How to Play & Strategy

01. Setting Up a Game #

ActionSims needs iPad or desktop/laptop screen space to play -- it isn't supported on an iPhone.

1. Step 1

   Start a Single Game #

   From the Baseball home page, click the Single Game card under "Choose How to Play."

   

2. Step 2

   Pick Your Team #

   Pick a season and click Choose Season, then pick a team and click Continue. Check Computer-controlled if you want ManagerAI to run your team's lineup and in-game decisions instead of you — mainly useful for simulating a full game hands-off, with no user interaction.

   The Ballpark picker plays the game somewhere other than the home team's own park, such as the Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa. The game plays like that park: its fences and walls shape home runs and fly balls for both teams. It lists the parks that have a ballpark photo.

   

3. Step 3

   Pick an Opponent #

   Same two steps, this time for the opposing team: Choose Season, then Continue. The opponent has its own Computer-controlled checkbox, so you can set up Human vs Human, Human vs Computer, Computer vs Human, or Computer vs Computer games.

   When the two teams come from different years, Run Environment picks the league both sides' stats are measured against: each team's own era (the default), a neutral era, or any single year. Adjust for league quality also accounts for how much stronger the competition got over time. Neutralize home parks takes each player's own home park out of his stats. See Build a Custom Season for how it works.

   

4. Step 4

   Set Lineups #

   Set the batting order, defensive positions, and starting pitcher for both teams, then click Continue. Even a Computer-controlled team's lineup is editable here — it's pre-filled with ManagerAI's own pick, but you can change it before the game starts.

   Each batting slot's player dropdown lists players who've actually played that slot's defensive position first, and shows every position a player is eligible for right next to their name. The Starting Pitcher dropdown lists that team's regular rotation first, followed by any other pitcher who's started a game this season — a swingman or emergency starter — for the rare case you want to hand him the ball too.

   Seasons from before the designated hitter existed are flagged No DH — the pitcher bats in the lineup instead of a DH. On a No DH lineup, the pitcher's batting slot is locked (shown greyed out) and always matches whoever's picked in the Starting Pitcher dropdown — change the pitcher there, not by editing that batting slot directly.

   To swap two batters, drag one slot's ⠿ handle onto another — the target lights up so you can see exactly where it'll land — and dropping it trades those two slots' players and fielding positions with each other. This works on the locked pitcher slot too; drag it to a new spot and the lock (and the note explaining it) follows along. On a tablet or phone, use the ▲ and ▼ arrows on the right of each slot instead: each tap moves that slot one spot up or down, trading places with its neighbor. The arrows work on desktop too.

   

5. Step 5

   Confirm and Play Ball #

   Review both lineups on the summary screen, then click Play Ball to open the gameboard and start the game. Use the "← Back" links on any setup screen to revisit an earlier choice.

   

   To change the ballpark photo for this game, click Choose or upload a ballpark photo above the Play Ball button. Pick any photo in that park's collection, or upload your own. Your pick is remembered for that park in every single game or All-Star game you play there afterward. See Ballpark photo collection for how sharing, tags, and upvotes work.

   If you set your opponent to Computer-controlled back on the Opponent step, you'll also see a Manage Both Teams button here — click it instead of Play Ball to take over both dugouts for this game.

   If both teams are Computer-controlled, you'll instead see Watch Game in place of Play Ball, alongside Manage Both Teams.

   Watch Game opens the gameboard and plays the game out one at-bat at a time, with ManagerAI managing both dugouts. The only button you'll see is Resolve At-Bat — click it to let ManagerAI play out the next at-bat for whichever side is up. You can still pinch hit, pinch run, change pitchers, and change fielders for either team between at-bats, the same manager controls you'd use in a normal game — ManagerAI just makes every other call (swinging away, bunting, stealing, positioning) on its own.

02. Working an At-Bat #

Each plate appearance moves through up to three steps, and the Field card itself only shows the icon buttons that make sense for the step you're on — a Defense group (bottom-left of the diamond) and an Offense group (bottom-right). Hover over any of them for a tooltip naming what it does. Each one also shows its name under its icon unless you turn Button Labels off. With runners on base, you'll start in a baserunning step (steal or move on); every plate appearance then has a strategy step where the batting side picks its approach, followed by a defense step where the pitching side can adjust before the at-bat actually plays out. A button only appears once its step is current and the situation allows it — for example, steal buttons only show up with a runner on base who has an open base ahead of them.

Playing by Keyboard #

You don't need a mouse. As soon as an at-bat's buttons are ready, the first one is already focused — press Enter or Space to use it. Press Tab (or an arrow key) to move to the next available action, and Shift+Tab (or the opposite arrow key) to move back — from the last one, either wraps you back around to the first. Pinch-hit, pinch-run, change pitcher, and replace fielders come last in that order, after the main at-bat actions. Every new at-bat resets focus back to its own first button.

