Game Developer Sims Mets Season in a Tiny Citi Field

We here at TechGraphs are big fans of Out of the Park Baseball (OOTP), and you should be too. It’s an immensely deep and feature-rich baseball simulator that allows you to create your own dream team using past or present players. Do to its extreme customizability, it also makes for some great thought experiments.

Recently, the New York Mets announced that they would, once again, be moving in the outfield fences in the right-center portion of Citi Field to make the park a little more hitter friendly. This will be the second time since 2012 the outfield fences have been tweaked with. The news lead to a myriad of jokes on Twitter, including this:

Queens, 2035: CitiField's dimensions are now 150 feet in all directions. Mets are out-homered, 1,215-1,049, and go 79-83

— Emma Span (@emmaspan) October 15, 2014

Which led to this:

@emmaspan @paul_boye I believe you CAN do that in @ootpbaseball

— dianagram (@dianagram) October 27, 2014

Which led to the fine folks at OOTP actually testing this theory out. Over on the OOTP blog, Brad Cook outlines just how he went about simulating a 2015 Mets season with a home park that was the Bandbox to Rule Them All.

Cook actually uses two methodologies, one with a straight 150-foot fence, and one with a slightly more realistically curved one. Click the link for the full details, but be prepared for Ike Davis to win the Triple Crown (and still be less valuable than Mike Trout). Needless to say, the Mets score a lot of runs and give up a lot of runs. But in one scenario, they actually manage to be a pretty decent team (there’s hope, Mets fans!)

OOTP is a wonderful game to play the “normal” way, but it’s tricks and tweaks like these that make it all the more enjoyable. On a similar note, friend of the site Patrick Dubuque performed a similar-ish experiment, creating four teams consisting of nothing but Adam Dunns, Koji Ueharas, Dee Gordons, and Bartolo Colons. This type of thing slices through the meaty side of life, and when the winter doldrums hit my abode, you can be sure that I’ll be experimenting like this until Spring Training starts.

(Header image via Cathy T)