? If not is there a way to post a link that would let us read it after the fact on Reddit?

Thanks.

While the link in the main post can take you to the thread, which will be available for as long as the internet is around, I can come up with a text post here to parse through all the things asked during the AMA

[dishnet34]

Transcriptor's note: Any unsigned response is attributed to Nicolino unless I hear otherwise from OOTP staff, since his account on Reddit was mainly used to respond to the questions.

Originally Posted by DespairAndCatnip

Will there be any updates to the Association feature? I know I'm in the minority, but I love to use OOTP to create fictional and historical fictional worlds.

Lukas - No nothing planned here for this year.

Originally Posted by nice417

From an aesthetic standpoint when we are playing tournaments is it possible to not have the box score the same color or a very similar color for each team?

Second question is when we are playing tournaments sometimes we do not get the ball field that is stated and we get a generic field will this be changed for 26 as well?

Matt - In both PT and the base game, we are extending out how the construction kit is being used. Instead of using the generic field, it will create a random ballpark from the construction kit features, and play in that park. So it may not exactly look like the actual park that was used, but it will create a much nicer looking park to play games in.

We will look into the boxscore question in regards to team colors.

Originally Posted by matzt

Will OOTP 26 be Steamdeck verified?

Nicolino - It does work on the Steamdeck, but we don't natively support it.

Originally Posted by Tricky-Inspector4922

Will we be able to view player's average/max exit velocities and launch angle this year? The play by play has the data on each ball in play, I would love to be able to see that for a player's whole season/career.

Love the game btw, so much fun

Matt - No, we do want to make sure that any stats that we give like that are truly representative. We don’t really want to show someone gain a bunch of EV in their stats but have that as not actually representative of any change in their talent or something else.

Originally Posted by lovallis

Any chance for a PT feature this year where we can change the order of packs opened? For example: this year historical silvers were slated to open AFTER historical diamonds - or “era” packs were set to open above all else, including historical rainbow perfects. I know a feature was added to go back to the menu and open one at a time, but I think this would be a nice quality of life feature as a guy who collects and opens packs once a week.

Nicolino - This year when you open packs, it will default to opening all the packs of the current type before going back to the start of the order to open the rest. There's also a button on the top right of the screen that allows you to select the next pack type you want to open.

Originally Posted by matzt

Will OOTP offer steam cloud saves (so we can play between devices)?

Lukas - We’ve looked into this extensively, but it’s a challenge to offer this on the standalone version as well as Steam. We wouldn’t like to offer this on only one version of the game, so we’ll continue to look into enabling this for all versions of the game.

Originally Posted by TheSeanie

Is the option to adjust how sensitive injury proneness is to change when players are injured going to be in ootp 26, or maybe on the radar for future versions? It still seems that every save where we use realistic modern day settings for injuries, every free agent is fragile or wrecked by age 30

Matt - Modern day MLB injuries do wreak havoc with players. We’re always looking to make sure there’s balance in how ratings adjust over time. You are able to change those settings. One of things we pride ourselves on is that the game is very custimizable.

Originally Posted by Watty89

Will I be able to manage Great Britain in the WBC?

Nicolino - Yes. In 2025 you can play through the qualifiers, and then it will roll into 2026 where you can play any of the teams in the main tournament. Since they're already qualified, Great Britain will be present.

Originally Posted by endaayer92

I love OOTP but my biggest qualm is that there a lot memory bloat, be it facegen, player/staff pictures, messages, reports, so on and so forth, that can really add up and clog to the point where it will crash or bring my computer to a complete standstill, and loading times can be obnoxiously long.

I know there are options to turn most (all)? of this off, but it's very tedious to do that every time I start a new file.

Is there any way for OOTP26 to include a "lite" mode setting that focuses on performance where, when checked, all of that memory bloat is off by default? Or a settings template I can click to quickly turn all of those options off? (if such a thing already exists please let me know!)

This would make OOTP go from great to outstanding in my view. Thanks.

Will - Good idea, although at the moment there is no overall setting, there are a couple settings that are the most impactful to change from the default.

Facegen > Uncheck Load FaceGen PhotoFit files automatically

Global Settings > Save Box Scores from… > Human Teams

Global Settings > Save 3D Movements from… > Human Teams

(although turning off all of the Auto-Save & Log Settings will help the most)

Originally Posted by ifHodor

In your opinions, what were some of the top successes for the PT 25 cycle? What were some of the things you wish went differently? What new features or plans are you most looking forward to for PT 26? Favorite cards released?

