Bridging the Gap: Learning to Love OOTP When You Don’t Speak Fluent Baseball

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

Hey folks,


I wanted to share something a little different — not about winning online or gaming the AI, but about understanding how to play my game better.

First, a confession: I’m not really a baseball guy.

My real sporting love is cricket — the long matches, the patience, the strategy, the stats, the stories and 150 plus year history.

For years I’ve wished someone would build a cricket sim with the same depth, history, and soul that OOTP has for baseball.
Since no such thing exists, I kept circling back to OOTP, thinking, “Surely I can make this click.”

And apart from the actual sport, everything about it did scratch that same itch — the data, the development arcs, the long-term world-building.
I just couldn’t get past the fact that I didn’t actually understand baseball.
I’ve bought four editions of OOTP over about 10–15 years, and every time I bounced off it.
Not because I didn’t love the concept, but because I couldn’t cross that gap between the game’s depth and my lack of baseball literacy.
OOTP is incredible, but for someone like me — coming from another bat-and-ball world — it can feel like reading a foreign language where all the verbs are stats.


A few months back I decided to stop fighting it and try to learn the language properly.
So I asked ChatGPT to take on the persona of a 1960s New York baseball coach — I call him “Geep.”

He’s got the vocabulary, the attitude, and the storytelling of an old dugout hand, but the mind of an encyclopedia.
I set firm boundaries from day one:

• I never wanted to min-max or “game” OOTP.
• My goal was to understand the relationships between baseball concepts and how OOTP represents them.
• I only wanted the kind of knowledge that would help me learn the game, not break it.
• And maybe most importantly, I wanted this whole project to be about fun — about creating a living world where the swings and misses, if made with good intent, are every bit as meaningful and satisfying as the swings that clear the fence.

Before I got this far, I even tried to spark a forum thread about using AI as an OOTP “buddy” — not to get answers, but to learn, experiment, and bounce ideas around like a virtual assistant GM.
A few folks read it, but nobody really responded.
So I kept working quietly with Geep anyway — figuring if nobody wanted to join in, I’d at least build the resource I always wished existed.
Over months of conversations, we built two complete guides:
Pitching Foundations and Positional Player Foundations.
They’re written in that 1960s coach’s voice — gritty, human, and deeply practical.

They don’t reveal any secret formulas; they just connect baseball sense to OOTP’s mechanics in plain language.

They’re meant to teach fishing, not hand you the fish.

Originally these were just for my personal Yankees Binder project, but they turned out so well that I thought they might help others — especially anyone who’s ever said,

“I want to love OOTP, but I don’t know enough baseball to really ‘get’ it.”

So I’m sharing them here, not as gospel, but as a collaborative starting point.

The metrics and baselines are just placeholders — I have no idea if they’re exact, and honestly, I don’t care. ( I think from memory GPT may've tweaked the statlines to reflect the evolution of my league - a historical-ish ( player recalc switched off- coaching and dev on. TCR 125)

They serve their purpose: helping me think like a manager, not a mathematician.

If you’re a newcomer who’s struggled with the same divide, I hope these binders give you a foothold.

And if you’re a seasoned vet, I’d love your help refining or improving them — as long as it’s in the same non-judgmental, “help people learn” spirit this project was built on.

Let’s keep this thread friendly, generous, and open-handed.
It’s about learning, not lecturing.

Maybe together we can make OOTP a little more accessible to anyone who loves sports management — whether they grew up on baseball, cricket, or anything in between.

I’ll share the two guides below as separate posts for easier reading and discussion.

Cheers,

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

Deleted now I've worked out how to attach the files - such a noob

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

“Would love to hear how others interpret this, or what parts of OOTP’s pitching model you find most mysterious.”“Would love to hear how others interpret this, or what parts of OOTP’s pitching model you find most mysterious.”

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

as above deleted the huge scroll now i've worked out how to attach the files

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

“If you’ve built your own heuristics or teaching tools for hitters, I’d love to see them — especially if they help newer players bridge that baseball knowledge gap.”

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

Deleting as I have replaced with the zip files..now I know how to attach them

[Bobfather]

Could you put this as a document or a zip file for easier download?

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

OK sorry.
Feel free to provide some feedback too.

