Hey there everyone. I’d like to apologize for the lack of updates but the laptop I had Out Of The Park (OOTP) on died a slow painful death due to a bad battery and DC jack. Though I have my games saved to the cloud, a lot of transaction logs and screenshots were inaccessible while my laptop was down which inhibited my ability to write about the playthrough. After a few weeks and a few hundred dollars, it’s up and going again and so is the continuation of the Miami Marlins Playoff Challenge. To recap Part 1 and Part 2, the Marlins remained bad despite my best intentions, finishing with sub .400 records in both seasons. The most noteworthy moment over two simulated years of game play was the epic battle of ineptitude between Marlins shortstops Cristhian Adames and J.T. Riddle.
It is against that backdrop that the 2020 season began with a message from the cantankerous owner, Bruce Sherman..
Who, on behalf of Derek Jeter, wants my team to get better… and shows his support by cutting my budget by $28 million?!?!
In 2019, my expenses were $122 million. I now have to get that down to $94 million overall in expenses and just a payroll of $60 million.
Yikes. I guess all the hard work I did, with the intent to do realistic baseball trades failed to generate neither wins nor ownership brownie points.
Fundamentally, the further reduced budget means that I can technically no longer afford my best player, last season’s free agent acquisition Yasmani Grandal. Also Wei-Yen Chen decided to get more expensive without deciding to get good. He has to go before he gets even worse, especially with that player option in 2021. My second best player, Derek Dietrich, also surpassed the $11 million estimate and got $12.5 million in arbitration. So, the top three players in terms of payroll amount to $58.9 million of my $60 million dollar payroll…
I’m in a bind. I’ll have to slash scouting expenses and draft pool bonuses… If I don’t make budget, I get fired. Getting financially solvent isn’t easy because in order for teams to take on Chen’s contract, I’ll have to offload what little talent I have just to make the contracts more enticing… meaning my team gets worse, thus reducing the chance I have a winning season and increasing the chance I get fired.
Faced with the very realistic possibility I may be fired for the first time ever in OOTP, it’s time for me to throw intentions to the wind. It’s time to game the system.
There are a few fun quirks with OOTP that can be abused if you really really work at it. One of them is what I call fishing. Since OOTP doesn’t show you how much salary room each team has on a single screen, you can shop around a player who is expensive but has value, to give you an idea of who has salary room. Usually, you’ll get offered a bad contract back but it gets the discussion going. Once a trade partner is identified, you can usually add an additional bad contract at the cost of sending a player who has some value. If you fiddle enough with the terms of the deal, you can rid yourself of the unwanted player in addition to the expensive but valuable player. So I shopped around Grandal to see who had some room. Lo and behold, the New York Mets offered Yeonis Cespedes, who was due to make $29.5 million for only the 2020 season. Grandal was due to make $26.3 million in 2020 (and was still signed through 2025) and Chen was due $22 million in 2020 with another $16.5 million in 2021. By taking on Cespedes’ $29.5 million, I’d remove $48.3 million from my 2020 payroll. I had to toss in a three star prospect to get the deal done, but I took back some bullpen help in Gerson Bautista who made the major league minimum. Step 1 of trimming payroll accomplished.
Cespedes had a .606 OPS in 2019 and no defensive value whatsoever, so I wasn’t interested in keeping him around either. I was also short a catcher. There’s another quirk of OOTP where you can retain part of a player’s salary, thus increasing their trade value. Knowing that eating part of Cespedes’ contract is better than eating all of it, I thought I’d try to find a catcher with some salary attached who actually could contribute to the team. The Red Sox had Christian Vasquez who was making $4.2 million in 2020 and $6.2 million in 2021. Though he couldn’t hit much, he outhit Cespedes in 2019 with a .612 OPS while carrying a stellar 75 defensive rating. The price of offloading Cespedes meant I had to toss in Dan Altavilla who was making $850k while posting a 1.41 WHIP out of my bullpen, along two other minor prospects and backup outfielder Braden Bishop who made the major league minimum. I ate 65% of Cespedes’ contract, putting me on the hook for $19.2 million for 2020 only. Yet, I was able to get the Red Sox to retain 40% of Vasquez’s salary, reducing the bite from $4.2 million to $2.8 million. When all was said and done, I’d converted Chen and Grandal’s contract and their future commitments into $18.8 million in budget room in the first deal and Vasquez and an additional $9 million in budget room from the second deal.