Now Batting Card #

To the right of the field, the current batter's name is followed by their season AVG, HR, RBI, SB, and CS. Below that is their line for this game, as hits-at bats (e.g. "2-3"), with any extra-base hits ("2B", "3B", "HR") and walks ("BB") tacked on — singles aren't listed separately since they're implied by the batting line. It updates after every completed plate appearance. With Animations on, the batter who just hit stays on this card, at the plate and at bat in the lineup until his play is over on the field. Then the next batter steps in.

Hover over that line (or tap it on a phone or tablet) to see how each of the batter's earlier trips to the plate today went, inning by inning, in scorebook shorthand: "1st: Struck out swinging", "3rd: Double to RF, 2 RBI", "5th: Grounder to SS" and so on. Walks, hit by pitches, sacrifices and times he reached on an error or fielder's choice are all listed. The first time up it says so.

Hover over the batter's name (or tap it) to see his real hitting for the season he's playing in and the two seasons before it: G, AB, AVG, OBP, SLG, OPS, HR, RBI, BB, SO and SB. A traded player's season is one row, with "2 TM" for the team. A year he didn't play in the majors is left out, so a rookie shows one row. A stat that was never recorded that year, like most Negro League strikeouts, shows "-". In a draft season the latest row is the season he was drafted from. When a pitcher bats, his pitch count is shown above the table.

The Now Pitching box has the same kind of line for the pitcher on the mound, matching his row in the box score: "2.1 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 4 K". Hover or tap it to see his hits, runs, walks, strikeouts and home runs allowed today plus his pitch count split into strikes and balls. Before he has faced a batter it says "First batter today".

In a season or World Series game, a Stats toggle in the Field card's corner switches that season line — and the pitcher's IP/W-L/ERA/SV on the mound and in the bullpen list, the Up Next hitters, and the field diagram's own fielder/catcher/pitcher hover tooltips — between what this season (or this series) has produced so far and each player's real-world historical line, folding in today's game live either way. It defaults to the season/series line, matching the mound and Now Batting cards' original behavior, but you can flip it to historical at any point; the toggle disappears once the game ends. A single game has no season or series to switch to, so it always shows the full-season line for whichever historical year you picked.

Each player in the lineup card, the bullpen list, Now Batting and Now Pitching has a small bar-chart icon after his name that opens his real-world stats and career. In a season game there's also a calendar icon that opens his full stat line for this season so far. Today's game is added once it's final. Hover over either icon to see its name.

Real records only split outfielders into left, center and right field from the 1950s on. For an earlier outfielder, the historical line is his whole outfield line, whichever outfield spot he's playing.

Ballpark Background #

For ballparks with a curated photo on file, the Field card shows that photo behind the field diagram instead of a plain background, and the fielder/base positions shift slightly to line up with it. Not every ballpark has a photo yet — where one isn't available, the field diagram shows on its plain background as usual.

A small image icon in the Field card's top-right corner lets you switch back to the plain field diagram at any time, in case the photo isn't lining up the way you'd like. Clicking it again switches the photo back on. Your choice sticks for the rest of the game.

Phone screens always show the plain field diagram, whether or not the ballpark has a photo, and whether you hold the phone upright or sideways. The background icon isn't shown on a phone. Open the same game on a tablet or a desktop and the photo is there.

Sound Effects #

The gameboard plays ballpark sound for each play: the crack of the bat as the ball leaves it, the crowd building while a long fly is in the air and the crowd's reaction when it comes down. Walks, strikeouts, double plays and every other result get their own reaction, so you can follow along without watching the screen every second.

The umpire calls ball four on a walk and strike three on every strikeout, as the K appears behind the plate. Every so often he adds "You're outta there!" to the strike three call. He also calls "You're out!" whenever a runner is put out on the bases: caught stealing, picked off, forced out, thrown out trying for an extra base or doubled up on a double play. With animations on, the call comes the moment the runner is out. Batters retired at the plate or at first get the crowd's reaction only.

He calls "Safe!" when a runner beats a throw: a stolen base, a runner waved home or sent to third who makes it, a batter safe stretching his hit, a runner safe tagging up or one scoring ahead of the throw home on a ground ball. A runner who moves up with no throw on him gets no call. When one runner is out and another safe on the same play, you hear the call on the runner the throw went to.

Each game gets one of three umpires, picked at random. You'll hear the same umpire's voice on every call for the whole game. His name shows under Voices in the right column's Game Flow section, so you can tell which one you're hearing, even with umpire calls turned off. While sound effects are on, his name is a dropdown: pick Jerry Hollins, Walt Peters or Gus "Gruff" Mahoney and that umpire makes the calls from then on.

The crowd roots for the home team. It cheers the home team's hits and the outs it records in the field, and it groans at the road team's hits. A routine home-team out barely stirs the crowd. The groans are saved for outs that hurt: an inning that ends with a runner in scoring position, a double play, a long fly ball caught deep in the outfield, a runner thrown out tagging up or the last out of a close loss. A runner who tags up and moves up on a fly ball gets applause.