Rich - Personally I loved the new licensed legendary players and Hall of Fame plaque cards; I believe they add a lot to the overall experience of fans to really see the true Plaques and player images of a lot more players than we have had in the past. And more coming this season too!

Lukas - I really love how many of the Alumni cards we’ve been able to offer and am looking forward to our being able to create more for more players this year.

Nicolino - I enjoyed the competitiveness of the PT environment around tournaments and Perfect Drafts. It was great to see players engaged in different formats and then compete in the PTCS, PTMS and PTWC. The PTWC was a resounding success, and a great way to end the cycle. The two-day event with different formats was such a great formula to cap off a great 25th anniversary year.

I also loved the real player images on PT cards! Rich does an incredible job signing legends to deals that allow us to use historic and iconic images to make the game even more special. The Willie McCovey giant bat photo is my favorite of PT 25 after the Roberto Clemente suit in the locker room image was spectacular in 24.

Paul - I loved the art we were able to use thanks to Rich from the Jose Bautista bat flip pic to the bevy of 80s and 90s players pictures we included. The Perfect Game set was my favorite new set as the art was amazing and celebrating all of the Perfect Games as well as a few of the *almost* Perfect Games like Armando Galarraga and Harvey Haddix was a lot of fun. I already really like the new Super Utility set.

I definitely felt more comfortable in my second year as Content Director and I’m extremely excited for year 3. Immortal Seasons are returning after a year off, Perfect Game will be back, a new Unassisted Triple Play set is coming, plus much, much more! Rich has already secured some massive new player contracts that I can’t wait to show off.

As for something I’d have changed, I think the power level of PTCS/MS rewards was deemed light by the community on the whole and I will be mindful of that for 26 as I want folks to feel like they’re getting something substantial for their achievements in those major tournaments.

Originally Posted by BenHarper20

Will combinator cards be returning in 2026? They completely ruined the game and I think we deserve to know if they'll be a part of the game again before we pre-order.

Paul - While they weren’t loved by everyone, we respectfully disagree that they “ruined” the game.

It was the first year of a huge new feature, and we’ve taken in the community feedback to make them better for 26.

First off, they will be re-named Variants, their power level will be brought down lower, the “combistry” effect (the high-impact chemistry as a team collected more combinators) will be eliminated, and they will be easier to upgrade to cut back on the high number of mouse clicks required to boost them. We’re excited for year 2 of the upgradeable cards.

Originally Posted by shdowmastr81

On the player profile main screen there is a Summary box and in that Summary box, for pitchers specificially, there is a projected current and future role listed. Are there any plans to add something similar to the Summary box for hitters? maybe something that says Starting 2B, or Bench Infielder, etc?

Matt - For pitchers it’s a lot more important to know if they project as a SP or a RP. For hitters, it’s a lot more subjective on what their ideal future role would be.

Originally Posted by johnsonr2013

I know it is unlikely for 26, but what are the chances we get some of the foreign leagues that used to be present in the game back?

Lukas - For the 26 dev cycle, we chose to put the time and effort we had available diving deeper into the leagues that we do have. We’ve put a lot of effort into updating the affiliated minors players to a deeper level than we’ve been able to in the last couple years. Things like adjusting pitcher’s repertoires where available even well into the A leagues, updating some service times and position changes that had been overlooked, and putting even more time and effort into adjusting the ratings in the lower levels of the minors, as well as adding in splits, and expanding where we use Statscast data throughout the affiliated leagues in the roster set. Even doing some other new things like adding in alternate facegen jerseys for MLB teams, including City Connect uniforms as well.

For the coming years though, we really would like to work on reconnecting with leagues we’ve had in the past and creating new connections with other leagues and expanding out the OOTP universe to more and more leagues.

Originally Posted by GMMWD

Playing in online OOTP leagues has been the most fun I’ve ever had with video games. There’s a vibrant community of guys that love this game. Are there any plans to make online league focused updates in future games?

Will - There are a few changes made this year focused on online leagues in particular, in particular an item that has been long requested; a new queue for the development lab 2.0 to help leagues use the new feature. (it can be used in single player as well).

Originally Posted by thrillhouse989

What will the updates to the player scouting model look like? What new information might we be able to see, how might it change how we play?

