The folks behind the fantastic baseball simulator Out of the
Park Baseball were once again kind enough to let me test out their new version
this year, Out of the Park Baseball 17. I’ve long held that it’s the smartest,
most powerful baseball game there is, and this year’s version only further
solidified me on that The core game is as solid as ever, with new updates to
the basic system, but with cooler features around the edges, like a full MLB
license and automatically generated post-game reports that add to the full
experience.
But the best part is always in the limitless capabilities in
what Out of the Park lets you do. For that reason, some of you may be a little
disappointed that I’m revamping one
of my older ideas, but I had good reasons. The biggest is that, for as fun
as historical What Ifs are, if I go back to before I was old enough to follow
baseball (or even born), they become much harder for me to write about. I have
no opinions about, say, Sam Horn or Leo Gomez. But if I’m writing about them,
even for an article about a video game-created alternate universe, I feel
compelled to look them up as I’m playing and write out said defense. If I’m
talking about current players, I already have pre-formed thoughts on players,
and have maybe even written about them. It makes the playing and writing phases
a lot less slow.
So, in case you didn’t click the link, this year I’m going
to be modernizing the concept of the 1990s Atlanta Braves’ pitching big 3. Picking
a team was a simple matter; I looked at the Braves’ position player WAR (per
Fangraphs) the year before they acquired Greg Maddux, then looked at teams’
2015 numbers. The closest one made for an easy choice: the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Hey, at least I would be starting with one historic ace; less work for me to
figure out the other players to pick.
Yes, it seems the Dodgers would get some compensations for
losing half of their historic 2015 pitching duo. I would be like Justin
Timberlake in The Social Network;
“Two future Hall of Fame pitchers isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? Three
future Hall of Fame pitchers.”
I went through my
most recent Future Hall of Fame Pitchers article to find some people on
track or close to it and similar in age to Clayton Kershaw to serve as my core.
There weren’t many good choice in the years immediate above Kershaw, so I went
younger instead, and acquired Chris Sale and Stephen Strasburg. I did this
towards the start of the season too, before I knew just how fantastic those two
would be and when trading Kenta Maeda and Scott Kazmir for them (respectively)
seemed a lot less lopsided. Upon doing so, I locked Strasburg (formerly the
only one not under team control through at least 2019) down with a 7 year, $155
million deal (with player opt-outs after the fifth and sixth seasons). And with
that, I was now off to the races.
The first month was a disappointment of sorts. Corey Seager
won NL Rookie of the Month, Yasiel Puig won NL Player of the Month, and my Big
3 each put up 1.3 WAR months (with Strasburg offering an especially promising
first few games). Despite that, we go 13-12, putting us 4.5 games back of the
Giants (because what good is playing as the Dodgers if the Giants aren’t your
foes, I guess). It seems that we’re a little weak around the periphery (which
is to say, we’re five good players, two or three okay ones, and not much else).
Thankfully, I get one easy improvement at the end of the month, as Mike Bolsinger
comes off the DL to replace the struggling Ross Stripling.
With that problem solved, we proceed to…absolutely stink up
the joint. Halfway through the month, we’re coming off a 7-9 stretch to drop
two games below .500 and towards the bottom of the division. I’m not panicking
at this point, but that’s mostly because I’m in Commissioner Mode and can’t be
fired (how else was I going to pull off those trades?). Otherwise, I’m starting
to wonder about my plan. Seriously, how did I screw up starting off with a
fantastic trio of pitchers like this?
Thankfully, I won’t have to be asking these questions much
longer. Alex Wood finally steps up his game, plus we get Hyun-jin Ryu back at
the end of the month. Those should help us shore up the edges of the team.
Sure enough, by the end of the month, our season is no long
of void of disappointment. We’ve improved all the way to 28-25. That’s still
not where you’d like to be with Clayton Kershaw, Chris Sale, and Stephen
Strasburg in your rotation, but it beats 2 games below .500. We’re 8.5 back in
the West, but only 3 games behind the second wild card spot. We’re also sixth
in the league in runs scored and four in runs allowed, so maybe a full
turnaround is coming? At the end of the month, the big three sits at:
Kershaw: 7-3, 82.0 IP, 89 K, 15 BB, 1.87 ERA, 0.99 WHIP, 226
ERA+, 2.83 FIP, 2.6 WAR
Strasburg: 3-7, 72.0 IP, 84 K, 13 BB, 3.25 ERA, 1.06 WHIP,
129 ERA+, 2.69 FIP, 2.4 WAR
Sale: 3-3, 76.2 IP, 91 K, 10 BB, 2.93 ERA, 0.93 WHIP, 143
ERA+, 3.04 FIP, 2.2 WAR
Alex Wood is holding his own here as well:
Wood: 6-3, 74.1 IP,61 K, 19 BB, 3.51 ERA., 1.21 WHIP, 120
ERA+, 3.09 FIP, 2.0 WAR
June goes even better for us. We go 18-10, including a
3-game sweep of the Giants, which takes us up to 3 back in the NL West and .5
back in the Wild Card hunt. Corey Seager wins another Rookie of the Month award
as well. We’re starting to look like the playoff contender we should have been
the whole time. In the meanwhile, Brandon McCarthy comes off the DL, but I
don’t have the roster space or rotation slot for him any more. I make the
decision to trade him for offensive help, since Justin Turner, Howie Kendrick,
Chase Utley, and Andre Ethier are all struggling, and Carl Crawford coming off
the DL doesn’t sound like it’ll solve anything.
