iOOTP 13: Toronto Blue Jays are better in the sim world than the real world

I got my copy of iOOTP 13 a few weeks ago and dove right in.  I decided to go with the Toronto Blue Jays this time around to see if  my sim team could match up to the expectations of the real world team this year.

If you’re used to the iOOTP format, you will pick up right where you left off.  The action is pretty smooth as you’d expect and the set up is pretty much exactly the same.

I went with the re-draft new season format.  I like that in this version you can pick what teams are in the league.  It has randomize function.  I tried to stick to the real thing.  I like the re-draft because I like fantasy baseball, but it would probably be fun to take a team on the cusp like the Orioles and see what you can do with them.  Here is pretty much the offense I drafted.

2013-04-21 23.27.11

I’m pretty sure I went Trout, Stanton, Castro, Zunino and Eaton were my top picks.  I heavily leaned towards young players because I knew my payroll wouldn’t be very high to begin with.  Check the staff I came up with after the jump:

2013-04-21 23.27.08

Horrible, right?  Leake had a pretty good season.  But I obviously leaned towards hitting during the draft.  I have found that highly ranked hitters seem to be a little more consistent in iOOTP, but I’m sure that’s just perception.  Anyway, I like seeing 50 HR more than 230Ks.

I learned a lot about how to win in iOOTP from my previous foray in iOOTP12.  So this time, my teams did fairly well from the beginning.  Here are my three year finishes:

2013-05-07 20.58.33

2015 was particularly successful for me.  These are the awards I won that year.

  • World Series
  • Manager of the Year
  • Mike Leake won the “Cy Young”
  • Mike Trout won the MVP and the batting title
  • Nolan Fontana won the Rookie of the Year
  • Adam Eaton won a Gold Glove in CF

Not bad for one season.  I had trouble getting over the hump with my first two teams and I learned my lesson on pitching.  I traded some high yield prospects like Byron Buxton and Miguel Sano for Dylan Bundy – who was already an overall 80.  And another few prospects, Starling Marte and Jorge Soler for Zach Wheeler.  So take note, you will probably have trouble making it past the league championship without solid top of the line pitching.

Some new features I found pretty enjoyable on this update:

  • New medal achievements to unlock like winning 10 games in a row or hitting 3 home runs in a game.
  • A little better trading intelligence.  Not quite as easy to trick the computer into a good trade.  (If you want to challenge yourself, don’t allow yourself to trade except to accept offers…much harder when you can’t flip veterans, especially if you own a smaller market team)

This game is great for those times when you have 15-20 minutes to kill.  It’s much less intensive than OOTP, so you can jump in and out.  Although, be warned, you may look up and realize an hour or more has gone by, you’ve won a few games, made a few trades, and have 3 guys on the DL. (And your wife is staring at you wondering why the clothes aren’t folded).  Enjoy!