Hi everyone. 

I have been fiddling around with Out of the Park Baseball which is very advanced, including compared with what we play here at WIS - though to be fair it is about the same as what is available at Hardball Dynasty here, but you have a choice of what we here would call Progressive leagues (Historical Leagues at OOTP), Fictional leagues (Like the worlds at Hardball Dynasty), or any sort of mixing and matching you want. 

For example, I recently, playing only solitaire still (I have not tried to play an online league yet), imported about 24 of the greatest teams ever (1927 Yankees, 1975 Reds, 1969 Orioles - and Mets - 1954 Indians, 1908 Naps, 1919 White Sox) and then dispersed their rosters to a big free agent pool, had a random draft, mixing all the team rosters together. 

i have also played a single season league starting in 1961 and my Yankees are now starting the 1974 season, having swept San Francisco in the 1973 World Series (Randy Moffett and Cookie Rojas came up big in the series, though season-long my big stars were Reggie Jackson, Bobby Murcer and Ross Grimsely). 

So it is fun. 

I haven't played online yet though I do read and occasionally ask questions on the OOTP forums. 

WIS players would find a lot that is familiar, though there is a learning curve. 

So I was thinking: WHY NOT AN OOTP LEAGUE ONLY FOR THOSE OF US WHO PLAY HERE AT WIS? 

Frankly, I don't care if it is a free for all league of players from every period, or a historical, single-season league (as I would prefer if possible) or a "theme league" for example of teams from different epochs or players from certain teams. 

I think it would be great because for many of us, translating OOTP into WIS terms helps understand what you have to do, and because many of us know each other at least from this site, so there is certain level of familiarity in communicating. Plus it would be a good first step in case this site at some point fades and people want to play online at what is also a great simulation baseball game. 

So post here if interested and let's start the discussion. I should say that i am not equipped to commish such a league, but maybe some of the people here who have played online OOTP and have more experience with it might be willing to commish? 

I've been playing OOTP for a few years. Haven't jumped into any online leagues, but would be interested if we put one together with WIS guys.

I'm interested. 

I started playing OOTP last year but have 8 seasons under my belt. Four as the Tigers 2013-->  middle of 2017 season and four with a completely fictional Michigan baseball league with 16 teams all in....Michigan.  Just been doing these on my own, nothing online.  I would be interested in giving online league a try.

Thanks for sharing Italy. I did some research on OOTP baseball and it looks pretty in depth.  There seem to be alot of options for starting a league and a boat load of stats.  Not sure how the online leagues are.  I checked their message board and came across a fictional league where a player was 45 years old and had a .379 batting average which I thought was a little unrealistic.  Since I am still trying to learn SLB (and may want to get back into HBD) for now I probably wont adventure to this game just yet but maybe is something I would do in the future.  OOTP 15 comes out in April.

chisox378 - yeah one thing I don't care for is that the default setting is to not set an age limit for the players so unless you set one and set the game to have retirements when they occurred historically in real life you have Tim McCarver still playing in the 90s - though at least that keeps him out of the broadcast booth ! (now for Joe Morgan...)

But you can always change those kind of settings, so probably that was a league where the owners had decided to play it that way. Whatever. 

I understand, thanks.

Posted by italyprof on 2/26/2014 1:13:00 PM (view original):
chisox378 - yeah one thing I don't care for is that the default setting is to not set an age limit for the players so unless you set one and set the game to have retirements when they occurred historically in real life you have Tim McCarver still playing in the 90s - though at least that keeps him out of the broadcast booth ! (now for Joe Morgan...)

But you can always change those kind of settings, so probably that was a league where the owners had decided to play it that way. Whatever. 

Wow, we found two things we agree on in the same week! There must be some kind of planetary alignment. Unfortunately, McCarver retired (hurray!) but unretired with the Cardinals (why me!). *facepalm*

Well, I played an OOTP Historical League solitarie  through to 1984 with a 1961 starting season and had a blast (you have an option to have the auto-play run for a week, a month, even a whole season), and won 5 World Series and lost 2 of them in that 24 year period. 

I have started over making a major change: I felt like the rosters - of good teams at least - had too many very good players on the bench, something that by the way appears to work against a team. The logic is probably similar to that of WIS: value on the bench doesn't help your team, but since there are no salary caps the competition may have higher or lower overall roster value and by big margins (like in RL baseball). 

So I went back to 1961 with a new league but added four expansion teams immediately, shutting off the automatic expansion in historical years function. So we started the 1961 season with 20 teams (I added the Memphis Suns - a tribute to Sun Records, and the Seattle Mariners to the AL and divided the league into East and West Division with a best of 7 championship series, and then added the New York Mets and the Denver Rockies to the NL doing the same divisional divide and playoff set up. 

So although when you turn off the minor leagues you automatically have a reserve roster that goes up to 15 players, most teams had a total roster of around 28 or so, maybe an extra pitcher or two, a utility IF or OF or a third C on the bench, nothing more, since we were stretching the available players over 20 teams. 

When the number of players grew by 1962 we had better overall rosters, but it was still more difficult to accumulate a whole bench of stars as had been possible in my previous league. 


