MLB Mirror Season

I’ve decided to run an MLB Mittor season this year since I’ve been enjoying playing OOTP baseball. What is a Mirror season? It’s simulating yer season from a common starting point. I’m not gonna force things to occur as the reason life season unfolds but I’m gonna trey to start with the same shortened schedule, the same rule set, and the same rosters as Major League Baseball and I want to see where things end up.

MLB Mirror

Well, I finally figured it out…

I wanted to kick off a ‘mirror’ season of MLB starting on the ‘new’ opening day and simulating the whole thing in Out of the Park Baseball 21 (OOTP). Thing seemed to be working well and I loaded up the game. For some reason the season had started already but that’s ok – my Angels team was 1–0.

The first game I got to play was up in Oakland against the A’s and I was ready to get the season kicked off. One cool thing was that the rosters were updated to reflect the current state. Players who were opting out of playing because of COVID or those who had tested positive for COVID were on the Injured List. Players who had been injured for the original ‘Opening Day’ were reactivated and on the regular roster. Things looked really well set up.

For my Angels, I had a few injuries I had to deal with. Luis Rengifo was out with a hamstring issue, Anthony Rendon had and oblique injury, and Julio Teheran tested positive for COVID and would be out for a little while. I figured I would go ahead and play through the injuries and the game would tell me when they could come off the injured list.

Hmm…After the first couple of games I was able to reinstate Teheran which I did but he wasn’t;t gonna pitch for a few days anyway so I played through some games. Other than the fact that I played through the first 5 games of the season and the team was not doing very well, I saw no change to the status of Rendon. From the look of things, the game kept telling me he was on the 60-Day injury list with his oblique problem. In the real world he was already starting games and I suppose technically would have started the season day-to-day. What was going on with this sim?

I played through another game and figured things would soon update since he definitely playing in the real world…nope. Another game without him in my ‘Mirror’ season.

What to do? I could keep going and see when he would become available but it was starting to look like he might be out for the full 60 days. When I looked at the Injury Time Left, it said 6 months! Wait, the game somehow set him to be out 6 months based on the real world start of the season? NO!

I was not gonna let that stand. I scoured the interweb…read through reddit posts…finally I decided what I needed to do. I had to play commissioner.

Yeah, that’s funny after I bashed the real MLB commissioner yesterday for being in bed with Houston. Well, my game was gonna allow me to simulate the updated, COVID season the way I wanted to. So I adjusted Rendon’s injury status.

Yup, I left the fact that I played the first 6 games of the season without him. I chalk that up to me not knowing how to play the game properly but he WAS actually out of service for a few of those games in the real world.

So…tomorrow will be the first game that Anthony Rendon is on the active roster in my MLBM – MLB Mirror league. Hopefully he’ll be able to pull my team out of it’s start of the season slump.

First Week in MLB Mirror

Ok, with the details out of the way about how I basically updated the simulation to be more accurate to the real world, here is how bad my Mirror Angels did during the first week.

Well, I guess the team in my sim is sitting at 2–4 while in the real MLB the Angels are 2–3. For some reason the MLB Mirror league set my Angel team to play a double header against Oakland on Monday which the team proceeded to lose.

I actually did not control the team through a win until today and I had to go into extra innings to get that win.

Here are the results of the MLB Mirror sim for the first 6 games:

7/25 LAA @ OAK – Win 4–1
7/26 LAA @ OAK – Loss 1–2 (10)
7/27 LAA @ OAK – Loss 3–5
7/27 LAA @ OAK – Loss 0–5
7/28 SEA @ LAA – Loss 1–3
7/29 SEA @ LAA – Win 6–5 (10)

None of my starting pitchers have a win, Mike Trout is batting .150, and as I mentioned, Anthony Rendon hasn’t played a game. The team has 3 home runs with Brian Goodwin leading the way with 2 and Pujols with one, and Justin Upton has gone 1 for 18 with 7 strike outs.

The whole team is in a slump to start the season.

You can see why I broke down and updated Rendon’s status.

In any case, I’m gonna keep up with my MLB Mirror season and hopefully things will improve.

I’m hoping to provide regular updates as I play through the games but if there aren’t highlights to point to, I’m not gonna just write about my misery.

It’s a Wrap

So there’s the current state of my MLB Mirror season in OOTP. I’m hoping to keep up with the dates in the real world but we’ll see. I’ve also got my Second Chance League where the Angles are doing a bit better. That league started with the normal opening day and I haven’t caught up to the current date yet. I was thinking of running 2–3 weeks for each real world week, but we’ll see what happens.

In any case, I am enjoying OOTP 21 and am glad that the game has been around while I’ve been having to deal without real baseball. Now that I can watch the games on TV, I’m still gonna keep up with my simulation and see how close it comes to reality.

Ramble 2020.03.19 | MLB Mirror Season