The announcement mentions AI updates for 26, any chance you’d be able to tell us where the AI should look improved?

Matt - Scouting - We redid a lot of the underlying scouting. The biggest change is that scouts when you get a better accuracy on players will now have a little better view into the potential future player development, and will be able to better predict the scouting risk associated whether the player will reach their full potential.

For AI, we check a lot of items. One of the bigger updates this year will be to better manage the minor league roster AI, so that players can hopefully have a more realistic minor league progression.

Originally Posted by mannysoloway

Any changes to winter leagues? I would love the ability to create the equivalent of the Caribbean Series in the game.

Lukas - Nothing specific about winter leagues, the World Baseball Classic and qualifiers should add a great international flavour. The Caribbean Series is hard to coordinate the mix of players that play in it, and would require a separate license. We’re always looking to expand out with more licensing deals to add a bigger mix of leagues. So we’ll definitely try to take advantage of any licensing opportunities for new leagues in the future. We follow a great deal of leagues and love having as much of the baseball world as possible represented in-game. The thing is, we’re a small team, and licensing deals take a lot of time and effort to set up and then execute. So we have to take it little by little, and try to make incremental gains in being able to offer more official leagues.

Originally Posted by long_dickofthelaw

Any plans to separate out sliders and sweepers as individual pitches? Might make a big difference in pitching handedness splits (though I have no idea how hard it would be to code).

Lukas - We have a bunch of default pitch types. We may consider it in the future, but a lot of those pitch types are so much in the eye of the beholder. It’s very hard to actually break down the difference between some of the breaking pitch types. If you look at scouting reports and compare them across different sources, everyone classifies pitches a little differently. Once source might say a guy has a slider, one says it’s a sweeper and one says it’s a slurve. So pitch types like sweepers and slurves, we’ve considered adding them in and may yet do so. But we’d want to do it in a way that’s meaningful, and doesn’t just make identifying pitch types more confusing.

Originally Posted by According_Fruit6379

I thought that in the last road to release there was going to be something about improvements in scouting. Something I want to know is if the scout report is more detailed instead of giving us a DEF value, is it possible that it also has the values ​​of the defensive ratings (range, arm error, etc.) in the report.

Nicolino - Currently the scouting reports don’t elaborate more, but this is something we have an eye on and would like to improve in the near future.

Originally Posted by According_Fruit6379

I also want to know if some parameters of the TCR, speed of development, age of B and P (decline) were touched or varied in relation to last year's version?

Matt - Yes, we have done a heavy pass through player development, TCR, and everything related to that. We know players this year tended to crash in their late 20s, and putting in a lot of effort to make sure that development paths are more realistic. It’s been big on our priority list for sure.

Originally Posted by TheRealEVCinNYC

We know that there will be bonus "loyalty" packs for returning Perfect Team players but the details have not been shared yet; can you do that today so we know what to expect?

Nicolino - Yes, there will be loyalty packs for PT 26 and here they are:

19-22: 3 Diamond Packs
23-25: 2 Diamond Packs

Originally Posted by sinistah4

Is there a way you guys can add a button that can clear scores after we simulate a game and allow us to re-simulate that game again?

Matt - So you want to cheat …. You can use the simulation module if you want to get a sense of matchups between two teams, but no, replaying a game won’t be supported.

Originally Posted by Tekneek74

Will there be a sorting/filter option in the PT26 Card Shop to only see cards that are part of incomplete missions?

Nicolino - You can still filter by specific mission to see what you’re missing, but there currently isn’t a way to do it for all incomplete missions in your inventory. It’s a good suggestion that we will explore, though.

Originally Posted by RedGreenPepper2599

What are some QOL improvements and improvements to prior new features that you guys like. I know about Dev lab 2.0

Also, any upgrade plans to the create a ballpark feature?

Matt - We always have a ton of little things, even something as simple as little left and right arrows when navigating the league settings and rules to be able to quick cycle between leagues without too many clicks.

The Construction Kit has a bunch of new features too. Not only will we use those parks in a lot more places instead of the generic option, but we have added all new backdrops to the parks, updated the seating model, have the walls adjust to the park dimensions, added in the ability to have domes vs open stadiums, and a lot more.

