Out of the Park Baseball Manager 2006 (OOTPBM 2006) lets armchair fans take control of a baseball franchise in a league

Manage your own baseball franchise
Out of the Park Baseball Manager 2006 (OOTPBM 2006) lets armchair fans take control of a baseball franchise in a league of choice. You may create any baseball universe you like, for example with the real league setup, a historic leagues, or totally fictional leagues. The number of leagues within your virtual baseball universe is not limited so you may have as many leagues and minor leagues as you like.

Managing your baseball franchise takes a lot of knowledge and skills but OOTPBM 2006 offers you all the tools you will need to succeed. You can set up your roster, lineups, depth charts and your pitching staff. Sign new players, demote them to the minors or release fading veterans. Initiate trades, respond to trade offers and make the right decisions in the first-year player drafts. In a word, anything a real GM does can be done in OOTPBM 2006. You have the power to guide your team into the infinite future. But beware; you might get fired if your calls result in your team finishing under .500 all the time.

A realistic and accurate simulation engine
Using a highly realistic and accurate baseball simulation engine, OOTPBM 2006 plays out all the matches in full. Fully flexible, you can take control in the dugout, making all the calls you want between each pitch. You can call for all common baseball strategies, including double-steals, pitch-outs, suicide squeeze plays, pinch-runners and defensive substitutes. And make no mistake about it, your CPU counterpart is highly intelligent and will make smart decisions, resulting in a very challenging game-play.

No computer baseball game would be perfect without loads of statistics. OOTPBM 2006 is the undisputed king of baseball games when it comes to stats. Not only do you get your usual fix, like batting average, ERA, assists or innings played. You also get special stats like VORP, Total Average, Runs Created and Secondary Average. And it doesn't end here, as the stats engine also offers splits and double splits! If you want to know how your star-shortstop is batting with 2 strikes in close ballgames on the road, no problem. Or check how many homeruns your closer has given up against left-handed batters in June this year – on a 1-1 pitch. The stats engine can produce millions of stats per player, so all the information you may need to make your decisions are at your fingertips.

Customizable financial system
Your league can feature a financial system which is the most realistic in any baseball game on the market. Just like almost every feature in OOTP, the financial system is optional and customizable. You want the 40-man roster rule, including the waiver-wire and minor league option years? Or do you prefer the old style without free agency and just trades? What about the Rule-5 draft or free agent compensation draft picks? OOTPBM 2006 offers you a lot of different setups to choose from, resulting in the most realistic or a casual experience, just the way you prefer it.

If you use the typical setup, you have to care for a lot of things in order to compete. You decide which players you give contract extensions (maybe incentive-laden ones), or which ones you want to let go via free agency. Then in the off-season, you enter the bidding war for the most talented star players, offering well constructed multi-year contracts including optional bonus clauses and no-trade clauses. Also, you need to decide if you give high bonus money to a top draft pick or rather settle for the cheap local high-school hero. Players aren't the only ones who cost money however and you will need to take care of your coaching, scouting and management staff. And all you have is the budget that your owner dictates you!

Scouting and coaching staff at your disposal
Every team has a general manager and, in the case of your franchise, it's you. Additionally, each team in your organization has a manager, a bench-coach, a pitching- and hitting-coach, 6 scouts and a team doctor. Each of them has different skills and personalities, as well as contract demands. The quality of the staff influences your team performance in many different ways. A good pitching coach who has a great reputation for working with youngsters might just be the one who turns a decent prospect into a top prospect. Or your team doctor might be the difference between an injury-ridden team and one that benefits from healthy everyday-players. Scouts have abilities as well and a great scout has a better chance of discovering the next legend in Puerto Rico than an average scout. Select your staff wisely otherwise you will not have an edge over your competition.

Endless possibilities with historical and fictional leagues
OOTPBM 2006 offers the real life setup of every major baseball league in the world and in addition, you may also import every historical baseball season starting in 1900 from a freeware database (www.baseball1.com), or simply create your own fictional baseball league. Best of all, all kind of leagues can co-exist in your baseball universe and compete with each other for players or interact in the form of trades. Setting up leagues is very simple. For example, you would like to have a league in Canada, with 3 minor league levels attached to. Simply select the number of sub-leagues/divisions/teams, then select the country, and with one button add 3 minor leagues. Just like that you have created the league you like, with randomized city and team nicknames! That way, you can for example create a baseball universe that has a league in the USA, 2 leagues in Japan and one league in every European country. And each league can have different financial options, AI options, schedule options etc. The possibilities are basically endless so just go and have fun!

Create or join an online league
Competing against the computer AI is fun, but the real challenge is facing human competition. OOTPBM 2006 features a full online league mode where one commissioner and multiple owners play against each other. Online league commissioners and general managers can use FTP (file transfer protocol) functionality that is built directly into the game's interface. This allows both commissioners and league participants to upload and download league files without ever leaving the game. Commissioners can instantly upload every team's files with a single click. And since the FTP instructions are built directly into the game engine, no 3rd-party software is needed for file transfers - just an active Internet connection!

If you thought file transfer was easy, wait until you hear about the Out of the Park Baseball Manager 2006 built in HTML reporting and web site creation features! In seconds you can generate a complete, statistics-rich web site, complete with an amazing assortment of hyperlinks. Want to see the complete history of the player that's leading your league in homeruns? Just click on him and his HTML card appears on your screen showing his complete history from the day of his initial amateur draft to the present.

Slick intuitive interface
OOTPBM 2006 offers so many features and so many options, that the interface has to be as powerful as the game. The new version of the game introduces a brand new, fully skinable interface. It features hyperlinks everywhere, right-click menus, drag & drop, recent page history, bookmarks, an integrated HTML browser, customizable player lists (including custom filter setups) and much more. Not only does it look great, it makes your OOTPBM 2006 experience as comfortable as never before!