Out of the Park Baseball 20 - Make your team Perfecter!

Games
61

Waah!

@Charlatan @octavious230 If you really want to lock in a particular batting order, or just lock a player to a particular spot in the order, you can do it. More on this in a sec. But first:

I assume you clicked “submit team” after making your changes? If you make changes and the game runs a sim before you “submit,” the game forgets your changes. But you probably know that.

If you’re sure you did click “submit team,” then check your depth chart. Have you assigned backup players to each position, and told the game how often to play the backup? If any starter is tired, there’s a chance he’ll be subbed out. Even one substitution can lead the AI to change your lineup; e.g., if a high-contact hitter is replaced with a power hitter, or a speedster replaced with a slowpoke, the AI will likely change the lineup order.

Personally, I generally like the lineup changes the AI makes for me when a starter subs out. E.g., recently Gedman sat for a day, and my lousy substitute catcher was swapped in – and the AI had him bat 8th, not in Gedman’s #5 position. Pretty good.

If nonetheless you want more granular control over where every player bats, then there are a couple options. One you probably know about already: 7-day lineups. You can tell the game exactly who you want to start in what position (including pitcher) for the next 7 days. Not the next 7 games – just the next 7 days. If you leave “clear 7 day lineups” unchecked, then the game will keep your 7-day schedule intact in perpetuity, which might work okay, if your 7 day lineup rotates starters in and out for fatigue. Personally, I don’t use 7 day lineups in PT, because I check the game only once or twice a real-life day. (Yes, PT needs a 30-day lineup feature.)

But OOTP 20’s PT features a new way to lock in a player – or all players – to lineup spots. If you go to a player’s screen and set his Game Strategy, you’ll see you can lock him to a spot in the order. So if you want so-and-so always to lead off, you set his order spot to “1,” and he’ll always lead off. Supposedly. I haven’t tried it because I generally like the way the AI handles my subs. (In the name of science, I’ve just tried it; will report back.) Also, you can force a player to play a position, using the same screen.

Hope this helps.

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I’ve added all the managers from above. I encourage everybody to do that. It’s nice to have forum members in your league.

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Yes that helps, thanks. I think maybe there was some auto substitutions that may have triggered the odd changes to my lineup. I haven’t dug too much further into it because I haven’t noticed it happen again.

So digging this game. I can sorta go with the flow of the AI lineups or tinker with all th details to my hearts desire. So much depth and enjoyment regardless of how much time you want to put into it. Now if I could keep my pitchers from still being exhausted 5 days after they pitch I’d be a happy man.

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I’ve added all the above managers to my list; my manager name is sammich if y’all want to add me.

Couple questions on the auction house:

  1. Is there a way to see the highest bid on an auction, or do I just have to keep increasing my bid incrementally until it tells me I’m the highest?
  2. Is there a way to compare a player card with a player on my team, if that card is not currently on any of the teams in my league? I know about the Player Search & Compare screen, but I can only seem to search for players in my league, so if a card is not currently in my league, it’s not available for comparison.

On a related note, how in the world is this card only a 64 overall? Sure, he’s not gonna draw many walks, but everything else blows most Bronze cards out of the water. And he can play two extra IF positions in a pinch!

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Regarding #1: Bidding in the AH works just like in eBay. When you bid on an item, you’re telling the AH the max you’re willing to pay for him. However, the current bid is the least you had to use to become the high bidder.

For example, say Nellie Fox has a current bid of 1005. You bid 5000. The AH checks the current bidder’s max bid (say it’s 1015) against your bid. He would bid up to 1015 so you’d have to bid 1016 to get him - so that’s the new price, 1016, with you as the high bidder.

If the first guy rebids 2000, the AH checks… he bids 2000, can you bid 2001? Since your max was 5000 you can. The current bid is set to 2001 and you’re still the high bidder.

Now he bids 6000. The AH checks… can you bid 6001? Nope. So he’s now the high bidder. Your max is 5000 so he has to bid 5001. So the current bid is set to 5001 and he’s the high bidder.

This also means that when the auction ends, you only spend the “high bid” amount - if you bid 5000 and the high bid is 1016, you only are charged 1016. However, your 5000 is tied up in the auction until it’s over, since the AH needs to keep your entire bid in limbo so it can bid for you.

