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Detroit Tigers: Simulating the 2017 Season with Out of the Park Baseball 18

By Matt Snyder

Mar 31, 2014; Detroit, MI, USA; General view during the national anthem before an opening day baseball game between the Detroit Tigers and the Kansas City Royals at Comerica Park. Mandatory Credit: Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports
Mar 31, 2014; Detroit, MI, USA; General view during the national anthem before an opening day baseball game between the Detroit Tigers and the Kansas City Royals at Comerica Park. Mandatory Credit: Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports /
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Simulating the Detroit Tigers’ 2017 season with the newly-released Out of the Park 18 baseball simulation game.

Out of the Park Baseball 18 was released this week, just in time for the start of the regular season. One of the first things I like to do with each year’s copy is run a quick simulation of the season to get an idea of how the year might go for the Detroit Tigers.

For the uninitiated, OOTP allows you to get as deep into baseball management details as you want. You can act as GM and designate players for assignment, make trades, and scout international talent, you can act as the manager and fuss over every in-game decision for an entire year (or decade!), or you can do everything at once.

For this experiment I took a completely hands-off approach and just let the simulator run from April through October. I kept an eye on the standings but didn’t step in to make any roster or lineup decisions.

In my sim, the Tigers started out fairly slowly with just four wins through the first 12 games. Doom was avoided — good thing Tigers Twitter doesn’t exist in this game — and the club was back to .500 by the end of April.

They would hover around that mark for much of the summer, but a weak AL Central kept them in contention for the division title. They would ultimately fall two games short of the Cleveland Indians, but a strong second half got the club to the 86-win mark which was good enough for a Wild Card berth.

Here are some statistical highlights from the simulated season:

  • Anibal Sanchez pitched in the rotation for most of the year with 158 innings and a solid 4.15 ERA.
  • Tyler Collins clubbed 22 home runs but a sub-.300 OBP prevented him from providing much overall offensive value. He was also seven runs below average in 80 games in center field.
  • Miguel Cabrera hit 40 home runs and was, unsurprisingly, the Tigers’ best overall hitter.
  • Jordan Zimmermann bounced back to be the Tigers’ best overall pitcher. He was worth 4.5 WAR with 208 innings pitched and a 3.55 ERA.

In the postseason, the Tigers beat the Houston Astros in the one-game Wild Card play-in but fell to the Boston Red Sox in the ALDS by a margin of three games to one.

In all, it was a season that would be satisfactory to Tigers fans. The club is trying to make one last push into the postseason and, although they fell short of ultimate World Series glory here, the simulated year provided much excitement and plenty to cheer about.

Next: Tigers All-Time 25-Man Roster

The simulated total of 86 wins is in line with what many Tigers fans expect, though the traditional projection systems would peg that number to be on the optimistic side of reasonable. FanGraphs currently projects the Tigers to win about 82 games while Baseball Prospectus projects them to win only 79.

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