Carter Stenberg
Written by: Im A Gausman
Shmuel Gardner. Takeo Koya. Holger Staar.
These names will mean nothing to you. But in Out Of The Park Baseball 22, 23, and 24, they mean everything to me. In a simulated MLB future, these 3 talents would go on to become some of the most incredible talents the MLB has ever seen.
The annual series from Out of The Park Developments is one of the deepest sports sims around – and most certainly the deepest for the great sport of baseball. Now as the series hits it’s 26th edition, I wanted to do something a little different for my yearly dive into the next 50+ years of MLB history (future?).
As with any sports title that offers it, I dive right into expanding the league and piloting that brand new team in my image and wants all the way from a newborn punching bag to league juggernaut… Though usually falling somewhere in between.
This year I am inviting you all to join me in this journey as every week – right here on Regeneration Sports Network – I will be giving full recaps of each simulated season, providing insights into some of the decisionmaking, and reveling in the story told in the stat lines of the real and fictional players that we shall come to know and love.
(This series is heavily inspired by the incredible work of Ricky O’Donnell and his “College Hoops 2K8” series he had created back in 2020. If you haven’t checked that out, please give it a read as his chronicle detailing the ascent of the Western Illinois Leathernecks is something to behold.)
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First things first – the rules for this particular game. I used the base systems of the game but minor tweaks to rules. The “Talent Change Randomness” was upped about 5%. This is a small tweak that I think reflects real life a bit better with surprise break out stars and some crashing to earth. You don’t want to go much higher than this and you start seeing some really rapid ascent and decline from prospects and veterans.
Trading difficulty has been pushed up to hard including hard mode. If we want to develop this team via the trade market, like any good Canadian team, we gotta work our asses off to do so.
And with that we have the birth of the Saskatchewan Knights and the Portland Phantoms.
We held a fan poll on our social media, and the people had spoken that they wanted me to go on essentially hard mode with this tiny market team. Vancouver and Nashville stans needn’t fear though, they will be each expansion city’s respective Triple-A teams.
The AL already having the Blue Jays representing Canada, the NL Central will be getting the next Canadian team. The Portland Phantoms join the AL West division.
Honestly the division for a Sask team was such a headache to figure out. Saskatoon being further east than the NL West Rockies, but further west than the Astros and Rangers. My ultimate deciding factor was to put them into the division that would most respect a field of corn in Left Field (and further away from getting curb stomped by the Dodgers every year).
Speaking of our Corn in left field, may I welcome you to Ag Park:
Keeping with Saskatchewan’s rich cultural heritage of growing things, I named the park after it and will make sure the world knows when they see a deep drive to left-centre.
Yes. A 20 ft wall in left, and a 7 ft wall in right. This ballpark is a monster. A green one if you will. I wonder if that’s been claimed? At any rate, we need power righties and contact lefties to make best use of this behemoth. I will be sure to go into the expansion draft accordingly.
For the upcoming expansion draft, I made it closely reflect the last expansion in 1998 but also not making it extremely easy to fleece teams. OOTP uses a standard 25 protected players, protect all players with less than 3 service years, and a one per round limit on how many players taken from a given team. In 1997 – the previous league expansion – teams were allowed to protect 15 players then increase by 3 after each round. For simplicity’s sake, I am making it an even 18 protected, but increasing the service time threshold to 4 years to try and simulate a comparable # of protected players. I also capped the limit of picks from a team at 3, closest resembling the limits from the last expansion.
With that, it was time to hire our coaching staff and get ready for the draft…
Say hello to the owner of the newest MLB franchise, 61 year old Zach Cone from Union Township, NJ. (I don’t know what’s up with his logo I can’t fix it).
We definitely got lucky here in terms of the temperament. Hands off, lenient, and normal are about as good as you can ask for a small market team like ours. Winning is something that seeks great on paper – but is going to be a hard goal to meet early on in this sim given the conditions and amount of available talent. We shall test how lenient Mr Cone REALLY is.
It could always be worse though. Look at what our GM across the league got for an owner:
I am not sure if it’s a glitch with my save or OOTP or exactly how it works, but there were no available free agency coaching staff meaning to start this sim we had to fill our teams with generated coaches and scouts. Not a huge loss given I will be running this as a GM / Manager, it still would have been nice to have some real world names fill out our staff.
We will not be doing that with our minors players though. No sir we are gonna comb through FA to find some studs.
But before that happens, we’ve got an expansion draft to complete!
We luck out and get the first pick. Lots of talent available and huge names from Giancarlo Stanton, Justin Verlander, and even the goat Martin Maldonado on the board… but this team is likely going to be about building stars, not acquiring them. There is only one 5 star potential available and that is the incredible Porter Hodge who ate some solid innings in relief for the Cubs last year. I feel we can make this guy into something.
The Phantoms take Dustin May and Shane Baz. Both guys I had on my radar. That’s fine though as we get 2 picks into the exact guys I was hoping for: Michael Massey and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. Yes, Lourdes has the huge contract and is a bit older – but as an old Jays fan and someone on the Snakes bandwagon in 2023, I just want him on the squad.
I won’t go over every pick but there are ones worth pointing out for the philosophy of this team. We take Casey Mize and “Foolish Baseball Favorite” Tim Locastro. His speed/steal stats along with his ability to play just about any position makes him invaluable to us in our monster ballpark where Home Runs are a luxury.