Originally Posted by Natan-Cake

Are there plans to include a way to get female players into the game? I know it's been a topic on the forum for awhile so I'm curious to know

Nicolino - Yes, it’s been a topic for awhile and for a good reason. We would love to do it, and when we do anything we strive our best to do it properly, all the way. To implement female players in the game properly, with accuracy and respect, is a multi-year effort involving a significant amount of resources across almost every aspect of the game (engine, UI, databases, in-game text, and AI for starters). Plus, it would most likely include new licensing (we’d LOVE being able to “play” the leagues represented in “A League of Their Own” for example) in order to be authentic.

Originally Posted by QuasiFrodoLip****z

Is it true that pitches are more-or-less identical? I saw a study someone conducted on the sub-reddit that posited that all pitches minus the knuckleball are more-or-less equal in terms of effectiveness. One could essentially erase the names above the pitches and just look at the rating.

Matt - They are not. Each pitch impacts platoon splits in a different way, and each pitch will contribute to a player’s stuff rating at slightly different levels.

Originally Posted by rockiesfan4ever

Are there any plans to make the "ratings" page adjustable so you don't have to scroll to see all the pitching ratings? It feels weird to me that the major portion of the ratings page shows hitting ratings even for pitchers.

Matt - This will vary a lot based on an individual screen resolution. We aim to make sure that things work out for the vast majority of screen sizes, but sometimes it’s hard to fit it all in.

Originally Posted by QuasiFrodoLip****z

I know you guys are pretty transparent on the forums, but a lot of the community doesn't use the forums so I'll ask: Any plans to be more public on the way calculations and ratings work? A lot of people rely on the work of Reddit detectives like this, and this could be outdated or flat-out wrong. It would be nice to have some type of easily accessible repository for ratings information. There's a lot of misinformation and confusion going around.

Matt - We are as transparent as we can possibly be, while maintaining our “secret sauce” that we feel is one of the key differentiators of our game. Personally I think it’s more fun to not know the exact formulas, and treat this like real life with a little fog of war. Also why scouting is important, and it can be more fun sometimes to play on a lower resolution ratings scale.

Originally Posted by QuasiFrodoLip****z

Any plans to use generative AI in OOTP? Do you think it would be feasible, or even attractive? We've had the same news articles and storylines for years and years haha.

Matt - Not for OOTP 26, or the near future. The technology is evolving so rapidly, and we're not currently working on to define how it can best be utilized. Further down the line, there’s certainly a use case for generative AI (storylines would be the most obvious place for them) but as of this time that’s pure conjecture. Most people probably don’t want to download an entire training set to their computer, too, and there’s still obviously some big questions about what (ethically, legally, etc..) you can train data on.

Originally Posted by Natan-Cake

How big of a deal is your scouting and player development budget? I haven't noticed a considerable difference beyond having a higher budget feels better

Will - It’s certainly true in real life that some teams invest a lot more. How much that actually helps is not something you can really quantify - although we did add a feature this year where when you edit your development sliders, it will track how often those actually come into play in development, and give you a hint about how much impact moving the sliders actually is having on your players.

Originally Posted by dmendro

Discord seems to be the primary form of communications for all thing PT, is there a plan to make it more cohesive for new events, tournaments and PD's, as well as new card and mission release plans in the actual game so I dont have to be married to discord?

Nicolino - We invested a lot in our back-end technology to make it a lot easier for players to get Perfect Team information directly in the game. We added “Latest Content Drops” directly on the Perfect Team home page, and our in-game Perfect Team news feed is updated with all of the big information about what’s happening in the game including the big events and tournaments. Look for that to continue in PT 26! In terms of Discord, we all know how quickly internet communications move, and these days a material number of our players are in our Discord (and others) and our forums, and that is a place where we communicate on the regular as well.

In a world that has forums, Discord, Facebook, Instagram, X, Snapchat, and so many other places - and we have a very small team that focuses most of our time making sure the game is always the priority - we have to “pick our spots” to a degree. The largest number of users are in the game directly, which is why in-game communications are vital. The next two most-populated places as of today are our forums and Discord, which is why that’s where the next level of comms takes place.

Originally Posted by RedGreenPepper2599

Any chance one day there might be a player page similar to baseball savant that shows where a player ranks in your league % wise for key stats and metrics?

Matt - They do have some great graphs and charts. We don’t have that for 26, but would certainly love to expand on the graphical options down the road.

Originally Posted by Ok_Information_7492

OOTP 25 is awesome. I struggle the most with keeping track of who is is developing monthly. Is there a feature coming to where we can choose who we see develops monthly on those emails instead of my entire organization, or those emails could be sorted by player with the highest potential? Also just more clarity on how scouting works for international and the amateur draft. How do I raise scouting in certain players other than inviting them to practice?

