Tag Archives: Breaking OOTP

BREAKING OOTP Ep. 7: Schlafly’s Royals (Also “30 Teams, 30 Posts” for the Royals)

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In BREAKING OOTP, I push Out Of The Park Baseball to it’s limits in various scenarios. Some will answer questions, some will settle scores, and some will push Out Of The Park Baseball to it’s very limits, to see if I can literally cause the game engine to beg for mercy.

In 30 Teams, 30 Posts, I write a post (of varying amounts of seriousness) about every MLB team in some way in the lead-up to the beginning of the 2016 season. Earlier installments can be found here. This also fulfills the Royals part of that.

This will be a controversial entry in BREAKING OOTP. It’s going to be a bit political. You see, not too long ago, a woman named Phyllis Schlafly had an opinion on baseball. There’s nothing wrong with that. People have opinions about baseball all of the time. Some of them are even insightful.

Her opinion, however, was hateful, ignorant and wrong. She believes that MLB should KICK OUT ALL OF THE FOREIGNERS. In fact, she openly says “It is time to cut off visas for foreign baseball players, and return our National Pastime to Americans.”

This, needless to say, is a bigoted and xenophobic view of baseball, and anyone who honestly believes it should be rightly sent to the dustpan of history. However, it’s also objectively wrong and ignorant. Even if she was right that Americans have a god-given privilege to have every baseball job in America (AND SHE IS MOST DEFINITELY NOT RIGHT), her arguments for the superiority of American MLB players are so paper-thin you could poke holes in them with a baby’s finger. For example, she uses the claim that the vast majority of Hall of Famers are American to “prove” that foreign players are inferior, utterly ignoring the fact that the vast majority of Hall of Famers came from an era before baseball became the diverse multi-national pool of players it is now. She also uses as “evidence” the fact that only Americans won the big awards in 2015, ignoring the fact that that was an aberration and that plenty of people from outside the United States have won those awards in the past.

So, to prove this bigoted old lady just how wrong she is, I’m going to show just how out-of-their-league a team made up entirely of American white guys would be in modern-day baseball. But who?

Now, she seems to think (according to her actual article, which I’m not linking to because I don’t want to give her the pleasure of the hits) the 1944 Cardinals were the pinnacle of baseball. Never mind that 1944’s Cardinals weren’t even the pinnacle of white American baseball, given most of the stars were off fighting WWII. Still, the 1944 Cardinals did win the World Series, so to produce her vision, I figure it would be a good idea to do it to the most recent MLB champions, the Kansas City Royals. It’s obviously not a one-to-one correlation, but it’ll do. Go below the jump for more:

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Breaking OOTP…. ON THE OUT OF THE PARK BASEBALL WEBSITE!

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Hello. Just wanted to let everybody know that a very special edition of BREAKING OOTP is now available. Just not here. Oh, no, it’s in an even cooler place (hard to believe, I know): the official blog of Out Of The Park Baseball! So, if you want to see what happens when the entire field is shaped like a literal diamond and the outfield walls are 700 feet tall, GO THERE NOW!

(Blogathon ’16) BREAKING OOTP, Ep. 5: The No-Homers Club

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This post is part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

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In BREAKING OOTP, I push Out Of The Park Baseball to it’s limits in various scenarios. Some will answer questions, some will settle scores, and some will push Out Of The Park Baseball to it’s very limits, to see if I can literally cause the game engine to beg for mercy.

Do you remember the Arena Baseball League? Y’know, the league where only an infield existed, an MVP had 213 HRs and a Cy Young winner had a ERA over 7? Well, now we are going in the opposite direction.
BEHOLD THE GIGANTOFIELD!

Gigantofield_webcastYes, it’s a field so big it can’t even fit in the picture. 500 foot walls to all fields. And, what’s more, it has a domed roof, a wild grass field that probably was last mowed reliably three months ago, and enough foul space to qualify for statehood.

And now, the Arena Baseball League will play in this monstrosity. Let’s look at it’s OOTP park factors:

Screen Shot 2016-01-29 at 3.39.13 PMSo, let’s see, according to this, batting averages will be cut in half from a neutral environment, but doubles will be twice as frequent and triples one-and-a-half times as frequent. Also, outside the park HRs should not exist.

Mommy.

So, after the now-anachronistically named “Arena Baseball League” expanded by two at the end of last season, ten teams will struggle against the darkness. No hope for hitters.

OR IS THERE?!?!

Let’s get started by simulating the opening month of April and then looking at the leaderboards… hmmm…

YEAAARRRGGGH:

Screen Shot 2016-01-29 at 3.46.28 PMThere have been two HRs (both inside-the-park) hit in the entire league. The batting leader is hitting just .318. Mark Hamilton of the San Antonio Coyotes has 28 hits… 23 of them doubles.

Now, let’s look at the pitchers:

Screen Shot 2016-01-29 at 3.50.34 PM0.58 is leading the league in ERA amongst starters. Manny Lopez, by the way, had a 8.53 ERA back when the Arena Baseball League lived up to it’s name.

Okay, now let’s zoom to the All-Star Break…

Screen Shot 2016-01-29 at 3.56.45 PMOof. As you can see, the total number of Home Runs now stands at 3. The leading batting average is .312, and that’s the only BA over 300. The leader in doubles would already be tied for 30th all-time in a single season in the real world.

The pitching standings similarly continue to be a bit off-kilter:

Screen Shot 2016-01-29 at 4.05.39 PMAmazingly, despite how good all of these pitchers seems to be, there has only been one no-hitter in the first half of the season… and it was barely in the top ten best pitching performances of the half!

Screen Shot 2016-01-29 at 4.06.45 PMWowzers.

