OOTP is so realistic, MLB clubs are using it. How a German programmer created the deepest baseball simulator ever made. More, via CodyStavenhagen:
It was 2008, and Markus Heinsohn needed every bit of his willpower to leave the house.
Heinsohn was 14, and his friend Lars Gerken had just returned from a trip to see family in Miami. Gerken came bearing gifts — family members sent him back across the Atlantic with a baseball bat, a glove and a few balls. He brought them to a park outside the local elementary school where Heinsohn and his friends spent their summer goofing around, playing table tennis or soccer.This time, the boys took turns throwing a baseball up in the air and hitting it. They had no idea what they were doing.
But as a kid who taught himself how to code on an old Commodore VIC-20 at age 11, the sport resonated in another way. He would scour some of the first sports sites on the internet for information. Whenever he could, he would pick up an American newspaper and dig through box scores. Often, people would write to him, asking if they could use his data to help build a video game or some kind of fantasy league. Lahman always said yes. He rarely heard back.
Heinsohn needed a way to sell his game, and Lahman had the perfect platform. The infrastructure was already in place thanks to his baseball stats. Soon the game was sold via a link on the website. There was no other marketing.“I was already tapped into that very nerdy baseball community,” Lahman said. “I think that just really allowed the game to find that niche that already existed.”“Home Run Baseball was taken,” Heinsohn said. “Strikeout Baseball was taken.
Although users in Out of the Park can play individual games in manager mode, essentially overseeing in-game strategy, OOTP’s biggest appeal is the ability to be a GM, to build a franchise, replay historic seasons or create completely fictional leagues. That level of customization was an early priority. Want to see what would happen if Ken Griffey Jr.
Heinsohn remains deeply involved in the game’s development. He used to code all night, but now, at age 45, he joked he gets tired after about four hours.After the first or second edition of the game, Heinshon had a problem. “Hits allowed,” Heinsohn realized, was a flawed way to rate pitchers. Pitcher ratings in OOTP evolved to become based on stuff, movement and control.
“When we simulate games, are base hits going to the right spots on the field? Are we getting the right breakdown of pop-ups to line drives?” Arnold said. “If too many pop-ups go to the wrong spots, suddenly the stats are wrong because you’re getting a different distribution.” In 2020, Gabe Kapler and his staff were on a video call. It was Kapler’s first spring as manager of the, and it was his 13-person coaching staff’s first time working together — all while baseball was on hiatus as COVID-19’s spread accelerated.
So one day while Kapler was still stationed at the Giants’ spring-training home in Arizona, Grisham hopped on the call and ran the Giants staff through an OOTP tutorial. Kapler, interested, spoke up:Quickly, Grisham set up a situation using OOTP’s 3D gameplay. Say, fourth inning, the starter’s pitch count is rising, runners on first and third. What do you do? Who are you getting up in the bullpen?
“What we knew then and what I’m even more confident in now is that the game has more capability than even we used it for,” Kapler said. “It’s just an awesome simulator. And that’s what these games are designed to do: Simulate what might happen in the game and remind how random the game can be at times, and let you go back in and get a ton of reps. I think it’s a great tool for any coach or manager. And it’s fun.
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