Texas Red Bulls: A $20 OOTP Perfect Team

Welcome to Out of the Park (OOTP) Perfect Team. You may be familiar with OOTP, perhaps even recently via Ben Clemens’ journey with his Milwaukee Brewers. I checked with Ben to make sure he wouldn’t feel like his toes were being stepped on if I started an OOTP series and he was beyond chill with it because he’s just that kind of guy.

Perfect Team is a card collecting online mode. You build and mold your team through throngs of virtual cards with ratings relating to the year in question whether it’s the 2020 iteration of everyone on a current roster or an early-1900s flashback and everything in between. When you start a team, you get six free packs and 1000 Perfect Points (the in-game currency you can use to buy more packs or players off the Auction House). About 20-30 minutes after you create your team, you’re placed into Entry Pool which is essentially a Spring Training of sorts where games are simulated against other human-run teams every 30 minutes 24/7 until the next Monday.

It makes the most sense to start a team earlier in the week so you have that time in Entry Pool to earn Perfect Points (which you acquire via a bevy of achievements your team can do like someone hitting 2 HR and getting 20 points or a big comeback win that is worth 400). To give you an idea of what you can earn in a day, the team we’re going to be focused on in this series earned 1850 points on Sunday.

Once you’re done with Entry Pool, you’re placed into a Rookie League against 29 others and sims still run every 30 minutes but now it’s from 9AM-midnight Central Time. Each day is a month of the season (Mon-Sat is Apr-Sept) and Sunday is the playoffs. You work your way up the ladder by succeeding in your league, but you can also be relegated down a level for rough seasons, except in Rookie League. You can’t be put back into Entry Pool or anything like that. From Rookie, there’s Stone, Iron, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Diamond, and Perfect so it’s a long ascent to the top of the heap.

The top question I get from someone new to OOTP Perfect Team is if you have to pay to win. The answer is decidedly no, particularly from Rookie to Gold league. By the time you reach Diamond league, your silver studded team will probably start to struggle, but by that point you’ve likely accumulated a ton of points to improve the squad and have something more competitive with the top dogs.

For this team, I’m only spending $20. That will get me 25,000 Perfect Points and I’m going to foolishly buy some packs, but then supplement the team via the Auction House. I say foolishly because hitting it big in packs is tough and a crapshoot. If you run into some golds or a diamond, that’s awesome, but you’re likely to collect a load of commons and bronzes with a decent number of silver sprinkled in.

I’m going to be writing about this squad regularly here at Rotographs and like Ben I’ll be polling y’all for some of the decisions, particularly when it comes to buying someone off the market. For today, I’d like to share the contents of my six starter packs plus the notables from the other 22 packs I pulled. In your six starter packs, you’re guaranteed one gold card. Obviously, it’d be amazing to get more than that or even a diamond, but I’d settle for a handful of silvers within the 36 cards (6 cards per pack).

Here’s what I got!

Pack 1: A Piece of Candy

You’re guaranteed at least one bronze or better (60+ OVR) in every pack and this pack offered just the one, but at least it was a silver (70-79). Candy Maldonado doesn’t field too well, but ’92 was his best season ever by wRC+ (128) and he works well against both righties and lefties.

Pack 2: The Fake Player

Eno is very confused by the guy in the upper left, but Tom Murphy is our starting catcher. I love Swipe Right (Pinder), but he really flopped in Entry Pool so I decided to move on from him even as a backup utilityman.

Pack 3: A Couple Flashbacks

Tony Womack’s premium speed (84 SPD, 85 STEAL, 91 BASERUNNING) was a candidate for our pinch runner off the bench, but I found a better option in the form of Roman Quinn (98 SPD, 88 STL, 93 BR), who cost just 75 points and can actually hit a good bit better than Womack should he be forced into pinch-hit duty.

Pack 4: White Gold

Here’s our gold card! Frank White is quite a pull. He’s an elite 2B defender and strong power hitter with an 85 power rating (80 vR, 99 vL). He’ll be in the middle of our lineup for sure. Murry Dickson is a lowkey nice pickup, too. He’s one point from being a gold (80-89) and barring a run of major pulls in our remaining starter packs and the ones I buy after that, he’ll make the rotation.

Pitchers have three main ratings to focus on – Stuff (related to K potential), Movement (related to HR suppression), and Control (related to BB potential). Dickson’s only weakness is Control with a 47 rating so if he can work around his walks, he’ll be a solid 3-4 starter.

Pack 5: A Legend in Rookie Form

There are obviously better iterations of Jackie Robinson out there, but this rookie version is a solid hitter with some speed for 1B or DH. His defensive ratings at 1B aren’t very good, but as in real life, you can hide a poor defender at 1B much easier than other positions.

If I was doing a Team No Money, guys like Stashak and Spencer would likely make the team in some capacity, but since I’m putting in some money and opening a bunch more packs, both will likely find themselves on the outside looking in.

Pack 6: A Second Gold

I got lucky and pulled a second gold from our starter packs and this gives me an opportunity to highlight one of my favorite things about OOTP Perfect Team. Because they have such a deep treasure trove of cards from all eras and ranging across all player types, I find myself often learning about players I never knew about when I come across their card either in a pack or on the Auction House.