Nicolino - Thank you!

In terms of development, everyone is always developing, so the development updates will cover all your players. At the moment there’s no way to sort that email but it’s a good idea

The main way to scout the international amateurs and draft pool is via the international practices and combine watchlist respectively. This also helps improve your team’s relationship with the players making them easier to sign. That being said, it’s possible to manually scout individual players still using your scouting tasks.

Originally Posted by Natan-Cake

Have you considered doing any community competitions? Like a competition on the subreddit where everyone submits a storyline and the storyline with the most votes gets added to the game?

Nicolino - Yes. While we couldn’t just blindly take whatever wins if it wasn’t appropriate for the game, we’d certainly monitor a community-ran contest like that and be open to adding the best ones in the game. If you decide to undertake that task, please let us know and we’ll keep tabs on it!

Originally Posted by Ok_Information_7492

Also would love to hear from the creators of the game the difference and benefits of Tools scouts vs Ability scouts. Most people on here seem convinced Tools is way better.

Matt - That’s always been a point of controversy. That’s actually another reason why wanted to make a big change to scouting this year. In 26, we are actually shifting the balance of tools vs ability scouts. Scouts that favor tools will have a preference for player’s innate development potential, how fast they are developing. Scouts that favor tools may be able to find players who are more likely to go through talent changes, and be able to grow beyond their current ratings.

Originally Posted by Outlawxrahul

Is ootp 26 GO going to have a player development lab like ootp 25? So u can have players work on specific things in the offseason

We're not feature-complete on OOTP Go 26 at this time, but will be giving more details on it after the launch of OOTP 26 on PC.

Originally Posted by DrDynastic

What video games do OOTP staff play when they’re not playing Out of the Park?

Rich - I am deep into Balatro these days, and also dabbling in Yakuza Like a Dragon, NCAA Football 25, and Quantum Break. But most of my “video game” time right now is spent trying to beat the Red Deck in Balatro.

Will - Mainly Hearthstone Battlegrounds, TF2, and League of Legends.

Matt - Civilization 7

Lukas - I like racing games. Love NR2003. EA Sport WRC. Football Manager. Currently playing Horizon Zero Dawn.

Nicolino - Nico enjoys playing retro games, so you can find him playing Tecmo Super Bowl, which he used to play competitively at live and online tournaments. He also enjoys the NES RBI Baseball, Galaga, Dig Dug and other old games. As far as recent games, it’s more a matter of having the free time, but he enjoys Football Manager and various Star Wars games.

Paul enjoys MLB The Show because he lives, eats and breathes baseball all day, every day.

Will - Xayah adc, Lee jg, and lately digging Brand sup (depends where I get queued). Been playing mostly AURF recently though.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by dishnet34

While the link in the main post can take you to the thread, which will be available for as long as the internet is around, I can come up with a text post here to parse through all the things asked during the AMA

Thankyou for posting the AMA questions/answers here.

[kq76]

Thanks for doing all that formatting, dishnet! I might not have bothered to read it on reddit, but with it here already in front of me I did.

Matt - No, we do want to make sure that any stats that we give like that are truly representative. We don’t really want to show someone gain a bunch of EV in their stats but have that as not actually representative of any change in their talent or something else.

Do you not do that for HR distances though? Do you wish you didn't give HR distances? I wish there was more behind the HR distances (I'm under the impression that the distances are totally random and don't have anything to do with a player's ability, please correct me if I'm wrong), but at the same time I kind of like that they're still there.

Originally Posted by ifHodor
In your opinions, what were some of the top successes for the PT 25 cycle? What were some of the things you wish went differently? What new features or plans are you most looking forward to for PT 26? Favorite cards released?

This person's second question was a great one, but unfortunately everyone, other than Paul, chose to only talk about what they loved. Yeah, it's important to congratulate yourself on your successes, but at the same time it's probably even more important to ask yourself what went wrong, what could you have done better. Hopefully they're at least doing that privately, but I think doing it publicly would have engendered some confidence in those who didn't like the direction PT has been going in ("okay, they are seeing what we're seeing; they're not saying the sky is red when it's clearly blue").

I don't know who Paul is, but good on him for identifying a weak point.

