This will be like my series of articles for Madden, only it’s all in one article, and it’s about Out of the Park Baseball 2014 instead of Madden 12. I am assuming that a) you are playing with scouting turned on and b) you are using standard MLB 2013 settings.
Step 1: The two most important positions on your team are team trainer and scout.
Team trainers are generated less frequently than any coaching position, and there are maybe one or two good ones each year. They keep your pricey baseball players from getting hurt. Scouts mean more accurate ratings (although pay attention to their bias — this will affect how they value certain traits).
Step 2: The most important place to spend money, apart from these two positions, is your scouting budget.
This determines, again, how accurate your ratings are. How you divvy it up is important too, but not as important. The more money you have, total, the better off you are. As far as how you divide it up, that depends on your particular philosophy for improving your team. That leads me into step 3…
Step 3: Choose a design philosophy for your team.
A lot of this depends on the size of your market, the size of your budget, and how expensive your current roster is. There are three ways to effectively build a roster:
International free agents/recruits – the new International Complex lets you store up to 50 players between the ages of 16 or 20. Your scout will find these periodically during the season (for free), and there will be an international free agent bidding process after the draft.
The draft — This is potentially the cheapest way of acquiring talent in terms of money. Only the first five rounds have mandatory bonuses. However, about 90% of this is out of your hands — if your team isn’t terrible, you’ll have a lot of difficulty getting good prospects at the top of the draft.
Acquiring established talent — Either through trades or free agency. Trading for prospects is a great way to supplement the draft. The trade AI isn’t entirely brilliant, but it does tend to value players correctly.
You can, of course, use a combination of all three, but the scouting budget is best used if you focus on no more than two areas (as in 25%+ spent). Major league scouting is best for established veterans, minor league scouting for prospects; amateurs and international scouting are self explanatory. You don’t want to overspecialize either; you can be penalized with inaccurate ratings from time to time (some of which can be mighty expensive).
Step 4: Figure out what you have.
Ratings are nice, but don’t tell the whole story; check your stats too. Some players over perform their ratings pretty consistently; others under perform. Rate stats are generally more useful than counting stats; I personally use VORP and OPS+ for hitters, ERA+, FIP, and BABIP for pitchers. K/BB ratio is extremely important as well.
Step 5: Shed payroll.
More money is better than less money. Look for overpriced veterans, or guys getting their first crack at free agency but aren’t worth the huge contracts they’ll command. This may mean your first year will be rough; that’s part of the cost of doing business.
Step 6: Use freed up money sensibly.
The best use of money is ALWAYS buying out arbitration years of talented rookies. Cost certainty is absolutely critical for long term planning, and that’s how you’ll get out of whatever rut you find yourself. Failing that, invest in international free agents and the draft. Major league free agents should be pursued only when a) you get good value, b) you need one or two cogs for a championship, or c) if it’s something you’ve had a hard time developing yourself. Never pay more than $2 million for a reliever unless he’s the closer or likely to be very soon. Try to balance offense and defense as best you can, but if you can’t, go for one extreme or another. Guys who can kind of hit and kind of field tend to get a lot of money — they aren’t worth it.
Step 7: Hire the best coaches money can buy.
Cheap talent is useless if you don’t develop it, and for that you need coaches. It isn’t clear what the Player Development Budget does, but it’s better to have too much in it than not enough. Stockpile coaches, so when they retire you don’t always have to look on the open market for it. Resign good ones.
One bonus step to long term success:
Step 8: If you play GM only mode, watch the AI’s lineups.
The AI will do very stupid things if you let it. These include playing guys out of position and letting a great defender get all the at bats because why not? Sometimes it is better to trade that great defender to keep him out of the lineup.
That’s it for now — I’ll have some quick hits in a few days, and will be happy to answer questions in the comments.