I had no idea who Emil Yde was before getting this card. The lefty starter only had three full seasons with his debut in 1924 being the best and actually landing 21st in the MVP voting. He threw 194 innings with a 2.83 ERA and 1.20 WHIP, finishing 16-3 and leading baseball with 4 shutouts. Like so many from that era, he had a comically low strikeout rate at 7%, but that was good enough for 33rd among the 69 nice qualified starters. He immediately becomes our ace.

Alright, the six starter packs are set. From here, I opened 22 more, but I’m not going to take you through each one as that’d be boring for all of us. Most were duds and didn’t even contain a silver, let alone a gold or diamond. Here are the highlights.

Supp. Pack 6: Thor’s Hammer Appears

Holy smokes!! Six packs into the 22 supplemental packs, my first diamond comes through and just like that Yde is relegated to our #2. I’ll admit, I was pretty geeked to pull this card. I was just sitting in my apartment by myself – not on my Twitch stream or anything – but I definitely audibly cheered and elicited a glare from Charlotte (my dog) who seemed to know I was too excited about a virtual baseball card for a computer game simulator.

Supp. Pack 7: Silver Studded

The very next pack delivered a pair of silvers with a lefty starter and our potential closer. Steven Matz’s Movement rating is his weakness (51), but he’s a groundball pitcher which can help mitigate allowing too many homers when the Movement is under 65. Scott Oberg is a great pickup for the bullpen and will be a prominent piece at the backend and perhaps the closer as I mentioned earlier.

Supp. Pack 13: Keep It on the Down Lowe

I’m a big fan of Brandon Lowe in real life, but his simulation capabilities could be undercut by his massive strikeout. His 35% K rate in 2019 earned him just a 23 Avoid Ks rating in OOTP so that’s going to put his batting average in danger and make him very dependent on his BABIP. He obviously won’t be starting at 2B over White, but he can play around the infield and outfield, so he’ll be the backup at several spots.

OOTP allows you to set two backups at each position and even make them start every Xth game ranging from 2-10 and also 12th, 15th, and 20th. While Lowe only has a defensive rating at 2B and LF, you can train a player at a different position by simply putting him there and letting his rating build up. It needs to make sense, though.

For example, the game would bar me from putting Lowe at catcher. The game offers up a detailed outlook on their defensive abilities in the infield and outfield and you can use that to determine where you could put someone. Here is Lowe’s outlook which tells you that you could train him everywhere but catcher:

Supp. Pack 19: Three Useful Players

This is solid pack when you’re first starting a team with Manuel Margot, Brian Harper, and Alex Reyes all offering usefulness. I actually ended up selling Margot for 599 points which I was regretting for a couple days until I finally found a centerfielder in the Auction House.

Harper is dreadful behind the dish with a comically poor 10 catcher rating. Catcher defense is made up of Catcher Ability and Catcher Arm. Ability is essentially a combination of their defense behind the dish and framing. If it’s really high, they can extract more value out of their pitchers. I don’t quite understand how the total Catcher rating works in comparison to Ability and Arm because Harper’s 10 comes with a 27 Ability and 26 Arm. Murphy has a 75 Catcher rating with a 66 Ability and 70 Arm.

Despite some decent bat skills, Harper is unusable behind the dish. He’s currently Murphy’s backup, but unless he absolutely rakes, I’m going to find someone else. Ideally, it’ll be someone to take over the main job and relegate Murphy to backup.

Supp. Pack 21: Another Golden Arm

OK, the title of this pack makes it sound like I got another gold pitcher, but I was just highlighting Carlos Correa’s massive arm (89 rating). He’s gives us another middle of the order bat and capable defense up the middle. Correa’s range is only 59, but his Error, Arm, and Turn DP ratings are all 72 or higher.

I created this team on Saturday which as I mentioned earlier isn’t ideal for maximizing Entry Pool points, but since I put in $20 and wanted to have the team ready to write about this week, I figured it’d be OK. Through selling a bunch of the cards I can’t use and earning points on Saturday and Sunday, I’ve supplemented the team through a handful of purchases. I’ve also kept several bronzes pulled from the packs though I didn’t highlight all of them in the above packs.

Here is the Opening Day 26-man roster with lineups, rotation, and bullpen. This is also gives an overview of our general strategies which is just the Sabermetric preset with a few small changes.

I wrote that bulk of this on Monday afternoon, but as I finish up, it’s about 6:00 PM Central and I’m just 5-10. However, I made several additions in the last few hours and they’ve only played a few games. Those include Kepler, Williams, and Mumphrey.

I also got Ruben Sierra as I had bids on three OFs and won all three, so I have to decide if I just want to sell him back or find a way to work him in. The only bench guy I could see getting rid of is Pumpsie Green, but then that’d leave Lowe as the backup to Correa. There aren’t injuries in Perfect Team, but there is energy so it’s hard to get some through 162 games.

I have 7716 Perfect Points right now and in the next update, we’ll assess April and decide where we need to make moves. Because the auctions are timed, the longer ones will be polled in pieces, but others will be polled on my Twitter so drop a follow there is you’re interested in voting on potential additions.

You can also follow the $10 team I’m doing in a YouTube series.