Originally Posted by shdowmastr81
On the player profile main screen there is a Summary box and in that Summary box, for pitchers specificially, there is a projected current and future role listed. Are there any plans to add something similar to the Summary box for hitters? maybe something that says Starting 2B, or Bench Infielder, etc?

I hadn't thought of this before, but I kind of like it. Players do sometimes tell us that they expect to be starters or just in the majors, it'd be nice for our scouts to tell us what they expect of these players. I like it.

Lukas - We have a bunch of default pitch types. We may consider it in the future, but a lot of those pitch types are so much in the eye of the beholder. It’s very hard to actually break down the difference between some of the breaking pitch types. If you look at scouting reports and compare them across different sources, everyone classifies pitches a little differently. Once source might say a guy has a slider, one says it’s a sweeper and one says it’s a slurve. So pitch types like sweepers and slurves, we’ve considered adding them in and may yet do so. But we’d want to do it in a way that’s meaningful, and doesn’t just make identifying pitch types more confusing.

When are we "identifying pitch types"? Is there an MLB the show mode in the game?

I get that different people give different names to pitches, often erroneously, but I don't think that means we shouldn't include these different types. It's not like sweepers, slurves, and sliders are different names for the same pitch. No, they're different. Here's a table I made a while back (sorry, I'm not going to bother reformatting it for here; if someone wants to read it easier, put it in a markdown editor):

| | **Velocity** | **Vertical** | **Lateral** | **Popularity** | **Example** | **Wiki** |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | -- |
| 4-seamer | fastest | straight | straight | most common | Nolan Ryan | [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-seam_fastball) |
| 2-seamer | very fast | some | yes, armside | more | Greg Maddux / Bartolo Colon | [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-seam_fastball) |
| sinker | very fast | yes | yes, armside | less | Jordan Hicks | [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinker_(pitch)) |
| cutter | fast | some | yes, gloveside | common | Mariano Rivera | [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut_fastball) |
| runner | very fast | no | yes, armside | rare | Marcus Stroman | [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-seam_fastball) |
| changeup | somewhat fast | maybe | no | less | Johan Santana | [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changeup) |
| circle changeup | medium | yes | yes, armside | common | Pedro Martinez | [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_changeup) |
| curveball | slow | yes, a lot | maybe, slight gloveside | common | Sandy Koufax | [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball) |
| spike curve (modern KC) | somewhat slow | yes | maybe, slight gloveside | rare | Mike Mussina | [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuckle_curve) |
| knuckle-curve | slow | some | unpredictable | dead? | Burt Hooten | [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuckle_curve) |
| knuckle-fastball | medium | maybe | unpredictable | dead? | Hoyt Wilhelm | [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuckle_curve) |
| slider | somewhat fast | yes | yes, gloveside | common | Randy Johnson | [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slider_(pitch)) |
| sweeper | medium | yes, a bit | yes, a lot gloveside | common | Shohei Ohtani / Corey Kluber | [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slider_(pitch)) |
| splitter | somewhat fast | yes, a lot | no | less | Bruce Sutter / Roger Clemens | [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-finger_fastball) |
| splinker | fast | yes | yes, a bit armside | rare | Paul Skenes / Jhoan Duran | link |
| slurve | medium | yes.some | yes, a bit gloveside | rare | Kerry Wood / Goose Gossage | [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slurve) |
| swurve | slow | yes, some | yes, a lot gloveside | rare | Doc Gooden | [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball) |
| knuckleball | slow | unpredictable | unpredictable | rare | Phil Niekro / Tim Wakefield | [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuckleball) |
| screwball | medium | maybe | yes, armside | very rare | Fernando Valenzuela / Carl Hubbell | [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screwball) |
| forkball | medium | too much | no | very rare | Roy Face / Gaylord Perry / Dave Stewart | [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forkball) |
| eephus | slowest | ridiculous arc | | very rare | Rip Sewell | [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eephus_pitch) |
| palmball | medium | | | | Trevor Hoffman | [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmball) |
| spitball | | | | | Gaylord Perry / Burleigh Grimes | [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spitball) |
| scuffball | | | | | Whitey Ford | [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emery_ball) |
| hesitation | | | | | Satchel Paige | link |
| gyroball | | | | | | [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyroball) |
| shuuto | any? | extreme? | extreme? | | Greg Maddux / Masaji Hiramatsu | [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuuto) |

EDIT: If anyone thinks I'm mistaken in any of this, as always, please correct me. I only made it to help myself learn about them all.

