Confessions of a Lost for Words Blue Jays GM: dynasty outline

[EKB]

This probably belongs to the Dynasty Reports but this is for one entry only, so...

Introduction

Hi everyone. This is a story that I wanted to share with you for quite a while but hesitated every single simulated season. I look forward to communicate with you all but your talks are usually overwhelming with their great analytics and professional humor. So I thought that I'm just not that good to even start a thread like this. You see, I come from Russia, a country that has never been quite into baseball and even my own love for this game doesn't let me follow it thoroughly so my only way of sticking to it is playing OOTP. Heck, I know more about history and players of this particular save rather than real-life MLB. But for nobody understands my OOTP pain in my surroundings, I came here.

So... now to the story itself.

The Save

I started a completely fictional MLB save starting from 2015, simulated for ten years so that everything was settled and took over my favorites, Toronto Blue Jays. They were quite out of shape in 2025, the year I applied as GM/manager, but on the second year we managed to enter the playoffs. Since then we made it eight times in a row which is one year short of the Orioles record (2017-2025).



As you can see, we dominated the league in 2030. 114 wins is nothing to sneeze at. Especially for me, a baseball noob who just doesn't deserve to play a game amazing as OOTP. We surfed through our all-time nemeses in the face of Mariners (lost to them in ALDS 2026 and ALCS 2029) and Tigers (lost to them in ALDS 2028), finally making it into the franchise second World Series (first one was originally in 2015, huh). But we lost that one too. We lost to Cincinatti Reds 4 games to 2, completely cloning the first WS appearance. What a story.

Legend Break

Funny enough, we were outplayed by the league legend, Jordan Torres. He was picked in the inaugural draft of the first season age 24 (not by Reds, though), which makes so that he played in 2030 World Series at the age of 39. Not much of a threat that year he was. Torres was injured for a while until Phillies traded him to Reds for whom he played only 41 game in the regular season. But he turned into a beast during the playoffs. 13 games (7 in start), 16 for 35 (.457), 1 HR, 3 RBI, 10 R. Jordan was clutch during our series and actually became the 2030 World Series MVP. Deadly to the Blue Jays.

If you are interested, Torres played four more seasons and retired at the age of 43. I guess he'll easily make it into the Hall of Fame.



Back to the Story

Anyway, we come back to the Blue Jays. I saw a great dip that we've got into. I don't know how we managed to sneak into the playoffs for next three seasons. But the inevitable came and we missed in 2034... To come back in a style in 2035 after a great trade with Brewers that gave us an ace named Adrian Torres. We definitely weren't great in the rotation (and it is still the hardest thing to get in this particular league), so he was a great improvement. We came back so well that we went to the World Series again, 3rd time in franchise history, 2nd time for me as a GM. By the way, I never reached WS in all of my saves since OOTP 2014. Well, I had a fictional world league to look after.

But we were faced by the greatest Colorado Rockies and lost 1-4. They won their third World Series, second in three years. I never thought I'm going to be that disappointed because we had a great run during ALDS and ALCS. There was never a doubt in my mind that we were going to do it next year, though. And so it begins.

2036 - 12th season, 10th PO appearance

96-66 is something I already got used to with this team. The expected record is just ridicious coming back to 100+ wins. Basically, it could have been even better but we've lost 8 out of the last 9 games almost losing the division to the Red Sox. But we won in game 162 which made it all better. We were great on all fronts which resembled a bit the season of 2030. Take a look.



I'm still shocked by 3-6 spots in my lineup. If only Tom Barth had one more RBI! We would have had four players in a row having 100+ RBI season. Oh well.

Of course, being a somewhat long-time OOTP player I knew that the season was going too smoothly. We had no injuries whatsoever. As you can see by our rotation, the end of the year had some 'surprises' for us. First, Beau Shellenberger (11-5, 3.06 ERA) who was one of our best gets in the team and occupied the third spot. Second, Josh Haney (7-3, 3.77 ERA), a youngster who we traded for in a strange deal that involved our other starter that I wanted to get rid of.

But I had some wild cards in my pocket. We turned a veteran Ken Tierney into a starter. And we called up Matt Klein, a 23-year-old pitcher from Buffalo Bisons. I had some good draft picks in my time, but none of them were pitchers. Matt Klein turned out to be a stud. In his second career MLB start he had a shutout against Orioles (9.0 IP, 3 H, 9 K, 1 BB). I almost cried.