But I am thinking of expaning again in 1964 , and running an expansion draft,, and maybe even of limiting the number of safe players to smaller than the usual 15 that is the default setting, because, although I was overjoyed to win the World Series in 1963 with my team, I  still see weakness in the solitaire game: 

When you hold an inaugural draft for a new historical league, you have to either pick individual players for each team, which I confess I am too lazy to do, or you pick only for your own team, and you let the auto-draft draft for all the others by clicking "auto-draft until the next pick by (name of your team)". 

When you do that, the auto-draft picks the best players to be sure, but I think the criteria it uses it a certain balance between players that are immediately good and long-term ones and it also goes straight for position players, mainly hard-hitting OFs. 


So I, in the 1961 inaugural draft went looking for long-term value, figuring the 1961 season would be a wash (we did pretty well actually, ending with a .500 record that year, then losing out in the division race in 1962 on the last few days of the season before winning the WS and going 100-62 in 1963. We are about to start the 1964 preseason now). 

So I ended up with Bob Gibson, Dean Chance, Gaylord Perry and Sam McDowell. In the 1964 draft I got Clay Carrol and Jack Aker, so my team, with Boog Powell at first (again, going for longer-term value in 1961), Frank Howard, Brooks Robinson, Lou Brock  and Tim McCarver will be very hard to beat for a long time. 

A dynasty will be enjoyable, but I also want a challenge, so I am leaning toward adding two more teams, running an expansion draft, having to lose a few of these stars and in general reducing overall league roster quality again, to keep it interesting. So trade will not be good player for future great player, but will mean giving up value for value (I always set trading on "hard" anyway, but still do get steals for some reason occasionally, though other times you can't give away a good pitcher for a third backup catcher or fifth OF, who knows?). 

More soon. Oh, and the Twins' Willie McCovey broke Babe Ruth's single season record by hitting 61 home runs in 1961. 

Can you set lineups for every game and/or do a live sim game? What if you did want to have a minor league system could you manage and gm and play those games as well?

Yes. 

You can play every game as a live sim solitaire (and I assume if you join the right online league even with others) and set lineups, make changes during the game. I do this for Opening Day, important games, or if I want to follow a certain pitchers' every start and I never auto-sim the playoff games, I want to manage those myself. So you can hit and run, bunt, change pitchers in the middle of an inning, have batters take a pitch or swing and so on. 

What I am not sure about is if you play every game of the minor leagues but I think so, because on the forums there are people who choose to be an unemployed manager at the start of a league instead of managing a certain team and they move up from the minors - going from A to AAA gradually over variou seasons - until they get into the majors. 

Whether, if you manage your own major league team you can manage an actual played game of your minor league system I don't know not having used the minor league function, but my guess would be yes.

Anyway, I expanded the league in 1964 by two more teams: the Houston Stars and Montreal Expos.&#160;<br /> <br /> I also limited to fewer than the default 15 players the number that on the existing teams' rosters that could be protected.&#160;<br /> <br /> I..um, kind of overdid it, limiting protected players to only 8 (should have made it 10 I think as my roster fell to 26, but one expansion team ended up with 35 players) and got the effect I wanted but more so:&#160;<br /> <br /> The Houston team lost the World Series to the Seattle Marines (!) in their expansion season with two of my starting rotation from the previous season, and Montreal came in second in the NL East !&#160;<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, my Yankees fell from 102-60 to 74-88, but we had protected Bob Gibson, Gaylord Perry and Phil Niekro (had to scrounge for a fourth starter in 1964 though) and held on to Lou Brock, Boog Powell, Brooks Robinson, Tim McCarver and the one recent draft pick we wouldn't want to lose: Don Buford.&#160;<br /> <br /> That meant that we left some good players exposed, but somehow the two young relievers, Jack Aker and Clay Carrol, who are not yet ready for the active roster, and by a small miracle Matty Alou.&#160;<br /> <br /> Then we ended up with better draft position given our sucky season and we drafted Catfish Hunter and Glenn Beckert in the first two rounds, and managed to sing both (we did not manage to sign many of our previous draftees - it is not guaranteed that you can keep who you draft in OOTP).&#160;<br /> <br /> So having Beckert I traded Tommy Helm and yes, Boog Powell for Bob Allison (we needed an OF as Alou is already only part time in these seasons) and Carl Yastrzemski.&#160;<br /> <br /> Somehow, given the losses to the roster I thought we needed a new approach and so a team with Brock and Buford leading off, and with Yaz at the core,&#160;<br /> <br /> So it is a sleeker team, and the league is now 24 teams, 12 in each league, in four divisions in 1965. Rosters are thinner, though in 1969 they will enlarge and I will again rethink expansion.&#160;<br /> <br /> For now, have to see if my 1965 team can come back after our retrenchment post-1964 Series win.<br type="_moz" />

Sorry about the formatting above, some glitch with our internet connection when I hit submit post.

Can it be played solitaire by 2 people - meaning can I run a team and someone else run another team and the computer run all of the others?

Can I run a franchise league, where all of the franchises have players from 1960 - 2010?

if you ever get this going, let me know-ordered OOTP 15 last month, have never played, will start playing around with it once I get it in April

Grey fox. Yes. The other teams can be auto-managed by the computer or you can each run half the teams in a league instead I think.