According to OOTP 19, the wait between the Cubs’ third and fourth world championships should be significantly shorter than the ones between their second and third.
What’s in a game? When it’s OOTP 19, the leading computer baseball sim on the market, quite a bit. The latest update to the newly released game came just in time for MLB Opening Day 2018, and of course, we immediately took it and used it to simulate the entire season to come. What we found should make fans of the Cleveland Indians, Boston Red Sox and even the Arizona Diamondbacks happy, but ultimately the game believes the Chicago Cubs will celebrate another World Series title just two years after ending their 100-plus-year drought.
We’ll use these next few pages to highlight the most interesting parts of the sim, starting with the final AL standings.
American League final standings
Anyone who loves the New York Yankees-Boston Red Sox rivalry will be in heaven if real life turns out anywhere near as dramatic as our OOTP 19 sim did. The two teams battled it out all season long for the top spot in the AL East, joined most of the way by the Toronto Blue Jays, who only faded during the last six or seven weeks of the season. In fact for much of the way, it appeared the East would produce both wild cards.
Even with Giancarlo Stanton proving he was worth every penny by leading the majors with 50 home runs and Gary Sanchez slugging 39, the Yankees didn’t quite have the offensive balance of the BoSox, who finished with three players in the top 10 in the AL in OPS: Rafael Devers, Mookie Betts and Andrew Benintendi. Boston also had the only 20-game winner in all of MLB, Chris Sale, who led his league in ERA and WHIP as well.
The Cleveland Indians ran away with the Central early and never looked back, as only a late rally by the Miinesota Twins kept the entire rest of the division from finishing under .500. Cleveland paced the big leagues in runs scored (901) and batting average (.276) while getting outstanding pitching seasons from basically everyone, but especially Corey Kluber and Trevor Bauer, who combined to win 5 games. Jose Ramirez led the AL in batting average (.349) and was first in OPS (1.021) as part of a monster season.
The West was the real surprise, as the Seattle Mariners led the division until September, and with the Blue Jays playing well for 3/4 of the year, it appeared the Houston Astros might not even get a shot at defending their championship. It didn’t help that almost all of their starting rotation was injured at one point or another, but it was Justin Verlander who was out the longest, missing more than half the season.