We all want to be in charge of our favourite baseball team. It’s why Franchise mode exists on console games and why games like Out of the Park Baseball and Strat-o-Matic baseball (among others) are so popular.
Well this year Strat-o-Matic has come out with a new product that throws a different spin on controlling your ballclub.
In SOM’s Baseball Daily product, you are able to be John Gibbons (or any manager of any team) using the same things that they have to decide things on a daily basis.
Baseball Daily will give you updated rosters and “cards” (SOM uses cards to determine results of play) every single day of the regular season. The cards on Opening Day will represent a mix of projections and recent history and every day, the cards will update along with the season based on the results. That means that the cards will represent hot streaks and cold streaks on a day to day basis, meaning you’ll have the same agonizing decisions to make as John Gibbons.
Sure, Drew Storen started off badly, but do you keep throwing him out there hoping he’ll revert to his old form? What about Ryan Goins?
And as manager, you have no control on roster moves. Players will be added and removed as they are in real life and you are not able to make any trades.
This is different than games like Out of the Park Baseball which revert into their own universe with trades and injuries. This allows you to live in the same world as your favourite manager and make the same calls. Will you make things better or worse?
You can go at your own pace and start your season at any point up until the end of December, however you can never pass the actual day of the season.
There are some hiccups you will run into. For example, on Opening Day with the Blue Jays you will not have Joe Biagini or Arnold Leon as they were not in the database. Players making their debuts typically take a few extra days to be added to the roster. However, a recent patch makes it so that teams lineups are as true to life as they could possibly be keeping in mind the missing players.
This is the first year of the product and there have already been many improvements since the product launched in April.
The game is flexible in how you want to play. You can choose to keep the actual lineups and use your in-game management skills to better the Jays fortunes, or you can make your own lineups if you want to avoid Kevin Pillar at lead off for the first month or so of the season.
The Baseball Daily product is an add on to the existing SOM Windows baseball game and you need to purchase both to have access to it. Included in the Windows game is the 2015 season which you can play with as well and we all know how much fun that would be for Jays fans.
When you have the Windows game, you are able to purchase any season in baseball history and replay that as well if you choose. The Baseball Daily product will expire December 31 so all seasons will need to be finished by that date.
To purchase or for more information you can go to Strat-o-Matic’s website.
