Road to Opening Day 5/7

Day 5, May 28th.
Sim league startups are always fun. The field is open, anyone could be the league's first superstar. But at some point, things settle and members start to understand how to create strong players everytime. Talk to us about what you think the first meta of the SBL will be for 2 uncapped TPE.

- Write 50 words about the kind of players you think will dominate the SBL of the future.
- Record a one-minute podcast about the kind of players you think will dominate the SBL of the future.
- Create a graphic about a future superstar.

This task will be open for 2 days, and you still have a day to do your task 4 if you haven't yet. Good day everyone.

I saw someone in the discord the other day mention they were going to specifically build against Zeke out of spite, so considering that, I think that right handed pitchers are going to be most dominant in the early stages of the league. If a large portion of batters focuses hard on beating Zeke, then they are all going to get dominated by the other half of pitchers.

There's really nothing to base this of, but I think one type of pitcher is going to dominate in the first couple seasons. Maybe pitchers that rush Velocity will be unhittable. Maybe one particular type of pitch, combine with high movement or control will be unhittable. Knuckeball? Sinker? Circle Change? Screwball? There's no way to know for sure, but I think it'll be easier to see a meta forming in 4-5 seasons when some pitchers have been established as stars for a season or two and we start to notice some things in common in their build.

Meanwhile, batters can always adapt. Until they hit their caps, of course. But until then, until we realize that 100 Power or 100 Steal is absolutely broken, we'll never know for sure what archetype is the best one.

As for team wide stuff, I'll just put out there that I hope some teams try to play more defensive, having a lot of players with high range, high error. I hope some teams do, and I hope they succeed.

I personally think that the ones that can get the hits on a consistent basis will be the few that show up and be the force of the league. Not everyone can knock it out of the park in the beginning stages but if you eventually build up to a power striker, your stock will rise. Triples and Grand Slams are the move and that can only happen if you got some players that can fit that gap just right and load those bases.

For me, it's not about the kind of player, it's about the user who earns the most. And has the right build, that's always the most key to being the best in sim leagues, not the position, but the user, earning TPE, and their build game. In this case, the people that earning the max they can each week are going to dominate, Pitchers are also my choice of who I think are going to dominate the league for the first few seasons. For the batters they are starting anew, not really knowing their strengths, therefore in my opinion, pitchers are going to have the advantage here, and are going to be the key to success for most teams in the league.

Pitchers have a distinct disadvantage at the beginning, with so many more attributes to improve upon, not to mention velocity. So I think any batter that focuses on solid contact and a bit of power will dominate the league early on, but the real key will be to pay attention to which hand the star pitchers are throwing from and upping your skills accordingly. Strategy is huge in ootp and it may not take long to separate the pros from the fakers

Power is the meta in OOTP. The stat not only raises your players power rating, it raises your players contact rating as well. In fact, Power may actually do more for a players contact than BABIP. Guys who can hit for power and average will be the leagues superstars. Pitchers, well, that's another story. Velocity is expensive. It is up to the leagues young pitcher to figure out how to dominate with 88-90 velo.

Small ball is the kind of baseball I want to see. I think a team with a balanced number of all in vs. LHP and vs. RHP will dominate. In baseball you just need one solid hit to change the course of the game. To be honest, I have no idea what I'm doing and I'm about to take Psanchez's bait and go all in on power.

I think that the first meta could end up just being contact. I feel like a lot of the guys out there might just want to get the ball into play, get on base and see their batting averages become some of the best in the league. I wouldn’t blame anyone for wanting that at all.

I think later on, pitchers will have a huge impact on the league, but right now, I think the power hitters will dominate. A lot of people are making power players, including myself, and pitchers are still very young now, so I expect that we will see some high scoring games as pitchers grow and mature.

I have a feeling that having the best defense in the league will tend to win a lot of games in the early stages of the league. However, having a great defense will be hard to come by due to pitchers having much more attributes to improve. Thus, I think that the players that will dominate in early stages of the league will be the batters focused more on contact and have a little power as well.

This is a great question. In my opinion, I think the first few years of the league on offense, will all be about small ball and trying to get runners in scoring positions with <2 outs. There's going to be a fair amount of fielder's choices as well as possibly some wild innings due to defensive errors since not a lot of folks here have invested into defense to get it up to an acceptable level. The team with the most defense points invested will help prevent those unearned runs and create more wins.

