Posted by Craig Brown on Tuesday, July 14, 2009 at 11:56 am

If you play baseball simulations on the computer, you’re certainly familiar with Out Of The Park (OOTP) baseball.  2009 sees the OOTP gang release the 10th version of their exceptional baseball sim.  Does it continue the great tradition of other OOTP games?  Read on…

For me, realism in a sim is hugely important.  I’m not talking only about results (because it’s no fun if a player hits .450 with 90 home runs in a season) but I’m also talking about the little things.  Like team logos, current rosters and even photos of the players.  OOTP X has all of that.  The game ships with the Opening Day rosters (something that wasn’t possible two or three versions ago) and from the first time you load, it’s ready to play.  The great thing is, if you want to customize your league, it’s easy to do.  You can empty all of the teams and create a massive free agent type of fantasy draft or you can even create a fully fictional league, with new teams and completely made up players.

Since I prefer the realism (and the pain that comes from following the Royals) I fired up the game and immediately took control of my hometown nine.  My season played out about how I expected.  Zack Greinke was my top pitcher, Billy Butler was my leading hitter and Joakim Soria was nails out of the bullpen en route to 80 wins.  If you look closely enough, there’s a Kila Ka’aihue sighting:

OOTP incorporates enough sabermetric tools that simply add to the depth and the realism of the game.  And that adds to the overall enjoyment of an already great sim.

If you prefer to play a historical game… Say the 1921 Yankees… That’s as simple as beginning a new game and selecting 1921 as the starting year of your managerial journey.  OOTP imports everything… From the players to the financial structure of the league in 1921 to the batting and pitching modifiers.  The goal is for your league to play exactly as it would have for the year you selected.  And the game gets it right.

Continue playing a historical sim and the game evolves with you where for example, there’s more offense in the 1930s and better pitching in the late 1960s.  You also have the option of expansion to add new teams to the mix.  You can also scrap the wild card system (an option I heartily endorse!)

If you’ve played this game in version eight or nine, version ten doesn’t hold too many surprises.  Rather, it’s the tweaks under the hood that get your attention.

This version of OOTP has overhauled the pitching system where they’ve tweaked the endurance of the starters.  In the last version of the game, I found that I had to go in and manually set pitch count limits for my starters. (In one of my games, I had a starter throw 170 pitches!!!  Who was the manager, Trey Hillman?)  You can still set pitch count limits, but the game now does a good job of deciding when to pull the starter.

Also new to the pitchers this year is a breakdown of pitch type.  In the past, OOTP just graded a pitcher according to “stuff.”  Now you are told exactly what type of “stuff” that pitcher is throwing.

The game setup window is just a dream for fans of customization.  From here you can enable things such as suspensions for PEDs, player fatigue and how the scouting reports are filed for players (you can have a scale from 1-20, or if you prefer to do it like the pros, 20-80.)  It’s nice to have these options and you can adjust them any time during your game.  For example, I found the injuries to be tilted a bit to the heavy side.  In fact, they seemed to be happening so frequently, I simply changed the setting to “low.”

The depth of this game is incredible.  When I first downloaded the game, I couldn’t really decide what was different (apart from the 2009 Opening Day rosters.)  However, the more I played and the deeper I was sucked in, the more apparent it became:  OOTP was already a great game.  OOTP X is the best version yet.

OOTP X is available for $10 off the list price of $39.99 now through July 15.