Nicolino - Yes, it’s been a topic for awhile and for a good reason. We would love to do it, and when we do anything we strive our best to do it properly, all the way...

This kind of answer (to anything) is a bit worrisome to me. I learned a long time ago that if you wait until you can do something perfect (or close to perfect), you'll never get a lot done. Now Nico doesn't say perfect or close to perfect here, but he might as well. No, I strongly believe we should just get things started, but also keep in mind that we should come back to them and improve them over time. Now I don't think OOTP often takes this attitude (I doubt they're usually perfectly happy with new features), but I also think we shouldn't shy away from something and maybe put it off for eternity just because we don't think we can get it perfect or right on our first try. OOTP is not NASA, we don't need to get it right on try #1.

This goes all the way back to associations. We didn't get what we wanted and so not many people played with them and OOTP seemed to think, "well, we shouldn't have worked on that at all". No, what we should have done was taken another hack at it, just like we're now seeing with devlab 2.0. FWIW, I thought last year's devlab was pretty awesome, but still, I appreciate they're improving it even further.

As for females in OOTP, for me it falls in the category, "I doubt I'd ever play with it, but I hope it gets in one day for those who do want it".

A couple stats I found interesting:

-"females account for more than a third of 14 million-plus people that tune into major events" [1]

-according to at least one study, the % of women who name baseball as their favourite sport is 15%, which is very close to the 17% of men who say the same (the biggest drop off by far is for football, 32% vs 43%) [2]

Now I'm not delusional, I'm not thinking that adding females to OOTP could increase OOTP's sales by 50% (one third of the total). The women who love baseball and might play OOTP are probably already playing OOTP, but like any feature, there's got to be some % of the already existing customer base that would like it. Some men might even like it. I could even maybe go for some future fantasy league with women in it one day.

Matt - Not for OOTP 26, or the near future.

Phew! I almost hope I'm dead before everything we see is fake crap created by AI. This urge to run towards AI by so many people really troubles me.

... In a world that has forums, Discord, Facebook, Instagram, X, Snapchat, and so many other places - and we have a very small team that focuses most of our time making sure the game is always the priority - we have to “pick our spots” to a degree. The largest number of users are in the game directly, which is why in-game communications are vital...

This is an interesting answer and I'd agree with the conclusion, except for one problem. Do people really want to read OOTP news while playing OOTP? I close those popups as fast as I can. When I open the game, I want to play the game, I don't want to read news about it. They're just like ads to me and who wants ads in their games. So unfortunately all these other places where the users are and are more likely to read your news are still probably even more vital than the in-game communications.

Originally Posted by RedGreenPepper2599
Any chance one day there might be a player page similar to baseball savant that shows where a player ranks in your league % wise for key stats and metrics?
Matt - They do have some great graphs and charts. We don’t have that for 26, but would certainly love to expand on the graphical options down the road.

Good question! I salivate over graphs and charts too. I still remember the first time I saw those WPA graphs in OOTP. That was one of the coolest "oh wow!" moments I've had with OOTP. More of that, please.

Originally Posted by Ok_Information_7492
OOTP 25 is awesome. I struggle the most with keeping track of who is is developing monthly. Is there a feature coming to where we can choose who we see develops monthly on those emails instead of my entire organization, or those emails could be sorted by player with the highest potential? Also just more clarity on how scouting works for international and the amateur draft. How do I raise scouting in certain players other than inviting them to practice?

Yeah, this is something I feel like we took a step back from a while ago and never went back to. I can't remember what it looked like or what version it was in, but I used to scour the dev reports so much more than I do now. I think there was also some online league add-on we had too, but I'd swear OOTP had better dev reports in the past as well. I'll still read the messages we get, but seeing the data in table format with different colours for increases and decreases allowed you to take in so much more info far quicker. Now we have to put more effort into it and it's just not as worth it. Just adding a dev grid would be so welcome.

Matt - That’s always been a point of controversy. That’s actually another reason why wanted to make a big change to scouting this year. In 26, we are actually shifting the balance of tools vs ability scouts. Scouts that favor tools will have a preference for player’s innate development potential, how fast they are developing. Scouts that favor tools may be able to find players who are more likely to go through talent changes, and be able to grow beyond their current ratings.

You said favour tools for both when I think you probably meant ability for one of them, but I'm not sure which.