Now, let’s go to the end of the regular season and look at what has come:

Oh. Oh dear…

Screen Shot 2016-01-29 at 4.14.51 PMThe best batting average is a .304. .304. That is 1968 level of bad hitting (in 1968, Yastrzemski won the AL title with a .301). However, the doubles record of 67 has been demolished, and Arturo Luna had more triples than any MLB player has had since 1925.

Now, how about pitchers?

Screen Shot 2016-01-29 at 4.21.00 PMA 0.99 ERA in 208.2 IP is very impressive, needless to say, and 306 strikeouts is more in a season than any pitcher has had since Randy Johnson was in his prime. Amazingly, there was only one no-hitter: Ron Turner’s in the first half.

Now, let’s look at the league as whole, shall we?

Screen Shot 2016-01-29 at 4.26.17 PM8 total home runs. 6998 total doubles. 564 total triples. The league as a total hit .215. Well, at least what hits did happen were usually exciting, right?

Screen Shot 2016-01-29 at 4.29.26 PMKind of surprised the league ERA was 3.06. I thought it’d be a little lower.

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So… what did we learn? We learned that pushing the fences way back is bad for offense but will cause any balls that get past the outfielders to allow for extra bases. We learned that nothing particularly “game-breaking” occurs in OOTP if you do this. And, uhm, we learned that having deep outfield fences is nowhere near as fun to write about as arena-ball fences. I mean, yes, this is partly because I’m distracted by other blogathon concerns, but it was way more fun writing about insane scores statistics as opposed to what more-or-less was just a deadball era.

Next Time on Breaking OOTP: The most controversial Breaking OOTP yet

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At 8 PM: BIZARRE BASEBALL CULTURE

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This post has been part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

 

Breaking OOTP, Episode 4: The Seattle MARIOners vs. Pablo Sanchez and the Backyard Kids

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In BREAKING OOTP, I push Out Of The Park Baseball to it’s limits in various scenarios. Some will answer questions, some will settle scores, and some will push Out Of The Park Baseball to it’s very limits, to see if I can literally cause the game engine to beg for mercy.

Last time, we made the Seattle Mariners be full of Mario and Donkey Kong characters. This week, though, we have a exhibition series between the MARIOners (minus any Mariners) and… the Backyard Baseball kids (shown here to be on the Dodgers, because reasons)! Yes, Mario vs. Pablo Sanchez. At stake: The title of GREATEST VIDEO GAME BASEBALL TEAM OF ALL TIME.

Or something like that. Go below the jump, and be sure to check the previous post to see how I created the Mario characters- I used an almost-identical process for the Backyard Kids:

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NEXT TIME ON BREAKING OOTP: MARIO vs. PABLO SANCHEZ

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Next time on BREAKING OOTP, the Seattle MARIOners from last time face off with the Backyard Baseball Kids in a 7-game series to determine who is the greatest video game baseball team ever.

Yes, you’ll hear about Princess Peach pitching to Pablo Sanchez. You will learn the result of Angela Delvecchio vs. Bowser. Pete Wheeler might challenge Petey Piranha’s arm!

Look out for it this coming weekend or so.

Breaking OOTP, Episode 3: The Seattle MARIOners

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In BREAKING OOTP, I push Out Of The Park Baseball to its limits in various scenarios. Some will answer questions, some will settle scores, and some will push Out Of The Park Baseball to its very limits, to see if I can literally cause the game engine to beg for mercy.

The Seattle Mariners are owned by Nintendo. This is well known. The Seattle Mariners are also coming off a very disappointing season. This is also well known.

But what if the Mariners had had Nintendo’s own playing for them?

MarinersMarioWONDER NO MORE!

(AND GO BELOW THE JUMP TO SEE THE ARTICLE, AND CLICK PICTURES TO MAKE THEM BIGGER)

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Breaking OOTP, Episode 2: ARENA BASEBALL

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In BREAKING OOTP, I push Out Of The Park Baseball to it’s limits in various scenarios. Some will answer questions, some will settle scores, and some will push Out Of The Park Baseball to it’s very limits, to see if I can literally cause the game engine to beg for mercy.

This week, we are going with a simple idea: what if there was an Arena Baseball? The smallest possible field, with a fast astroturf, 42-foot-high walls to knock balls off of and easily lob high-reaching homers over. Something like this:

Screen Shot 2015-09-20 at 11.00.34 AM

And, what’s more, I’m telling the computer to approach this as if this is the 2015 MLB season, so they’ll use the same tendencies that MLB teams would.

This could get weird. Go below the jump to see how weird it gets (and click any pictures to make them larger):

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Breaking OOTP, Episode 1: PITCHERS vs. HITTERS

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When my previous computer died, I lost the International Baseball Competition. I will try again next year. I might still have the original starting files to go on, and if I can find them, I will put them up so that you can do the IBC.

However, from the ashes of the 2015 IBC, there has risen…

BREAKING OOTP!

Yes, Out of the Park Baseball tasks me, so I must have it! I will force it to do things that it was not made to do, things that mankind was not meant to see simulated. Some will answer questions, some will settle scores, and some will push Out Of The Park Baseball to it’s very limits, to see if I can literally cause the game engine to beg for mercy.

(And, yes, this is basically Breaking Madden in OOTP form, you have a problem with that? Oh, and CLICK PICTURES TO MAKE THEM BIGGER.)

TODAY:

PITCHERS

vs.

HITTERS

Yes, for all time, the pitchers have waged war with those at the plate. But now, it is time to finally settle it once and for all, as a team made up entirely of pitchers will play a team made entirely up of hitters. And at the end of the day, ONLY ONE SHALL BE LEFT STANDING…. AFTER THE JUMP:

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