If you were to ask me what game or game series I’ve sunk the most time into, the answer would be easy: Out of the Park Baseball (OOTP). I have spent roughly 2,300 hours, according to Steam, playing various editions of the game. OOTP isn’t like MLB The Show or Super Mega Baseball. It’s not graphically impressive. It’s not a blast of simple arcade fun. It is basically a spreadsheet pretending to be a video game. It’s fantasy baseball, but without having to wait six months to see how disappointing that sleeper draft pick will be, because you can plow through an entire season in as little as a few hours.
You can play individual games and dig into play-by-play managing in OOTP if you want. But that becomes tedious. And frankly, it’s not where the game is the most fun. Instead, I think the game is at its best when you sit in the GM’s chair and maybe make some helpful “suggestions” about how to structure the lineup or bullpen.
The UI is complicated and dense. 90 percent of the time, you’re just looking at rows of stats and scouting reports. And the level of detail is deep. OOTP includes not just current MLB players, but historical MLB players, all minor league teams, Korea’s KBO League, and even the entire World Baseball Classic.
There’s something thrilling about digging through all this info and trying to find that diamond in the rough during a draft. Someone who might become the new franchise player for your favorite team in this alternate universe. Deciding whether to bet on that prospect developing into a superstar, or to trade them for an undeniable big-league All-Star is stressful. And you even have to worry about fans abandoning you if you fail to re-sign your favorite player.
On my Mets, Brandon Nimmo isn’t just a good player, he’s a damned superstar. Kodai Senga has won three Cy Young Awards. I signed Juan Soto, but also traded a raft of mid-tier prospects for Ronald Acuña Jr., made the playoffs four years in a row, and eventually won a World Series. (Look, as a Mets fan, I need this fantasy world, don’t harsh my vibe.)
Perhaps the best part of OOTP Baseball, though, is that it kinda lets you play however you want. It’s deeply customizable. You can manually play every game if you want. Or you can speed-simulate entire seasons in a couple of hours. Want an easier experience where players don’t get hurt? Turn down or off injuries. Don’t want to worry about budgets? Play in commissioner mode and tell the team owner where to stick it. And because it mostly just sits there, statically waiting for you, it’s easy to just leave it running in the background and dip in and out when you’ve got a few spare minutes.
OOTP Baseball is a cozy sim for a very particular brand of sports nerd. If you love fantasy baseball and wish you could play it year-round (and don’t want to deal with friends arguing about whether their bid for Alonso came in on time), or maybe you dig the idea of a cozy game like Tiny Bookshop, but wish they had a more Sabermetric bent, OOTP Baseball might be for you.
