Out of the Park Baseball 22: Take Me Out to the (Digital) Ballgame once more!

Games
1021

The bit that is nagging at me is not about the effectiveness but about stamina.

Specifically I seem to remember someone mentioning that starting pitchers do not recover as rapidly as dedicated RP as a side effect of the adjustments needed to map historical starters with high stamina onto RP roles. Normally I wouldn’t care but it actually feels like something that might have been added for similar reasons to not being able to retrain historical players to positions that they didn’t play in real life.

Since I don’t have a high quality IF backup I am forced to use a 12 man pitching staff so I’m a little leery of getting into a death spiral of tired pitching. I have to admit that I’m still slightly amazed at that since in the 80’s and early 90’s when I was active in playing Strat-O-Matic we always used 10 man pitching staffs and almost never worried about pitchers being too tired.

1022

I’ll try and follow my SP in the RP role more closely. It seems that they don’t get used quite as often based on innings pitched, and I’ve never noticed my bullpen being overly tired and my league ratings for my bullpen is generally in the top 5. But I’ll try and keep a better eye on things this season to see how it really is playing out.

1023

I’ve put a few SP into RP roles this season for the first time outside of a single starter designated as long relief. I’ll be watching also but due to the issues inherent in both switching levels, switching pitchers, and just plain randomness I don’t know how much I’ll be able to see.

Of course I can’t find any mention of this issue on Googling and I have been looking at OOTP 22 stuff here, on OO, in the official forum, and on Reddit so I really can’t point to a source for even my possibly misguided recollections.

1024

I have more good starters than relievers, so I’ve been using SP liberally in my bullpen. They seem okay there, though generally a bit better in the starting role.

Yes, I’m pretty sure there’s some hidden stamina adjustment when they go to the bullpen. Unless I’m mistaken, it used to be unhidden: in older versions of OOTP, I remember the stamina number changing depending on whether the pitcher was in the bullpen or rotation. Or maybe it depended on what “position” you assigned (SP, RP, CL). Anyway, that feature seems to be gone now, but I suspect it lives on in a hidden form.

The Curse lives on. Another season with no World Series win. Lots of playoff appearances, at least. But now my OL team is in Gold, along with Texarkana and other powerhouses, and I can already tell it’s going to be a long season. After five games I had only one starter with a single-digit ERA. Even Cy Young got shelled!

1025

Any idea when the next ratings update will be? I checked the thread on the OOTP forums, and the last announced update was for May 31. But maybe OOTP has said something on one of the live streams? I ask because I have a couple Live Perfect players I should sell – but I’ve got both in my lineup for now. Lucas Giolito and Brandon Woodruff.

1026

The ratings update is going to be on the coming Monday morning.

1027

Yikes. The day after tomorrow, huh?

I should sell one or both of these Perfect Live cards before they drop in value, right? They’re decent pitchers, but not as good as the toppers from missions. Live cards seem under-statted to me.

1028

I sell any live perfect I get immediately. They can only get less valuable!

As for the statting for live cards, pitchers suffer from today’s baseball environment where all the hitters swing from their heels. So pitchers tend to have poor movement and hitters tend to have poor contact and avoid k. Unfortunately when you pit players with those stat profiles against all players in the baseball universe, you end up with pitchers who give up a boatload of homers, and hitters with terrible BA/OBP. That’s traditionally been the issue with using live players.

1029

Thanks for your comments. OK, time to sell. :)

1030

I’m hitting another lull. My team made it to Diamond and isn’t horrible. But the recent Future Legend missions have sunk all of my interest. To keep having anything to really plan for I’m going to have to very strictly limit the number of historical teams I am collecting. Which sort of sucks because I have more of a connection with eras than I have with specific teams. Which leads to the flip side of the idea - I have absolutely no interest in the FL players so for the first time the way forwards is purely a spreadsheet exercise without even the trappings of baseball to me.

In the 90’s when I followed prospects I would have loved it so I can’t really fault OOTP but present me says yuck.

1031

I hear ya about the general blahness of the Future Legend missions. Heck, my OL team can’t even play FL players so even if (when) I complete missions the cards are only useful as a prerequisite for future unannounced missions. So doing them feels a bit like eating your vegetables because you know it’ll be good for you.

However, I am using some time to figure out what future mission chains I probably want to complete. Reviewing the structure of all the missions, here’s how I think it’s going to shake out:

Tier 1 of missions:

  • Live Team Collection reward
  • Build-A-Legend 100
  • Team Mission 1 reward

as shown below

image
image1920×1080 388 KB

Tier 2:

  • Franchise Hero #1 [reward of above mission chain]
  • Future Legend
  • Unannounced mission reward
  • Unannounced team mission #2 reward

→ unknown Franchise Hero #2 reward card

this chain is shown below. One of the ??? has been revealed to be the Future Legend missions.

image
image1338×751 156 KB

Given what we know, I think it’s safe to speculate a bit about future mission structure:

Tier 3: (complete speculation)

  • Franchise Hero #2 [result of above mission chain]
  • Unannounced mission reward
  • Unannounced team mission #3 reward

→ unknown Franchise Hero #3 reward card

And further speculation:

Ultimate Franchise Reward

  • Franchise Hero #1
  • Franchise Hero #2
  • Franchise Hero #3
  • ???

