OOTP 12 Review

Written by Jon Wilt

In late June the most recent update to the Out of the Park Baseball franchise was released by Out of the Park Developments, and is available for download on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms.  OOTP 12 is the 7^th update to the basic game engine and user interface that was introduced in 2006.  Although you could describe this as a evolutionary step in the series, it brings with it a lot of new features and tweaks that should satisfy most of the different types of fans of baseball simulation.

When you fire up OOTP 12 there are some cosmetic differences, and some tweaks to the startup screen, but you're mostly presented with the standard options to load a previous game, start a new one (including one based on the 2011 Majors with the built-in roster set), start a new historical game, or join up with an OOTP online league.  I haven't participated in the online version of the game, but this version continues a trend started several years ago of more tightly integrating the online aspects of the game into the user interface.

I usually play with a long-running universe that includes a version of the Majors that started in 2006, plus a large number of fictional, real, and hybrid minor leagues and foreign-based leagues.  I'll continue that, but for this review I launched a couple of leagues based on the 2011 Majors. 

The first league was a straight stock game, with the included rosters.  I concentrated on the Orioles, but put myself in vacation mode letting the computer handle all of the day-to-day tasks of running the franchise.  As this league ran through the 2011 calendar it was obvious that the core of the OOTP engine was fully intact, and the simulation churned out believable, realistic results, if not exactly mirroring what happened in the real world.  OOTP is a ratings-based engine, not a simulation designed to exactly mimic what has or will go on in actual MLB.  So while you'll get league totals that look right, and you'll usually get teams that end up near their real places in the standings, you'll get a good bit of variation around a realistic baseline.  For example, in my first sim the Orioles were 42-42 at the All Star break.  Luke Scott and JJ Hardy were having fine years, Guthrie and Arrieta were cruising along much like they have been for our real Orioles.

But Vlad managed to hold off the ravages of time, putting up a 1.7 WAR first half (yes, WAR has been introduced to the series for 2012).  Brian Roberts managed to stay relatively healthy, but was putting up sub-par numbers.  In probably the biggest stretch, Justin Duchscherer managed to stay healthy for the whole first three months of the season, posting 1.4 WAR and helping to anchor a solid rotation.  Mainly because of this unexpected health Zach Britton was still in AAA Norfolk, a roster he shared with Nolan Reimold, who had been raking the ball until a broken finger sidelined him in mid-May.

Throughout the 2^nd half the story stayed much the same, with the O's remaining fairly competitive but slipping several games below .500 with a series of  injures.  Kevin Gregg went on the 60-day DL with arm troubles.  Roberts had a couple of DL stints, Scott strained an abdominal muscle, and Guthrie was dealing with a sore back.  Even more damaging was a torn thumb ligament that kept Matt Wieters out over a month.  Strangely, the computer kept putting Mark Reynolds on waivers, seemingly fishing for a taker on his contract despite his 35-homer power.  It never worked out, and he's still on the roster.

That's the kind of results you'll get from OOTP 12: a season that will mostly make sense, it'll fit with a narrative that you could imagine before the season started, but with the details almost certainly different than what happens on real Major League fields.  For me, that's a great way to play simulated baseball.  As an Oriole fan I like that there's a possibility of breaking out of the tired old mold the Orioles give us.  In OOTP you might not be bitterly disappointed with our Birds every year.  Luck could actually be on our side.  Transactions might not be cursed.

In my second 2011 MLB sim I tried something a little different.  I used the same rosters, the same setup as in the first one.  But I jumped in with my commissioner powers and forced a trade of Jeremy Guthrie, Chris Tillman, and Xavier Avery for Prince Fielder.  At first it told me I couldn't make the deal, because the O's couldn't afford Prince's contract (there's some realism for you), but as commish I could override Peter Angelos and do it anyway.

Well, this ended up being a debacle.  The Orioles ended up leading the American League in runs scored, lead by a near-1.000 OPS from Fielder.  But they were last in runs allowed by over half a run a game.  Last second fill-in free agent Kelvim Escobar wasn't up to the task of replacing Guthrie, ending up with an ERA of nearly 7.00.  In this version of the season JJ Hardy suffered a career-ending concussion in May, Koji, Roberts, Markakis, Wieters, and Reynolds spent some time on the DL, and they were 30 games out by September. 

So, maybe it's a good thing that the O's didn't offer up a huge package for one year of Prince Fielder last offseason.  Or maybe my Orioles ran into a stretch of bad luck and poor decisions that wouldn't have afflicted the real team (who am I kidding?!). 

In any case, it's a lot of fun to play around with what-if scenarios like the one I just outlined.  There are a million ways to enjoy a simulation of this depth and breadth, but I'm sure a substantial number of people are most interested in playing some version of real life baseball, and OOTP 12 does a fantastic job of modeling this.

There are a lot of other new features and tweaks that I didn't get to play with in those two simulations, but I did toy with a little bit otherwise:

• The new international scouting model looks very promising.  In prior versions it often seemed like new players were magically discovered and signed, with little insight into the process. Now you can pick and choose countries to scout, with costs based on the level of baseball development there.  You might have to spend $500k to fully scout the Dominican, but if you're Peter Angelos there's always the $50k option of just sending someone to look for the next Sidney Ponson in Aruba!
• The financial engine has been recoded with a new financial modeling tool to ease league setup. As I mentioned before, the game told me the Orioles couldn't afford Fielder, and if I'd been playing as a standard GM without the God-like commish mode, I couldn't have signed him.
• There's now a central league newspaper with headlines and stories of what's going on in your baseball world.
• One thing that's probably a huge benefit for historical simulators (which I haven't had much time to do) is the introduction of real life transactions that happen as they did in history, along with as-played lineups.  So you could take over my favorite historical team, the 1894 World Champion Orioles, and actually model their real lineups, and the real churn that took place in their pitching staff over the course of the season, instead of just assuming everyone who played for the team was on the roster all year.
• One more big boost to realism is the revamped injury system.  A major flaw in prior versions was that all injuries were instantly diagnosed, and serious injuries could be declared career-ending hours after they occurred.  In real life that rarely happens, and the developers have tweaked the engine so that there's often a delay in diagnosis and there can be setbacks or even accelerations in recovery schedules.  Along with this, it's now possible to retroactively place someone on the DL.

So once again I'm going to recommend OOTP12 as a must have for anyone interested in baseball simulation.  It's the most in-depth game of its type, with a massive list of features that far outdistance any competition I know of.  So much that getting started might be the most daunting part.  Past issues with historical gaming have been beefed up, online play is now easier to accomplish, and the series' unparalleled customization and features like FaceGen (which generates realistic pictures of your players in uniform) make it a fictional simmer's dream.

It's not without bugs and issues.  I encourage you to go to http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/board and look around the forums if you're not familiar with the game.  There's a huge, active user community there, and the main developer, Markus Heinsohn, regularly visits and uses the community to take feedback and shape how the game goes forward.

So, go download OOTP12, and start fixing the Baltimore Orioles.  Or if that's too depressing, then literally the entire universe of baseball is at your fingertips.

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