Even with these two injuries we made it out alive. 1st in runs scored, 1st in runs against. I have never seen my bullpen perfoming that well. Every single player is under 3.00 ERA! And all the playoffs failures were pretty much caused by relievers. Pretty pumped to start the ALDS against the Los Angeles Angels.

Game 1 - LAA @ TOR 5-1

Adrian Torres had a decent start but surrended three runs. Two more from our closer, Terry Robinson, who wants too much money now and will probably enter free agency much to my regret.

Game 2 - LAA @ TOR 11-7

This was a wild one. We allowed three runs in the 1st, three more in the 2nd and two more for the icing on the cake in the 3rd. Steve Krier just wasn't there along with Nolan Schulte. I always hated the latter, but he's our only lefty in the bullpen. Offence was good, but couldn't cover this blatant perfomance.

As if I wasn't already morally suppressed, OOTP struck at us. It chose Mike Adrian (1 week) and Lorenzo Vilela (2 weeks) for the execution. Adrian is an overpaid guy who has one more year in the contract, but we still got him from Orioles to improve at outfield and he turned out great. Vilela is just our leadoff hitter who is among best averaging guys in the league.

Game 3 - TOR @ LAA 1-2

So this is where we come to a question. Who will start? We had a youngster Klein who hadn't even had time to adapt in the majors, a true veteran Tierney or just Danny Hall who spent the whole previous year on the disabled list and came back with a 16-win season. I decided to go conservative and went with Hall. He was really great. But apparently two runs isn't enough of a void to fill for our offence. We are swept by the Angels. Complete disaster.

What Is to Be Done?

I'm empty now. I beg for mercy. I feel nothing but dissapointment. I have never won the World Series in OOTP. I don't know if I will. Actually, my plan was to finally win in this save and to try and bring to life my long-time dream of a 'stats-only' league. But apparently I'm not even good at the game with the cards opened, so to say.

My finances are not that great, and I might lose Shellenberger and Robinson this year. Allen and 2B prospect Pat Reinhart may join the team. But does it really matter? What will this preseason change? I'm stuck in this rabbit hole. Every season is like a Groundhog day. I admit. OOTP wins. I don't.

Am I doing something wrong? Are only true hardcore baseball lovers allowed to win it? Are you Gods?

***

Thank you for sticking with this post. My writing may not be that diverse and punctuation is probably painful to watch, as English is not my primary language. So genuine 'thank you' to everyone who at least heard me. The process of writing this was also a strange mixture of eagerness and pain. Thank you, OOTP community.

[jaguar8311]

Как Интересно! Мне нравитсья это формат! Я бы в Питере по обмену и я никогда видел Baseball играл.

Regarding your lack of a championship with Toronto, it's not just you. I've never won the WS with them either!

Aside from the Blue Jays in 1992 & 1993, The City of Toronto really hasnt had much luck in winning anything either!

Так. не периживай! и удачи!

[damientheomen3]

I really enjoyed reading about this! It can certainly be tough to run a team for so long, be successful for so long but fail to win it all. But if it was the other way around and you won it all with relative ease, well, it wouldn't be nearly as sweet when it happened.

I had a similar situation in OOTP 10 in a fully fictional league. I was a Philadelphia team (I don't remember the original nickname, I changed it to the Bells about 7 or 8 seasons into my run), and I took over the team after a couple seasons of being awful. My first three seasons I missed the playoffs (I remember it being tough to make the playoffs, so I'm thinking it was probably 4 teams per 16 team conference made it in), so I told myself I'd fire myself if I missed the playoffs a fourth time. I had the second best record in the entire league but finished second in my division so I had to play a couple road series in the playoffs, but I made the World Series and wound up winning. In the 16 or so seasons that followed I made the playoffs 14 times and won at least 100 games probably 5 or 6 times, but every year I'd come up short in the playoffs, and I think I only even made the World Series like two or three times in that stretch as well. I decided it would be the last year for my human GM (he was in his 70s and I had already created a human "assistant GM" a couple years ago to take over the job once my first guy got too old) and in his last hurrah, we barely made the playoffs but came alive once the postseason started. We got as far a up 2-0 in the World Series before losing in 6. Then with my next guy after two re-tooling seasons I won a couple titles in a five year span. That's just how it goes sometimes.