→ Ultimate team reward card

Playing the long game, it seems like a good idea to think ahead to who these ‘ultimate’ players will be and to make sure you’re up to date on the missions for those teams. “Up to date” to me means completing associated missions for the team, including the boring Future Legend missions; maybe even being proactive and looking for team silvers/golds that aren’t currently in missions (because someday they WILL be in a mission, and their prices will only rise).

With help from some discussion on the BFF discord, I have identified five teams I want to pursue, given their theoretical ultimate rewards:

  • SD: Tony Gwynn
  • SEA: Griffey Jr or Ichiro
  • ATL: Hank Aaron (outside shot at Greg Maddux)
  • NYM: Tom Seaver
  • SF: Willie Mays

Teams that were considered but were eliminated:

  • CIN: Johnny Bench (his PT cards have been pretty bad in prior years, is it possible his batting profile doesn’t align well with the game mechanics?)
  • PHI: (who’s the reward here??)
  • PIT: Roberto Clemente (again, a live player who’s PT cards have not been terribly good)

Teams that might make the cut:

  • BAL: Cal Ripken Jr (I might work on this once the “sure thing” teams are done).

Of course that leaves a boatload of teams not even in the mix. And there very well may be some excellent cards there, but we just don’t know. But this is the information I’m going with!

All this takes a ton of PP of course. But I have found that having a goal keeps me more engaged. And I guess the PP will eventually come in (or if not, maybe I’ll just cut back on some of the lower priority teams so I can complete say one or two of the higher rated ones).

So, uh, that’s what I’m doing these days!

1032

I’m thinking the same thing but I had thought they would keep the future legends out as a separate collection more like the Negro Leagues. It was probably a dumb thought.

I need to settle on a trimmed list of teams as you describe but the Venn diagram of Teams I Like, Teams I Have FH#1 For, and Teams With Great Ultimate is not looking good.

1033

I’ve pretty much given up on it.

How did everyone do this season?

1034

Two of my teams have won their division series, in Bronze, so they’re still going strong. My OL team, in the same League as one of @vyshka 's teams, had an okay season in Gold – closer to .500 ball than I expected.

I’m still doing tournaments and collecting whatever missions I happen to complete, but I’m not actively pursuing missions. I don’t know what the Future Legends missions are about at all, honestly.

Paradoxically, my two lower-level teams keep me more interested than my Gold-level OL team, as I don’t see a realistic way for me to improve it.

1035

I only play one team in PT and it’s currently right at .500 in Silver. I’m to the point that all I’m doing with it is tinkering for the sake of tinkering. Is this 98 dude really any better than this 96 dude over here? Why does my 100 ranked dude suck so bad when I see this same player going nuts on teams I play against? I still do it just not daily. And when I end up in a league with a team that is all 100s and a +500 in runs over the course of the season, it’s hard to see the point.

That said my division this last week was terrible. I think the winner was only a few games over .500, so it was sorta fun to see which mediocre team was going to get the division title. Spoiler: it wasn’t me.

1036

Both my teams are in the same Diamond league. My BFF team won their division but lost in the 1st round of the playoffs. My OL team started terribly (like a .330 winning percentage) but really turned it around after the AS break and ended up 79-83 I think. That team added Pete Rose so maybe he helped.

1037

Live card ratings are out. Here’s a few:

Wheeler and Buxton went to Perfect
Vlad, Correa, Sal Perez, Glasnow, Grandal, Olson to Diamond
Posey, Devin Williams, Brantley, Stroman, Clase, Cease, Will Smith to Gold

Ohtani dropped 3 to 71 (don’t ask me how this happened).

I had been speculating on a few of these guys so I’m pretty pleased. I dumped all my Aroldis Chapmans yesterday (one of my teams had like 13 of him!). He went down to a 91.

1038

I picked up OOTP go when it came out so gave this a go this past week. Actually I had tried out perfect team when they first launched it but haven’t done it since OOTP 19. Anyway, ended up losing 4 games to 2 in the World Series. I’m not sure how long I’ll stick with my Perfect team because I’m not sure where the fun is yet. The seasons just come down to who has the best cards, which comes down to who spent the most $ or got the luckiest on packs. The game isn’t balanced in any way. The team I lost to in the World Series was WAYYYY better than mine. I have like 3 gold players total on my team, the other team had a few diamonds and a bunch of golds. Sure the RNG gods could favor me but more than likely I stood no chance. Is the “fun” part just working the market to get better cards or find deals?

1039

I find fun in many little ways.

The missions have a collecting aspect that I enjoy. I lump the tournaments into this as I found assembling a good bronze team was enjoyable and the flow of cards from the helps to make the random chance aspect of the packs not feel too horrible.

I’m a baseball nerd from way back and thinking about old players (and learning about one I’d had never heard of like Chicken Hawk and Chicken Wolf) is enjoyable.

The analysis. This competes a little with the nostalgia and collection side of things but I enjoy thinking about the baseball value of different players. This has been spoiled a little in OOTP 22 with the hidden BABIP stat being clearly very important. Still fun though even if I realize that without that stat the only real way to do things is to analyze results and I’m never going to have access to enough data to do that.

It’s not an exciting game but I enjoy a morning routine of checking in and looking things over for a bit.

1040

Re: Ohtani