I liked the old system we had for this and I didn't think it was obvious which was better. It depended on the situation.

Nicolino - Nico enjoys playing retro games, so you can find him playing Tecmo Super Bowl, which he used to play competitively at live and online tournaments. He also enjoys the NES RBI Baseball, Galaga, Dig Dug and other old games. As far as recent games, it’s more a matter of having the free time, but he enjoys Football Manager and various Star Wars games.

Galaga and Dig Dug? Those were my two favourite games as a kid!

I like questions like this. It's sometimes said, "you are who you are friends with" and I think what games we play gives an insight into something about us as well. Although I'm not sure what any of these games says about any of us, I appreciate that the likes of everyone on the team are different and so they probably bring different things to OOTP that we might like.

[dishnet34]

Originally Posted by kq76

I don't know who Paul is, but good on him for identifying a weak point.

Ah shoot, I probably could've done a little bit with introducing who people were for the record. Paul is Paul Sporer, and he is the Perfect Team Content Director.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by Tricky-Inspector4922
Will we be able to view player's average/max exit velocities and launch angle this year? The play by play has the data on each ball in play, I would love to be able to see that for a player's whole season/career.

Love the game btw, so much fun

Originally Posted by dishnet34

Matt - No, we do want to make sure that any stats that we give like that are truly representative. We don’t really want to show someone gain a bunch of EV in their stats but have that as not actually representative of any change in their talent or something else.

Originally Posted by kq76

Do you not do that for HR distances though? Do you wish you didn't give HR distances? I wish there was more behind the HR distances (I'm under the impression that the distances are totally random and don't have anything to do with a player's ability, please correct me if I'm wrong), but at the same time I kind of like that they're still there.

No they don't do that for average HR distances. Like you I also thought that a high power guy was more likely to hit a monster HR. That may be the case, but like velo it may not be tied closely enough to player ratings/skills to use it in any meaningful way?

HR distances, like velocity/launch angle, are one time reports in the play by play. The game, as far as I know, has never kept track of a player's average HR distance. Nor has it kept track of a player's longest HR in their career. At least I don't think it does.

The original question is asking for the game to keep track of average velocity, and Matt is saying that an average velocity stat is not representative of a player's skill in OOTP the way it would be IRL. It would be a meaningless stat that a user couldn't/shouldn't rely on to tell them anything about the player. And yes, it would be nice if they could tie velo to batter skills to the point "average exit velo" was a useable stat.


The OP also asks about the max exit velocity. In that case I suppose one could keep the max velocity stat of one batted ball (same for HR distance) for flavor? I don't think a user would look at a very high max velocity (got lucky on one swing) from Mark Belanger and think "wow, he hits everything hard". But an average of "flavor velocities" over a season may have a user thinking just that.

Having said all of that I had thought that a 7 contact/ 7 power player generated more high velocity balls than a 4/4 player. I didn't think it had an actual affect in the game as to whether a batted ball is a hit or not, as it's not physics based. More along the lines of a 7/7 randomly generates a higher velo than a 4/4 player. Though reading Matt's post has me questioning that. To me, that is fine to keep behind the fog of war wall. YMMV.
It could still be that my thought is true, but not tied closely enough to batter skills to make it a reliable stat a user can, well use.

[Matt Arnold]

Stuff like exit velo, HR distance, and that is adjusted based on player ratings - Mark Belanger will hit a lot less 440+ft bombs than Stanton will. But at the moment, I would say the values we use for those are more "rough" than a lot of the other data, so it would take some balance on our end to make sure they match IRL averages, and then even more balance on top of that to check that any changes that players experience in those values is actually meaningful over time.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by Matt Arnold

Stuff like exit velo, HR distance, and that is adjusted based on player ratings - Mark Belanger will hit a lot less 440+ft bombs than Stanton will. But at the moment, I would say the values we use for those are more "rough" than a lot of the other data, so it would take some balance on our end to make sure they match IRL averages, and then even more balance on top of that to check that any changes that players experience in those values is actually meaningful over time.

Thanks Matt.

[kq76]

Originally Posted by Matt Arnold

Stuff like exit velo, HR distance, and that is adjusted based on player ratings

Excellent! I'm happy to be corrected on that. Now I can go back to looking at them and thinking, "yeah, he really hammered that one!".

I think I got the impression because some people had been complaining about a lot of really long home runs, but I do understand how both could be true.