I finally settle on sending him to the Astros, who have been
shopping Colby Rasmus to make room in their crowded outfield. I still don’t have
roster space, though, so I start looking into a prospect trade. In the end, I
find the White Sox are desperate enough for an outfielder and a second baseman
that they’re willing to trade for Crawford and Kendrick. I package them with a
few minor leaguers I think look fringy, and get two of their top prospects (SS
Tim Anderson and OF Courtney Hawkins) in return.
With that, we move on to July. Corey Seager won his second
Rookie of the Month award in June, and it served as a good prelude to the hot
streak that followed. We take over first place on July 8th, thanks
to a 12-game winning streak. It’s left me time to negotiate with international
free agents in peace, which I’m grateful for. We win the next two games going
into the All-Star Break, but it turns out the Giants have kept winning as well.
We have a half-game lead at the season midpoint.
(In case you were wondering, we had seven All-Stars selected
from our team: the big three, Seager, Puig, Yasmani Grandal, and Kenley Jansen.
It’s also worth noting that Strasburg’s replacement in Washington, Scott
Kazmir, made the team as well. Kershaw
and Seager are starters, while Jansen will be the closer in the event of a win.
Sadly, that doesn’t happen; the NL loses, but my players do reasonably well,
with 6 Ks and 1 hit allowed in 3 scoreless innings and 3 walks in 5 plate
appearances.)
Our fourteen-game winning streak ends immediately after the
break, but we rebound to take the series by winning the next two 13-0 and 13-1.
Maybe our lineup will catch up to the pitching staff? We go 18-6 for the month
(64-41 overall), and even get our first pitcher of the month: Hyun-jin Ryu.
Just like we all knew would happen. Despite the success, the Giants have been
hot as hell and taken a one-game lead in the standings. I also extended Kenley
Jansen along the way ($79 million/5 years, opt-out after year two). The
pitching staff at this point:
Kershaw: 11-6, 155
IP, 172 K, 2.21 ERA, 1.04 WHIP, 184 ERA+, 2.55 FIP, 5.2 WAR
Sale: 8-3, 146.1 IP, 168 K, 2.21 ERA, 0.93 WHIP 183 ERA+,
2.76 FIP, 4.5 WAR
Strasburg: 8-11, 138 IP, 156 K, 3.26 ERA, 1.01 WHIP, 124
ERA+, 4.2 WAR
Wood: 8-5, 127.1 IP, 111 K, 3.46 ERA, 1.17 WHIP, 117 ERA+,
2.4 WAR
Ryu: 8-3, 70.1 IP, 58 K, 2.18 ERA, 0.94 WHIP, 186 ERA+, 1.4
WAR
As you can see, Stephen Strasburg has a losing record, so
this whole thing was a complete failure. But other than that, not too shabby.
We move back into a tie for first on the first day of August, too. Things take
a brief turn south right after that, though, as we drop 7 of the next 12 games.
In that time, our lead over the Giants…expands to 2 games, because baseball
makes no sense. We double that after a pair of sweeps against the Phillies and
Reds, which is much needed as we head to San Francisco.
This is a big moment, a series at our biggest rival in
August with a four-game lead to protect. The teams contribute to this drama
with…a three-game sweep in our favor. None of the games are blow-outs or close,
just sort of in the middle, and there are no big performances, even for the rotation.
It’s just a normal set of games where everyone was firing on all cylinders.
We finish the month with a 6.5 game lead, a great place to
be in September. Kershaw is looking like a Cy Young front-runner, leading the
league in WAR (6.7) and strikeouts (239), among other things. Stephen Strasburg
is giving him a run for his money in both, though, placing third (5.0) and
second (196) in the same areas. Sale isn’t terribly far behind, either, placing
ninth (4.2) and third (193). Yeah, I have the NL’s 1-2-3 pitchers in
strikeouts. It’s pretty cool.
