Baseball Mogul 2011: New Features

[Clay Dreslough]

I'm not very good at writing "marketing copy". The page for Baseball Mogul 2011 lists some changes since last year, but doesn't describe them in detail.

I'm really enjoying playing the new version of Baseball Mogul, but there isn't anything that pops out as THE BIG NEW FEATURE. So I figured I'd just start a thead and talk about what's changed.

The Skip Inning Button

I just got an email from a beta tester saying that the "Skip Inning" button, by itself, is worth buying the new version. He has a point.

The "Skip Inning" button is on the Play-By-Play button and looks like this: ">>". Clicking it will finish the current half-inning. When I'm ahead in a game, I tend to skip through the batting portion of each inning, so I can focus on shutting down the other team. Similarly, if I'm behind I notice that I tend to skip my opponent's turn at-bat and just worry about catching up.

The Options Dialog also lets you adjust how the "Skip Inning" button works. Normally it will skip the entire half inning. But you can tell it to stop in the middle if, for example, two runners get on base, or a run scores.

[Clay Dreslough]

New League Editor Features

The League Editor now includes a list on the right side of all your teams by division. This is cosmetic, but really useful. It makes it easy to move teams around or add teams to your configuration without trying to remember which teams are where.

You can also now set the lengths of each playoff series, from 1 to 9 games. And if you don't edit these settings, Baseball Mogul will set them to correct historical value. For example, the American League has always used a 1-game tie-breaker at the end of the regular season. But the National League used a 3-game tie-breaker until 1969.

Several options have been added to limit the role that cash can play in trades. For more realism, you can disallow trades where the amount of cash exceeds that necessary to cover the current salaries (or the remaining contracts) of the players involved. (This setting is called "Cash In Trades" in the League Editor).

[Clay Dreslough]

The "Injuries" list along the bottom of the screen now lists the most-recently injured players at the top (it used to list those with the longest injuries). This makes it easy to see when a player on your team gets injured without having to check your lineup or use the "Injury Contingency" function.

[Clay Dreslough]

In Baseball Mogul 2010, if you wanted to build a league with teams from throughout history mixed together, and you added the 1996 Mariners and the 2004 Reds, Ken Griffey Jr. would only be in the game once. Baseball Mogul 2011 corrects this so that Griffey will be on both teams (at different points in his career).

[Clay Dreslough]

The new Personal Catcher feature lets you specify a "personal catcher" for one or more of your pitchers. If this catcher is on the roster, but isn't scheduled to play, he will be inserted in the lineups on days when the specified pitcher starts.

[Clay Dreslough]

I finally sat down and re-wrote the entire logic that computer teams use to offer and accept trades. As the Trading Deadline approaches, teams out of contention become more aggressive at trading good players for prospects. And teams in contention do the reverse. In addition, the entire valuation engine has been changed. Among other things, it's now much harder to pry superstars and "can't-miss" prospects away from any team.

[Clay Dreslough]

Improved Depth Chart

The Depth Chart now lists your chosen starters at each position, even if that isn't their natural position. It also shows Free Agents and other available players at each position, and refreshes after you make changes to your team. These are relatively minor changes, but they make this screen a lot more useful in my experience.

Note: Some users would like the Depth Chart to let you specify backups at each position, with one player being able to occupy more than one position. I would like to add this kind of functionality to Baseball Mogul at some point, but not on this page. The Depth Chart is intended as an overview of your talent, to help you see the holes in your roster.

[Clay Dreslough]

Draft Editor

The new Draft Editor (on the League Menu) lets you reassign any upcoming draft pick to any other team. This is useful if you want to mimic things like compensation picks in your baseball universe. Baseball Mogul doesn't yet support supplementary draft picks (between rounds) but this feature is a big step in that direction.

[Clay Dreslough]

Free Agent Bidding

I think this feature needs some exposition because everyone has a different idea of how "Free Agent Bidding" should work. One way is to enter a bid, then sim day-by-day and see if other teams respond. I played around with this but found it really annoying. The problem for me isn't that signing a Free Agent is quick, the problem is that you can often get them for a steal before the computer teams sign players.

So I incorporated the computer bidding into the process where you actually negotiate with a player. A player might be asking for $5M over 2 years. You offer him $4.7M and he agrees to sign, but then the other teams hear that he's about to sign. If there's a higher offer out there that the player would like to take, he'll let you know and give you the immediate chance to outbid the other team. If you turn him down, he's gone to the other team. This is simpler than it could have been, but I find it does a pretty good job of keeping you from getting good players at bargain prices.

(You can turn this feature off in the Options Dialog)

[Clay Dreslough]

Rookies Moved From Free Agent List to Amateur Draft Pool

In Baseball Mogul 2010, when you started a new game in a historical season, the game would put players without major league experience on the Free Agent list, if Baseball Mogul couldn't find the team that they belonged on.

For example, if you start a game in 1992, Todd Helton is 18 years old. Helton debuted with the Rockies and should start the game in the Rockies farm system. But the Rockies didn't exist in 1992, so the game would just put him in the Free Agent pool.

This made it way too easy to build a successful team, because in some years there were a bunch of talented rookies just waiting to be signed.

For Baseball Mogul 2011, players like this are now put in the Amateur Draft pool. So you have to use a draft pick to get the player. This makes it much more challenging to build a team starting in a year like 1968, 1992 or 1997.

[Clay Dreslough]

All-Star Game Improvements

You can now play the All-Star Game in Play-By-Play, just like any other game. You are given the option of managing the AL or the NL, or just watching it.

The All-Star Game box score is also now available on the Calendar Page. And the AI has been made more realistic for pitcher and batter usage during the game. Specifically, the relief pitcher and pinch-hitter frequencies are now modelled on historical trends in these areas.

[Clay Dreslough]

Improved Bench AI

Baseball Mogul 2010 didn't have the best AI for setting up and using the bench. The first problem was that teams would often use a roster spot for a 3rd catcher; this has been fixed (or rather greatly reduced as sometimes the 3rd catcher may be the best option).

Baseball Mogul 2010 also wasn't very smart about using everyone on the bench. If a player wasn't the best pinch hitter or defensive replacement or pinch runner, then he might get used very rarely, and only get 5 or 10 at bats in a whole season. The manager AI has been re-written to focus more on lefty-righty matchup, different types of pinch-hitting (such as bunt specialists or RBI specialists), and giving players a good mix of rest and playing time. This means that team benches are now used much more realistically.

Clay

[Clay Dreslough]

Thanks for reading! More info soon.

Version 13.02 should be available on or before Tuesday (March 30th). And we'll be releasing a Free Demo soon, too.

Clay