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I love working with data, for fun and at work — and sometimes they overlap.

Whenever things get hectic at the day job and I need to clear my head, I’ll often prioritize a data project and spend a couple of hours messing around with pivot tables. You can organize and analyze data in different ways, and even use it to tell interesting stories. My favorites, of course, are the ones that counter someone’s “gut” or “vibes” with clear facts. Sorry, not sorry.

One of my all-time favorite games is basically a data-crunching simulation that lets you pretend to manage a soccer team, aka Football Manager. I’ve highly praised FM a couple of times in the past — in praise of virtual “work” and “the greatest RPG ever” — but the franchise recently hit a rough patch as FM25 was canceled and FM26 was a total mess when it launched. I was desperate for something that could scratch the Football Manager-shaped hole in my life, and the users of Reddit delivered unto me: Out of the Park Baseball 26.

tldr, Out of the Park Baseball is basically Football Manager, but for baseball. Functionally similar in many ways, the main differences are related to the many differences between the two sports, but also in depth and scale.

FM is a worldwide game, like the sport itself, with a dizzying number of leagues, teams, and players, but you’re primarily managing your own team. OOTP is primarily focused on baseball in the US, but it goes deep on the minor league system, giving you a lot more control over multiple teams and players in your organization, including international players you can scout and sign.

One of baseball’s most unique elements is its 162-game slog of a regular season, and in OOTP that means every day potentially gives you something to do, influence, analyze, or over-analyze.

You can micro-manage everything from roster construction, player development, lineups, and even individual at-bats, or delegate specific aspects to your AI staff members. This is the old school definition of AI in games, not the recent marketing nonsense that’s taken over everything, and it’s occasionally as janky as you’d expect, although often in frustratingly believable ways.

Also similar to FM, it’s not a terribly beginner-friendly experience, but there are plenty of good YouTube videos to help you understand the basics and get started. I watched a handful and began with a Quickstart game set late in the 1994 season, managing the Mets through the end of the season to get the hang of the basic mechanics. It was a weird flashback, but also a low-pressure way to familiarize myself before jumping into a new save from scratch.

When I was ready, I chose the Mets, of course, started in November of 2024 by demoting David Stearns to assistant GM, immediately re-signing Pete Alonso and locking down Juan Soto, both on team-friendly contracts before the Winter meetings even started. It was almost a little too easy and, as I was worrying if OOTP would actually be challenging at all — Nolan McLean inexplicably retired a month later!

How the Mets won the World Series in 2026

I decided to play only as the GM, keeping Carlos Mendoza and his staff in place, letting them handle individual games, while Stearns managed the minor leagues. I took on overall roster construction, contracts, scouting, drafting, and team strategy, which included making several mistakes in the first season as certain league mechanics weren’t always clear and I didn’t want to “cheat” by using the editor to correct my mistakes.

As a result, among other things, I mistakenly released Sterling Marte on waivers, although he was having a pretty good season as my DH!

Beyond actual mistakes, I made several questionable roster decisions that first season as I slowly got comfortable with the various systems, some of which probably tanked my best prospects’ development as I let the AI do its own thing for a while until I had a better understanding of how everything works and what I shouldn’t let it decide.

One of the downsides of the game’s daily cadence is that it’s a total trap for “tinker man” players like me, and at one point I realized I was making moves simply because I could, often based on small sample sizes of data. Day Job Guy was very disappointed in Play Job Guy!

My first season was a roller coaster, but we actually won 104 games, dominated the NL East… and then were embarrassingly swept out of our first playoff series by the hated Phillies.

With a full season under my belt, I had a much better understanding of the game and prioritized constructing a stronger overall team, focusing on better pitchers, in particular. I was ruthless with prospects and veterans alike, replaced several of Mendoza’s staff, and similar to IRL Stearns, ended up putting together a decent starting rotation and strong bullpen — and then watched my team play like chumps for the first six weeks of the season, blowing leads left and right.

The tinker man resurfaced and I’d rebuilt 2/3rds of my pitching staff by the All Star break, turning a barely .500 team into a more competitive challenger, and we ended the season NL East champs again. Unlike 2025, the 2026 Mets stormed through the playoffs, ultimately taking down the Yankees 4-1, and not having to regret trading Mark Vientos crosstown only to see him have the monster season he didn’t have in real life.

For the 2027 season, I focused on stability, running it back with the core that included a late-blooming Ronny Mauricio evolving into a stellar first basemen. The IRL “baby Mets” had grown up in the virtual world, and 2027 saw Alvarez, Baty, and Mauricio becoming three of the best players on the team, and in Maurico’s case, the whole league! I also had a prospect make a huge jump, as Jack Wenninger took advantage of an early season injury to break into the rotation and ended up being a strong Rookie of the Year candidate and longshot for the Cy Young. (I haven’t advanced past the first day of the offseason yet, so I don’t know if he won either of them.)

Sadly, although we won the NL East yet again, the Braves knocked us out 4-1 in the LCS, going on to lose the World Series to Seattle.

A great Simulator, but it’s not an RPG

After three full seasons in GM-only mode for the NY Mets, with three playoff appearances and one World Series victory to show for it, OOTP26 fully and completely scratched that Football Manager itch, delivering a similarly immersive experience with its own unique flavor. I felt more in control of my team’s fate as GM in OOTP than I ever did in FM (where I typically delegate fewer responsibilities to the AI), while my AI manager and coaching staff made a satisfactory combination of agreeable and confounding decisions that were usually clearly based on the strategy I’d defined.

(I also have a lot more sympathy for David Stearns IRL, because roster construction is really hard, even with Daddy Warbucks as your owner.)

Interestingly, my worst moments were often related to AI Mendoza’s in-game management of pitchers, sticking with struggling relievers much longer than I liked. I actually had to demote one reliever he kept as Closer despite him blowing multiple saves and me specifying someone else as the Closer in their damn contract! You can override things like that in the game, but I always chose to stick with my settings and go with what happens.

As a simulation, I think I actually like OOTP a little more than FM, but FM still excels (excelled?) at emergent storytelling, partly because OOTP doesn’t have many of the minor narrative elements FM has (had?) — arguably for better and worse. No press conferences; no beef with other managers or players; no sack race. Most of those things are peripheral to FM‘s core mechanics, but they add an element of immersion that OOTP lacks.

That said, going through a full off-season, pre-season, 162-game season and, potentially, deep in the playoffs, offers plenty of satisfying immersion. And there’s plenty of room for creating head canon, especially when a player you traded or cut at some point appears in a crucial game on the other side — and they either prove you right for letting them go, or get their revenge at the worst possible time.

Damn you, Nicholas John Carlo Pivetta!