As for pitching.... it didn't hit me until yesterday how many Control Freaks or Groundballers there are in this league and very few power pitchers. As Nitro is a power pitcher, it will be interesting to see how my build differentiates from the rest.... hopefully my velocity update this week will put me ahead of the pack. Should be fun to see what the sim engine outputs when everybody is shitty in OOTP lol

OOTP is a fickle beast when you give pitchers the kind of control that we do. Knuckleballers are strong pitchers but the low GB% makes them very risky to give up lots of homers. I think what will eventually settle out as the meta will be Control Freaks. Limited number of pitches will make the velocity difference between CFs and Groundballers important IMO for getting the stuff up. Max control would be pretty big and movement would be good enough. Then you've got pitch selection, which would likely turn out to be lead by the circle change, followed up with a couple of movement pitches, like Knuckle Curve, Curveball, or Screwball. And then of the fastball variants it would be sinker.

Those who earn the most TPE will be able to make up for any early build mistakes (if any) and create the most dominant players in the league. I myself am completely new to this sim so my pitcher is just being built to what makes sense to me and what quick research I did online.

I think I will dominate players that are more likely to steal as a catcher who is working on his arm and catcher ability as much as batting. I think I’ll dominate pitchers with no control especially if I work on my plate discipline and eye, and I’ll easily dominate slow players that bunt often as I’ll easily throw them out.

See, this one is interesting to me because I feel like a lot of people will want to be "the power-hitting guy" and I'm not sure that will ever change. It's a sim league, it's your player, you want to see your player do exciting stuff and put up some numbers. The natural progression for this, for a lot of people, will be to make someone who can hit for power. Now, the big question is how to best counter that as a pitcher. I hear PBE has a bit of a knuckleball meta going on? That's a definite possibility, but if you throw a bad knuckleball, that thing's getting blasted. Groundballer comes to mind as something that would hypothetically cut down on home runs and such--but Kevin Brown-type sinker throwers have kind of died out these days and there's a bit of speculation that throwing a sinker really doesn't do much against power hitters. I'm a power pitcher, which seems like the worst build against a power hitter, but get really good at throwing a changeup in with the heat and you've got the ability to confuse people swinging for the fences more than anyone.

In the end, it just comes down to what the sim engine likes and what it doesn't. I'm excited to see how things work out!

I think one of the earliest metas is going to be the rush for pitchers to get control and for batters to get a better eye. I feel like we’re going to have some ugly results early on while everybody works on making their players more well rounded, and that some of the highest value players in the league could be the hitters who just don’t swing easily.

There's a lot of guys that want to be power hitters right now, but I think contact hitters will fare better at first. As pitchers develop, I just don't see a lot of quality stuff to get hit out of the yard, but even then I don't see a ton of homers until that power starts getting towards the 80s. Contact hitters will be hitting well from the get-go, which could be a big difference for teams that have them this season.

The kind of players I think who will dominate the league are those who didn't go for power builds. Power builds suck and you will soon realize why. Another type of player who is going to be the best in the league is....

Me. I am the best player of all time and undoubtedly will become the GOAT. I already have chicks all over me! Anyway, I got to go like eat a sandwich and stay healthy and lift weights.

Honestly, I think contact hitters will be the stars of the future. Baseball is all about getting players on base offensively, and they're best equipped to handle the evolution of pitchers. For now, with pitchers relatively unproven and at low TPE levels, I think power hitters will dominate. Especially if they can boost their contact stats a bit, they'll be thriving for the first couple seasons as solid all-around batters compared to everyone else.

I think Pitchers will be dominating force in SBL. We are seeing a lots of great hitters in SBLM right now, but I think pitchers will take over in future. There are so many promising pitchers in minors right and more are on the way for sure. I think we are going to see Groundball or Control Freaks dominate too

If some other baseball sim leagues are anything to go by, the build I fear most is the knuckleballer. But realistically, I suspect the 'most feared' build is one that is properly used by the General Manager - for example, pitchers should slightly specialize and be used against teams with batters they excel against. We can argue that maybe power hitters won't be the preferred way to build fielders, but that depends on others' builds - for example, a pitcher that's all movement/control won't necessarily do as well against a power batter with a good eye. And a team with an excellent shortstop/second baseman will do well against batters that aim for the gaps.

For the future, I see pitchers starting to dominate. There are a lot of great users creating pitchers, so I can see this happening quickly. Not only that, but I see a lot of Control Freaks being created, so that's very interesting. I think they might rule the field in the future, and maybe other archetypes will be fighting for spots. The numbers initially will obviously be all over the place while people round out their builds, but I think in the future, it will be pitcher's paradise.