This means that unless you’re trying to snipe an auction at the last second that it makes the most sense to bid the max you’re willing to pay for a player - if you think a guy is worth 1500, bid 1500. You might get him for less but you’ll never pay more.

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That Vic Power card looks pretty good to me. As you said, his OBP is going to be really close to his BA but he’d be at the least a great platoon guy vs lefties. Here’s 3 Vics in my iron league:

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Thanks for the explanations, Charlatan. I ended up getting Power for 201, which is how I found out the bit about only being charged the high bid amount, even if your max bid is higher.

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So I went right at 500 overnight. I’m still at 543 for the season. All my batters are in the 200s (Tim Raines is at least knocking on 300). So I decided to check on the rosters of the dudes above me, thinking maybe they’re just stacking their team with silver and gold guys. Nope, based on a quick glance of their rosters, mine is stronger (using players overall rating) and the top three teams in my entry league have mostly bronze players by a wide margin. I have only a few bronze players starting (mostly in relief) and the ones I do are actually doing better than most of my other higher rated. I guess what I’m saying is…

Screw you, Digital Baseball Gods of Yore!

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I saw a boxscore where my Bronze team had won with a score of something like 24-2. Examined it more closely and noticed that the last three opponent pitchers (1 inning each) were position players! I guess once you reach blowout stage the AI doesn’t waste real pitchers on the game. They had some ugly pitching lines, let me tell you.

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I’ve experimented with “openers” and “followers,” which I’d never heard of until this year. In MLB, some teams start a reliever as an “opener” (rather than “starter”) for one or two innings, then put in the starter to pitch 6-plus innings, then go to the bullpen. The idea is to get through the strongest part of the lineup with a strong reliever in the first inning, and reduce the number of times those players see the starter and get used to his pitches. It has worked pretty well for me. Dick Radatz is one of my two “openers” (and a closer sometimes too), and he’s got a 0.00 ERA with 10 innings pitched so far. His “followers” have typically lasted into the 7th or 8th inning.

Also, I’ve tested the new “lock into batting slot” feature, and it seems to work perfectly. When I order the AI to always put someone in the leadoff spot, that guy is always in the leadoff slot (unless he’s rested for the day).

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Sorry to keep asking stupid questions, but I have the Steam version and was thinking of grabbing some PP but the purchase button just kinda clicks with no actual purchase. Is the purchase not linked to Steam in any way (I checked there to make PP purchase also)? If not, where am I supposed to enter a cc to buy them?

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When I bought some PP it directed me to Steam, and then I had to authorize adding funds to the wallet and then authorize spending money on PP. Then I was sent back to the game and the PP were there. So it definitely goes through Steam. Try logging out of OOTP and Steam and going back in, that sometimes helps.

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Ok, I’ve restarted OOTP but didn’t actually log out. Next I logged out and back in. Still when I hit the Buy Now button on the OOTP site to purchase PP, it just blinks like it sees my click it but no pop-up or redirect to Steam or anything. Blah!

EDIT: Fixed it. Finally found a post on Steam with this issue. You have to enable Steam Overlay. Once I did that, it worked perfectly!

EDIT: First Diamond, Trevor Hoffman. Now I have 2 gold and 1 diamond closers, lol. My farm system must really focus on pitching.

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Congratulations! When you said you had three top flight closers my first thought was “I wonder how much you could sell that diamond card for “… say you could get 6000 for it. That would turn into two, perhaps three gold everyday players… just sayin’

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That’s prob what I’m going to do. It looks like Live players go for a bit less the equivalent Legends or whatever since Live players have a chance of having scores change. My other two closers are Live but I figure it’s still worth selling Hoffman as a former All Star with frozen stats. He hasn’t sold on the market yet but similar closers are going for around 5k or a bit more.

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Those Live cards… I just bought Zack Greinke for one of my teams yesterday and I turn on the TV and see he got shelled on opening day. Sell! Sell!

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lol! I wonder what’s happened to Chris Sale’s value. Gave up 3 home runs and 7 runs in what, 3 innings today?

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Damn! People are kinda freaked out by the fact Live players can change their scores over the course of the year. There is at least a 25% markup for similarly scored frozen players and the norm seems to be about double. With a few 3 or 4 times the asking price. Yowzers!

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Sounds like a silly overreaction, just as we see in the stock market. In that case, it’s a good time to buy live players!

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Shhh! I’m trying to pilfer the AH before sanity returns!