September looks like it’ll be an easy month, with most of
our games coming against losing teams. There are four games against the Giants,
though (a mid-month three game set and one game at the end to start one of the
season’s last series), so we have to be careful. We have an 82-51 record, so
we’re almost certainly going to the playoffs in some capacity. Around this
time, we hit some injury problems, with Rasmus, Adrian Gonzalez, and Enrique Hernandez (the current starting second baseman) all going on the DL for short
trips. Better now than during the playoffs, though. We win Game #90 on
September 12th.
As San Francisco comes to town in the middle of the month,
we lose Kiké Hernandez for the rest of the season. He was only back for a few
games, but it seems something else has come up now. That’ll be tough to
overcome. Nevertheless, Strasburg, Wood, and Ryu all turn in strong
performances (including Stras’s game 1 complete game shutout), meaning that we
have a ten game lead in the NL West (San Francisco is also three back in the
Wild Card race, so things look tough for them).
The rest of the season is pretty uneventful. Our records
winds up a sterling 102-60, and while the back-end of the rotation has slipped
a little, the Big 3 put up some pretty great numbers:
Kershaw: 17-9, 233.1 IP, 274 K, 2.47 ERA, 1.05 WHIP, 164
ERA+ 2.53 FIP, 8.0 WAR
Strasburg: 14-14, 218 IP, 239 K, 3.26 ERA, 0.98 WHIP, 124
ERA+ 2.91 FIP, 6.2 WAR
Sale: 11-6, 199 IP, 2.71 ERA, 233 K, 0.97 WHIP, 149 ERA+,
3.13 FIP, 5.0 WAR
Kershaw leads NL pitchers in ERA, innings, strikeouts, BB/9,
FIP, and WAR. Sale and Strasburg’s names also litter the leaderboards,
including finishing the year 1-2-3 in strikeouts (Sale was tied by Jose
Fernandez in third place, but I’m still counting it). Unsurprisingly, we led
the majors in fewest runs allowed, 58 ahead of the Mets and Giants.
(Also, Corey Seager finished second in WAR for hitters
behind only Bryce Harper, so that’s cool.)
With that out of the way, we move on to the playoffs. We’ll
be playing the Pirates, who toppled the Cardinals in the Wild Card game (meanwhile
in the AL, the Yankees walked off against the Red Sox in 12). If we win, we’ll
take on either the Mets or the Cubs (the AL sees match-ups of Yankees-Blue Jays
and Tigers-Astros).
All four Division Series wind up being yawners. We sweep,
winning games by scores of 6-5, 3-2, and 9-1. Kershaw is good, Sale is better, but
Strasburg (7 shutout innings, 12 Ks) is the best. The Mets and Yankees also
sweep, while the Tigers win in four games even though they’re missing their ace
in Justin Verlander.
In the NLCS, we take game one 4-3. Kershaw pitches 8 solid
innings, but gets a no-decision as the game goes 14. Game 2 is less of a nail-biter,
as we score 13 to back Chris Sale’s 4-run complete game. Strasburg turns in
seven strong innings in Game 3, but falters in the eighth, and we lose 3-1. Game
4 goes fourteen 14 innings again, but we lose 5-4 this time. Clayton Kershaw is
once again stuck with the no decision.
We take a one game lead after Game 5, though, winning 3-2.
We got outhit 8-4, but Chris Sale turned in 8 shutout innings, with an 8:1
strikeout to walk ratio along the way. We start our first
non-Kershaw/Sale/Strasburg pitcher in Game 6 with Ryu, but he gets roughed up
pretty badly, final score 9-3.
I left my manager decide the Game 7 starter, and he decided
to counter the Mets’ ace, Matt Harvey, with Clayton Kershaw. Given that he was
on short-rest and we had Stephen Strasburg waiting, that decision looks suspect
given that Kershaw struggled (but was in the end pulled for a pinch hitter, not
for his pitching) and the bullpen came in to pour gasoline over the whole mess.
Matt Harvey didn’t look good either, but their bullpen didn’t give up eight
runs in five innings, so they moved on to the World Series. I will keep this in
mind when my manager’s contract needs renewed.
The epilogue to the season isn’t all bad. The Mets sweep the
Tigers (who also went a full seven) in a one-sided slugfest/bludgeoning. We do
decently in awards voting too, with Kershaw taking Cy Young honors and
finishing second to Bryce Harper for MVP while Corey Seager wins the Rookie of
the Year and a Silver Slugger. We’ll be back next season to see if our Big 3
can improve on their 2016 and, eventually, the run of the 1990s Braves.
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