Dietrich was an easier fix since he was actually productive. I also had extra second basemen so though I hated losing him, I at least had some replacements to try out. Off he headed to the Chicago Cubs for young prospect right fielder Duke Ellis who had a OPS of .936 in A- ball as a 21 year old four star prospect. I’d rather keep Dietrich, but I’ll take Ellis and the reliever dice-roll who came along in the package.
My 2020 payroll is at $56.5 million. I cut drafting, scouting and coaching expenses by $11 million down to $23 million, putting me at $80 million in total expenses versus a budget of $91 million. Depressingly, the most expensive player on my roster is starting pitcher Dan Straily at $5.5 million. Straily and Vazquez are the only two people on the roster being paid more than $2 million for 2020.
Whew. Yay. I have $14 million to cobble together a solution in free agency unless I cut scouting and the draft further…
Then, a funny thing happened. The league expanded, opening two expansion cities in Charlotte and San Antonio. Charlotte’s first pick was Yasmani Grandal. I found that out when I shopped around the perpetually failing Lewis Brinson and got offered Grandal in return. That’s because I now had some, though not a lot, of payroll room. Huh.
Having already decided that I’m going to win even if the trading got unrealistic, I decided to reacquire Grandal. Yet another quirk of OOTP is if you can use the AI to tell you which of your less obvious players have trading value. If you offer a trade that’s nearly complete and force a “Make this work now”, you’ll often get a list of one star players that the AI values. You can force a trade to be slightly unequal by retaining a portion of a player’s contract, or letting the AI retain that value, to identify other one star players the AI values. Write down those names and package enough of them together and it’s like you’re offering a four star player even if, in reality, you’re offering multiple one star players. As an added perk, expansion franchises have a lot of budget room. With that knowledge in hand, I reacquired Grandal and a promising outfielder in Tyler O’Neill from our new friends in North Carolina for Brinson and a bunch of flotsam. Even better, I got North Carolina to retain 70% of Grandal’s contract, meaning his 2020 contract would only put me on the hook for $10.8 million. I had the room for him with a few million pennies to spare.
That put me in the realistically awkward but fantastically funny opportunity to recreate a bit of Marlins history. I invoked “Mike Piazza” and flipped off Vazquez mere days after acquiring to the Texas Rangers for starting pitcher Alex Balog, saving myself Vazquez’s $2.8 million and $7 million in payroll room total.
Ok. Good. After all that runaround thanks to the owner’s budget constraints, I’ve got my best player back and I’m under budget with some flexibility. I lost a bullpen arm but gained a bullpen arm and I didn’t lose anyone I really cared about. Let’s start the season!
Or maybe not. The international free agent pool is announced. Enter Wei-Zhong Edmerson, shortstop, stud.
Crap de la crap a la mode. Edmerson can hit a crap ton. Not only that, he plays shortstop, second and third base well. I have no shortstop. Not in the majors, not in the minors, none period. His only downside is that at 32, he’s older than I’d like… but his positional flexibility helps that a bit. There are no other free agents to help me this year and if I don’t win this year, then gee-gee, Game Over. He’s asking for $22 million and I have $7 million.
As much as I hate doing so, I decide to make it work by trimming more of my draft and scouting budget. And I “Piazza” Grandal. I break form and go for a bat, not caring about the defense. Grandal has spent the offseason going from Miami to New York to Charlotte then back to Miami. I add to his frequent flyer mileage by sending him to Arlington, getting big young bat Willie Calhoun and two two-star pitchers from the Texas Rangers. Then, I sign Edmerson until the end of my tenure, playoffs or bust!
