That said, if you’re new to the world of Out of the Park or if it’s been a couple of editions since your last purchase, $40 is a steal for a game this deep and complex. Imagine a baseball game in which you can build, quite literally, an entire baseball world in any way you choose. That is this game. Go ahead and try to stump it. Did you want to run a historical league that begins in the year 1920 (that is statistically consistent with that era) and then expand the league, just like the real Major League, as you progress? Go ahead. Did you want to set up a completely fictional league with new cities, teams, and logos, fictional players, and no wimpy DH rule or playoff wildcard insanity? Do it. Did you want a salary cap or customized free agency eligibility rules? Done. Did you want to create just the Japan Professional Baseball League or Mexican Baseball League or Dominican Winter League? Hey, whatever floats your boat. You could create an eight-team, two-division major league, that gets its players from a pair of college and international feeder leagues if that’s how you want to roll. Given the longevity of the Out of the Park series it’s easy for longtime fans of this game to take for granted the degree to which this game lets you have it your way, not to mention the remarkable quality of the results it produces.
Of course, most people who play this game probably aren’t going to go for all of that. Most want to play a standard MLB universe, starting with the 2009 season, and if that’s you, the game is certainly capable of obliging you. The 2009 MLB rosters included with OOTP X are accurate with not only the actual MLB opening day rosters, which includes players appropriately classified on the disabled list, but also real life players stocked in every single level of the minor leagues. The placement of minor league players isn’t 100% accurate in terms of which organizational club they play for, but that’s to be expected given how much moving around these players do. If anything, I was quite simply blown away to find that every member of the lowly Class A Oneonta Tigers that I searched for on the Internet did indeed have a listing on some level of the Detroit Tigers organization. Who knew the Tigers had the rights to a player named Jade Todd; seriously, Jade Todd is a real guy.
Not only are the team rosters accurate this year, but so are player contracts (within reason), which were entirely fictional a year ago. Great, now I have to deal with Magglio Ordonez’s albatross of a contract in the game too.
The only catch inherent in playing with these rosters is the subjectiveness of the player ratings and the results you get with them; in particular, where young talent is concerned. OOTP doesn’t care how you feel about a Jurrgens or Verlander, promising real life major leaguers who, in my ten year sim, went on to thoroughly undistinguished major league careers. Sometimes there’s a good reason, as was the case for Jurrgens, who suffered a year-long injury in 2009, followed by a five-month injury in 2010 and another in 2011. He would go on to retire at the age of 27, despite having decent stats when healthy.
In the case of Verlander, who in real life is an all-star this season, he spent years struggling to get to 10 wins (he did win 15 in 2009) and would end up back in AAA by 2016 with no particular history of significant injury. More odd were the contracts he received during that time, getting a respectable amount in arbitration for a couple of seasons when he was still putting up decent numbers (180+ strikeouts in both), before signing multiple extensions in Detroit for less than $2 million a year when still a decent-rated pitcher putting up decent numbers for a starting pitcher. At the end of those contracts, during which his scouted ratings (which can be inaccurate) inexplicably dipped, and having come off a season in which he had gone 10-9 with a 4.49 ERA, he received his one big payday, getting a three year deal worth $19 million. Weird.
