- Release Date: 3/22/2018
- Developer: Out of the Park Developments
- Publisher: Self Pubilshed
- Platform(s): PC (Direct Purchase, Steam, Origin, and Origin Access)
- Price(s): $39.99, $35.99 with pre-order at all retailers, $5/month or $30/year as part of Origin Access
Spring training is in full swing and it's time for another iteration in the best baseball sim on the market. Lots of interesting things happening with this year's iteration.
What is Out of the Park Baseball?
Out of the Park Baseball, or OOTP, is a baseball management sim for PC. It is a baseball game where instead of controlling the players you're the General Manager, Manager, or both. You run the club, sign free agents, make trades, draft and sign amateur talent, etc..
What Makes OOTP Special?
Out of the Park is unique primarily for the scope of what it offers. Your traditional console baseball game offers a comparatively shallow depiction of the minor league associations connected with MLB. They also often only include a minor league player if they have seen Major League service time and are therefore part of the MLBPA.
OOTP includes every minor league level down to the Dominican Summer League and the Gulf Coast League. It includes all of the major unaffiliated professional leagues including Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), the Korean Baseball Organization (KBO), and the Cuban National Series. A serious attempt is made to include the current players in those leagues as accurately as possible as well. For example, in the 2018 version Shohei Otani was an elite young pitcher on the Nippon-Ham Fighters.
You can choose to play with this massive recreation of real world professional baseball in any setting you want. You can run a strictly NPB or KBO league if an ML club isn't your cup of tea. You can also create a world with the full interconnected baseball leagues including the posting system if you're so inclined. Or you can make your own league entirely from scratch with real or fictional players. The scope and operations of your league are yours to decide.
What Game Does it Best Compare to?
An interesting element to OOTP is how it plays compared to it's traditional console baseball counterparts. All games are effectively "Iron Man" mode, period. You can't have multiple save states. You can make a backup that you can restore as it's own turn, but that's about it. So unless you bail out on a sim (you can ditch a sim before it saves with CTRL+ALT+DEL closing the program) and reload when you sim what you get is what you get.
This coupled with the depth of the game's player modeling with multiple skill traits, personality traits, variable progression, a scouting system where you can choose your level of obscurity, etc.. produces a game that very much feels like playing the Paradox grand strategy games.
This is why I often describe OOTP as the Crusader Kings of sports games. Instead of controlling a member of the nobility you're a GM. Instead of having a court you have an ML roster. Instead of having children you have prospects. But the end result - becoming invested in your players, wanting to see them succeed, then casting your lot with the RNG gods, is what the experience really boils down to.
If you're even a casual baseball fan and enjoy the Paradox grand strategy games I'd recommend checking out OOTP. It scratches a lot of the same itches.
Also, if you're an avid baseball fan who feels like The Show and the various other console iterations of the sport have gotten stale or lack the managerial depth you'd like to see there is simply nothing like OOTP. The Rule 5 draft, signing rules, etc. are all re-created per the MLB and MLBPA collective bargaining agreement. The minutia you dig into this is up to you as almost any task can be assigned to the AI assistant General Manager or Manager you employ.
What's New in 19?
- New 3D Players, Ballparks and Game Screen
- 2018 Opening Day Rosters
- New Scouting System & Updated Scouting Reports
- Ultra-Realistic AI & Ratings
- New Tournament Modes
- User Voting for End-of-Season Awards
- Redesigned Interface
- Improved Manager Home Screen
- A New Stat - RA9-WAR (WAR based on runs allowed) - for pitchers
- Delayed Substitutions For Injured Players
- Two Way Player Designations
- Arm Slot for Pitchers
We have an ongoing Resetera League for OOTP (that I recently took up commissioner responsibilities for). Currently the league started in on OOTP18 with a starting season of 2017 and is now in the off-season following 2021. You can find the official thread for the league here:
OOTP18 OT and League Thread
We currently have about half of the ML teams staffed by a human manager and would gladly welcome new users into the group. In an online league I run the sims for set periods (generally 7 days of in-game time each real world day) and all the players make their adjustments with each sim and upload to an FTP server. You can see the blog attached to that FTP server here:
OOTPera.com
We will likely look to migrate over to OOTP19 by April 1st, before concluding the current off-season, so if you're interested in OOTP and the online league now is a great time to join. Time commitment varies based on personal member preferences, but you can be competitive with no more than 10-15 minutes a day (or honestly, 10-15 every other day) if you just ensure your own transactions are all set before stepping away. The big events (FA and the draft) work better with a greater time commitment but delving into the minutia is really not required at all to field a strong club.
I'll gladly help onboard a new member into the ins and outs of MLB/OOTP transactions as well, so don't let newness detract you.
We have a discord channel where a large amount of the day to day chatter goes on. As we get rolling a bit more I'll be sure to keep the OT and community thread updated with events and news however and I've personally made trades entirely via PM on here, so while discord participation helps it is not required by any means.
Anyone interested shoot me a PM and we can see about getting you set up.
Media for OOTP 19