Time to game the game again. I offer my best player in terms of value, closer Kyle Barraclough who is making a mere $1 million, to see what major league ready catchers there are. The Nationals make Pedro Severino, who had a .777 OPS over only 56 at bats but has a 70 defensive rating, available. I then pull back Barraclough and use another quirk. If OOTP says that “No player will make this deal work”, sometimes you can add in a good, but not great player, to at least prompt a “Make this trade work now” response to even it out. Then I again write down the names of the one star players and throw them together for the player I want. I netted Severino along with four three star prospects for 35 year old Justin Masterson and two 26 year old relief pitchers I didn’t care about but apparently the AI did.
Thus, the almost complete entire team makeover for the 2020 season is complete. Here’s the lineup:
1: CF Braxton Lee (original Marlin)
2: SS Wen-Zhong Edmerson (2020 international FA)
3: LF Willie Calhoun (Grandal 2020 2nd preseason trade)
4: RF Tyler O’Neill (Brinson 2020 preseason trade)
5: 1B AJ Reed (Tomas Telis 2019 preseason trade) / Sam Travis (2018 April Prado Realmuto Tazawa for Porcello trade)
6: 3B Andy Ibanez (Brett Lawrie “Everyone Hates Me” 2018 July trade)
7: 2B Max Schrock (Rick Porcello “I Hate It Here” 2018 June trade)
8: C Pedro Severino (2020 preseason fishing expedition)
Meanwhile, the entire Marlins rotation consists of Miami originals. The bullpen rebuild I did in 2018 is still there in most of its entirety, anchored by closer Kyle Barraclough and ex-Mariners reliever James Pazos. It still “works”, being a Marlins-relative term.
With one hand on a root beer and the other on the “Start New Game” button, assuming I don’t get fired, I simulate the season.
Hey, we didn’t completely suck. Ownership goal achieved. The 2020 Marlins managed a .460 record, a whopping 20 game improvement from 2019’s record of 54-108.
The bats finally paid off. In 2019, only 5 players had an OBP above .300. Only O’Neill fell below that threshhold this year, but his power helped to compensate for that. Maybe he’s not a permanent fix, but he’s young and cheap and will do for now. Braxton Lee had an atypically disappointing year and Sam Travis couldn’t continue his 2019 success, but overall the team did much better on offense. The exciting part is all the various parts such as Schrock and Ibanez, the Hail Mary trades where I tried to get something for value out of bad clubhouse chemistry situations, started to contribute. This team’s finally getting, dare I say it, interesting? Meanwhile, Edmerson solidified the shortstop position as he led the team in WAR and Calhoun turned out better than I thought. Even if he regresses a bit, there’s a chance the rest of the lineup improves.
On the pitching side of things, I may need to start shaking a few things up now that I have a working offense and defense at play. The bullpen’s still doing well but though the starting pitchers aren’t walking a lot of people, they’re all giving up a home run per inning. I can probably let Straily walk to free agency since I now have the rotation depth where I can get that mediocrity for much cheaper.
I’m no longer in the cellar in minor league rankings either and the starting pitching depth is making its way to the high minors. Much of the positional depth is still a ways off, but the rebuilt infield and corner outfield can hold for now. Right fielder Luis Alexander Basabe, who was a 23 year old 2020 offseason Rule 5 Draft, could supplant O’Neill in time. Now that his 2020 major league servitude is up, he can go grow in the minors. He had a .904 OPS in A+ ball in 2019 yet was still a capable backup outfielder in the majors in 2020. That’s a stark contrast to original Marlin Monte Harrison who had a .641 OPS in AA… Catcher’s dangerous though unless Severino’s bat pays off.
I don’t think this team can handle a fourth consecutive year of budget cuts. I never changed the ticket price settings so hopefully attendance will rebound as the team gets better and with fewer fan favorites to trade off. It better because, as we know, making money is one of the Marlins goals.
Hope you enjoyed this! Tune in next week to see how the fourth season goes and let me know what you think in the comments below.
Originally from Chicago and after an extensive tour of most of the western United States, Richard has resided in Denver since 2004. He attends quite a few Rockies games, especially Rockies fireworks games! When not writing about baseball, he enjoys karaoke downtown, a bit of poker, and a bit too much of his iPad. His writing has appeared on ESPN.com, The Hardball Times, and Beyond the Box Score. He has also covered the Rockies as a credentialed writer as the founder of Rockies Zingers and as a writer for SBNation’s Purple Row.