Knowing this, I immediately back track on this statement for the memes. “A drive into deep left field by Castellanos” is the exact kind of thing this series is about. Potentially kneecapping our future economic flexibility to do so is something I am willing to sacrifice.
We get Alek Manoah in Round 13. I can fix him.
With that the expansion is complete. There is only a few days before the season begins, so I quickly head to FA to sure up our roster and our minor system. I will spare you the tedious man hours that are filling out 6 minor league rosters.
I present to you now – your first official MLB roster of the Saskatchewan Knights:
Take a look at your Opening Day starters making history in Saskatchewan and Portland.
Opening day sees the Knights take on the Rockies at Coors Field. Tim Locastro starts the franchise off hot with a deep drive on the second pitch he sees that sails over the CF’s head for a double. He doesn’t score but makes it known this team is here to compete. Let’s take a look at how the first game in franchise history plays out:
Yeah that was a heartbreaking way to lose your first game. Hiura was a Triple short of the Cycle in his debut. It was a 3-hit night which included a go ahead 2-run home run in the 8th – and it was all erased with a Brendan Doyle walk off against closer Jordan Romano. Bad start.
We pick up Brandon Belt the next day, improving our infield and picking up another power bat. Another immediate need – left handed pitching. Somehow I missed grabbing a LHP during the draft. I scramble and get the best one available…
Patrick Corbin…
What is an expansion team if not a chance at redemption for players wanting a second chance. Maybe a specialist role is all Corbin needs to get back to Cy Young contender form.
The home opener arrives against Milwaukee. The home crowd is nuts for early superstar Keston Hiura with an .OPS of 2.250 coming out of the Colorado series. 6’11” Sean Hjelle makes his first career start along with the franchises first ever game at Ag Park.
He pitched admirably, only giving up 3 ER over his 5 innings of work. It was still competitive up until the 8th inning. What happ-
Oh boy.
The team plods along to a 6-14 record before Michael Massey gets diagnosed with a broken bone in his elbow, taking him out for the rest of the regular season. We pick up Whit Merrifield out of free agency to hopefully stem the bleeding, he will split time with Mastrobuoni.
Castellanos goes down for 6 weeks not even a few days later, then ruptures a ligament upon return putting him on the shelf for another 10 months. The wheels are coming off fast in year one.
Our need for left handed pitching gets so severe, I pick up Dallas Keuchel out of Free Agency. May the baseball gods have mercy on us.
We reach the all-star break.
I get the news Michael Massey will be out another 9 months. I will be firing the Team Trainer this offseason.
Our team sits at 35-64. We are tied for last in the league with the Chicago White Sox, but only a game back from the Pirates!
Improbably the Portland Phantoms are 48-51 and only 5 games back of a playoff spot. Ryan Mountcastle wins All-Star game MVP in his team’s inaugural season.
SP Sean Hjelle is the team’s sole representative at this year’s all-star game, who currently has a 3.07 ERA over 111 IP which is good enough for 6th lowest out of qualified starters.
I do want to note I will not be “voting” in any of the in-game competitions such as All-Star, MVP, HOF, etc. I do want this team and its players to make it on their own merit without my omnipotent power to imbalance that.
The Draft rolls around and it’s finally time for our team to start building for the future. Ethan Holliday goes 1st overall to the Chicago White Sox, a likely reality we will all see a few months from now.
With the 31st pick in this years draft, we take 18 year old 6’5” SP Landon Harmon.
A high ceiling kid with great stuff potential in his fastball and slider. He already has a star rating higher than most of our minor talent so I am hoping he develops quickly into someone to eat up innings. 5 of our first 6 picks end up being pitchers. I believe you build a team from the mound out. We will see how that plays out in years to come.
And this is “Example A” as to why:
They won 17-2 the next night… but then our Savior arrived. Alek Manoah returned! Ready to take the league by storm! How did he do?
Trade Deadline comes around – we don’t have much to deal with and a 43-79 record means we sure ain’t buying players either. We do trade Brandon Belt to Seattle getting Rowdy Tellez and a left handed pitcher in return. Minor improvements for both of us – not sure if Rowdy sticks around.
This deadline was weird and featured some really crazy deals. The Twins are assembling a super rotation, acquiring Kevin Gausman and Chad Green from Toronto along with Framber Valdez from Houston. Sitting first place they want to make a run.
Bo Bichette goes to the Astros. I want to cry. #FireAtkins
The inaugural season ends with the 57-105 Saskatchewan Knights losing 16-0 to the 76-86 Reds. Let’s review:
Team was bad. Late call-ups Abraham Toro and Will Brennan were the few bright spots. Keston Hiura led the team with 21 HR and 72 RBI. Well earned with his 177 Strikeouts.
Let’s see the rest of the league.
Josh Naylor was hunting a Triple Crown all season. You love to see it.
The Dodgers only got 96 wins. You love to see it.
There was also one No-Hitter this year by Kyle Harrison of the San Francisco Giants on 09/05 vs the Atlanta Braves.
Let’s see how these playoffs shook out.
Bet you didn’t see this coming? GO BREWE-
Marcus Stroman shuts out the Brewers in Milwaukee to win the Yankees their first WS since 09. This save has started off so cursed already but there is no going back now.
Hope you enjoyed Year One of the Saskatchewan Knights. We have got a long road ahead of us, but I expect we can turn things around this coming off-season. I’ll see you next week to cover the off-season and 2026 season.
#ImAGausman