[Larryk007]

Yikes! I don't know how to say thank you, THANK YOU!!!
What I have been able to read so far, makes this an awesome piece of work. Thanks for sharing!!

[Breckinridge]

Thank you for this. I saw your post on the OOTP subreddit and came right over here to check it out. This guide will not only be useful, but will enhance my in-game experience! Well Done!

Regards,

Breck

[micropterus58]

This is amazing. It's my 50 plus years of baseball knowledge merged with OOTP. Too much to read in one sitting for me. The zip files will be helpful to many. I hope the seasoned vets chime in with any corrections and suggestions and that this gets posted to the OOTP wiki (and it gets stickied). I applaud your initiative and efforts. Finally a good use for ChatGPT. LOL

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

Thanks for the positive feedback so far. I can't wait for people to pick it apart and add to it. I just worry given my lack of baseball and Chat GPT knowledge that I've got lots of flaws in here.
Please for anyone who might use these, really trust the guides with a grain of salt and please let me know where they can be improved.

I've got a few more I've been working on that are coming together.
Here's the next one which I think really filled a big need for me personally and that wa getting my head around scouting, scouting assignments, budgets, and what this all practically meant. I think the attached is more reliable and trustable than the previous guides - I've used the tenets of this for a while now as I've refined it with Chat GPT and it's served me well. Even just to help me reframe my expectations of what scouting is and isn't and how to view success.

I've hopefully reduced the likelihood of people contracting carpal tunnel syndrome by

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

🧭 New Guide Added: “Pitch Translation Guide — Baseball ↔ Cricket Edition (v1.0)”

I’ve just added a new binder reference to the thread — Pitch Translation Guide — Baseball ↔ Cricket Edition (v1.0) — which grew out of the long-running conversations I’ve had with Geep about *what if there was a cricket OOTP?*

This table is one small outcome of those musings, and also a bit of an experiment in cross-sport translation. I’ve always known that in cricket, bowlers make the ball talk — deception is an art. Some do it with craft and tact, others just launch exocet missiles from their shoulders.

What I didn’t understand were all the variations and patterns that make up a pitcher’s “arsenal” in baseball — how their Stuff, Movement, Control, and Arm Slot ratings tell a story of shape, drift, deception, and intent.

So this guide, like the batting and pitching frameworks before it, was developed to help bridge that gap in understanding — to translate the invisible physics of baseball into something a cricket-minded brain can intuitively read.

It’s short, visual, and fun — part physics chart, part thought experiment — and maybe a nice reminder of how both games share that same poetry of flight, spin, and disguise.


As always, feedback, refinements, and community contributions are welcome — some of the early responses to the previous guides have been wonderful. This one's more for context though, and hopefully some of you get a kick out of the cricket references

[Pelican]

Your postings are great. Thanks for sharing.

As an aside, I was once in a pub in New Zealand, a Yank walking in on a cricket match with Australia. The mood was intense, even though the match was playing out over hours and hours. Once they realized I was clueless as to the rules, guys (I mean blokes) tried to explain, as play unfolded. But the best advice I got was from a bloke who advised me to stop trying to see cricket in baseball terms. "Mate, forget about your baseball. The games are too different. It will only confuse you." I think that was wise, for me at least. Cricket was easier to grasp as a whole new game, not as an odd variant of baseball.

Probably that is not helpful to you. You're way beyond that in your grasp. But it does reflect how hard it is to fully comprehend a new sport in terms of history and strategy and metrics.

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

Originally Posted by Pelican

Your postings are great. Thanks for sharing.

As an aside, I was once in a pub in New Zealand, a Yank walking in on a cricket match with Australia. The mood was intense, even though the match was playing out over hours and hours. Once they realized I was clueless as to the rules, guys (I mean blokes) tried to explain, as play unfolded. But the best advice I got was from a bloke who advised me to stop trying to see cricket in baseball terms. "Mate, forget about your baseball. The games are too different. It will only confuse you." I think that was wise, for me at least. Cricket was easier to grasp as a whole new game, not as an odd variant of baseball.

Probably that is not helpful to you. You're way beyond that in your grasp. But it does reflect how hard it is to fully comprehend a new sport in terms of history and strategy and metrics.

100% mate, and this is exactly what i was trying to get across with that table comparison. It articulates the reasons why i needed to leverage GPT (more acceptable than kidnapping a baseball-file to answer my obvious and dumb baseball questions over and over). It's helped me bridge a divide i knew was there (given the level of complexity and nuance I knew from cricket) in 'game knowledge'.. If I couldn't close that knowledge gap, then i think its a high likelihood that i don't get anywhere near the amount out of OOTP26. The help of GPT in this has been super frustrating (2 steps forward, one step back) hence why its taking me months to now start getting some of this stuff ready to share.

Oh I bet in that Kiwi pub you no-doubt got the sob story of Trevor 'f$^#ing' Chappell's underarm delivery....boo-hoo....... they may have a valid point..
That would've been an awesome experience...I'm gearing up for the big one for us Australian and English cricket tragics. The Ashes... Aust v England. Its a 150 yr sporting rivalry, and we managed to get tix to day 1 (its goes for 5 days!) for the 1st of the 5 Test Matches in the Series. First Test in Brisbane, and its my 12 yr old son's first experience - it's a truly amazing and unique sporting experience. And one I think hardcore baseball fans would come to grips with. Its got all that quirkiness as well as stats, plus a whole lot else. It's the classic pub sport to have on and spend hours arguing with mates on pointless trivialities..

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

So I had cause to try out a section the guide last night. I still struggle with fully understanding and appreciating the nuances and historical contextual reference points for the roles and usage of relievers.
I was however acutely aware that my earlly season malaise was mainly down to the inability of my bullpen to protect leads late in games, sometimes giving up seemingly unassailable leads in the 8th or 9th inning.
I used the guides last night to better diagnose and reorganise my bullpen into roles that better align with their ratings and what they're showing in key stats in recent periods as well as helping me to tweak their training program and make an in game recurring note to check on training refocus and its impact in key stats as well as to remind me what Dev lab program to put them down for next Winter.

There's clearly some work to do with them in terms of tidying up some of GPT's mistakes I let get through.
But I'd really love to here from others who may've checked them out as to any suggested tweaks, or queries, or even challenging any of the work - i am so afraid I am missing something super obvious because of my lack of baseball knowledge....and I'm just not picking up something superdumb by GPT that other baseball fans would immediately call out.

[letsgobuccos]

The stuff on batting order is very outdated (#2 batter being not that good overall but good at making contact). Some managers have never done it that way, it started being questioned in general around 2000, and fell out of use altogether around 2010.

The way managers do it now is to have the first two lineup spots be really good hitters, but with less power. The #3 batter is often someone with lots of power but not that much contact because the idea is that they often come to bat with two outs and no runner. Sort of a, if they get the big hit, that's cool, if not, not much lost.

Another thing that's off is the metrics used for batting for different positions, or types. Those metrics (OPS+, wRC+ etc.) are all variations on the same thing, well, batting output. There's no reason whatsoever why one would work for one but not the other.

wRC or wOBA is what you would want. They're the same thing but expressed differently. Basically why they're good is like they account for how many runs a batter is worth when they get a single, or a double, and so on (or how many they cost when they make an out). Sometimes it's more, sometimes less, depending on the situation. wRC and wOBA take the average, basically.

The pitcher stat interpretation looks good.

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

Originally Posted by letsgobuccos

The stuff on batting order is very outdated (#2 batter being not that good overall but good at making contact). Some managers have never done it that way, it started being questioned in general around 2000, and fell out of use altogether around 2010.

The way managers do it now is to have the first two lineup spots be really good hitters, but with less power. The #3 batter is often someone with lots of power but not that much contact because the idea is that they often come to bat with two outs and no runner. Sort of a, if they get the big hit, that's cool, if not, not much lost.

Another thing that's off is the metrics used for batting for different positions, or types. Those metrics (OPS+, wRC+ etc.) are all variations on the same thing, well, batting output. There's no reason whatsoever why one would work for one but not the other.

wRC or wOBA is what you would want. They're the same thing but expressed differently. Basically why they're good is like they account for how many runs a batter is worth when they get a single, or a double, and so on (or how many they cost when they make an out). Sometimes it's more, sometimes less, depending on the situation. wRC and wOBA take the average, basically.

The pitcher stat interpretation looks good.

Brilliant that's the kind of feedback I'm after. i do think GPT was picking up my game was in the early 60's with alot of the metrics and advice too.
Thanks heaps!