A home team home run gets the loudest, longest cheer of the game. The crowd keeps cheering through the trot until the next pitch is on its way. A grand slam gets an even bigger roar. A walk-off home run gets the biggest of all. A road team home run draws a groan.

Seventh-Inning Stretch. After the last out of the top of the 7th, the organ plays "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" while "Seventh-Inning Stretch" shows at the top of the screen. It plays at the crowd noise volume. You can keep playing while it runs. Any click ends it.

A speaker icon in the Field card's top-right corner lets you turn these sound effects off, or back on, at any time.

While sound effects are on, a slider next to the speaker icon sets how loud they play. Drag it left for quieter or right for louder. It doesn't change the crowd noise or umpire volume.

Umpire Calls. The megaphone icon under Voices, right after the umpire's name, turns his calls off or back on. The bat and the crowd keep playing. It's on by default. Turning sound effects off silences the umpire too and hides the megaphone.

While umpire calls are on, a slider next to the megaphone sets how loud his calls are without touching the bat or the crowd. It starts at your sound effects level.

Announcer. The microphone icon under Voices, right after the announcer's name, turns the announcer on or off. He's off by default. While he's on, a slider next to the microphone sets how loud he is. Turning sound effects off hides both. While he's on, his calls keep pace with the field. The pitcher holds the ball until he finishes calling the pitch. He starts calling a ball in play as it's hit, finishes the call as the field shows how it turned out and calls the runners as they reach their bases. When he needs a moment more, the ball travels a little slower or the runners take a little longer, so his words never trail the play. A call on a runner moving up that still can't come in time is left out rather than said late. A run is always called, right after his call on the play, along with whether it tied the game or put a team ahead. The next batter steps in once he's done talking about the last play. On a slow connection a play can wait a moment before it starts while his calls and the ballpark sounds load, so every sound plays right on time. On a steal or double steal he says the runner is going as he breaks, then calls the result once the throw is caught. He also calls the plays between pitches: a pickoff throw on the field, whether the runner is out or gets back safely, a wild pitch, a passed ball, a catcher's throw that gets away and a runner taking a base on defensive indifference. When a runner is going on strike three, he calls both halves of the play: the strikeout with the runner thrown out (strike 'em out, throw 'em out) or safe with the steal. If that throw makes the third out, he ends the inning on the throw. When a ball in play stops for a decision, such as sending a runner or throwing home, he calls the ball first and the decision window opens once he's done. He finishes the play after you decide. After the call on the play he tells you every run that scored and every runner who moved up, then whether it tied the game or put a team ahead. The play-by-play text on the field also types in slower while he's on, starting as the field shows the result. His wrap-up at the end of a half-inning starts with the Side Retired! banner, which stays up until he finishes. After the top half he says the game is going to the bottom of the inning. After the bottom half he says which inning the game is headed to. In a tied game in extra innings he says it's still tied and names the next inning in the same line. He calls every pitching change, yours or the other manager's, as the new pitcher appears on the board, and the next pitch waits until he's done. A change made right after a play shows once that play is over, so the play is always seen with the pitcher who threw it. A new pitcher to start an inning gets a call of its own.

Between innings, after the bottom half, he reads a short commercial for a made-up sponsor while the score is up, styled for the era of the home team's season. Games before 1921, when ballgames weren't on the radio yet, get his ballpark megaphone pitches instead. The next half waits until he's finished. Click or tap the field or press Esc to skip it. The radio icon beside his volume slider turns commercials on or off. They're on by default.

Three announcers can call your games, each with his own voice. Dan Delaney is an easygoing veteran of the radio booth. Earl Whitlow is dry and gravelly with a Southern drawl. Mick Brannigan is rough-voiced and quick. Pick one from the dropdown in place of the announcer's name. Dan Delaney calls the game until you choose someone else.

When you're signed in, your sound settings follow you from game to game: sound effects, umpire calls and crowd noise on or off, the umpire and announcer you picked, every volume slider and the commentary speed. Each new game opens the way you left the last one. Without an account they last for the current game only.

Sound credits (trimmed and mixed for the game): Hitting baseball w. wooden bat by CGEffex, baseball-hit-01 and baseball-hit-02 by Eelke, licensed under CC BY 4.0; catcher hitting mit.aif by MAJ061785, licensed under CC BY 3.0; Ballgame by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Ambient Crowd Noise #

A looping crowd-noise track plays quietly in the background for the rest of the game — a different track each time, picked at random. It's off by default.

A crowd icon next to the sound effects toggle, in the Field card's top-right corner, turns ambient crowd noise on or off at any time.

While crowd noise is on, a slider next to the crowd icon sets how loud it plays, separately from the sound effects. When you're signed in, the on/off choice and the level carry into your next game.

3D Ball Flight and Animations #

Watch each play happen on the field. Every at-bat starts with the pitcher throwing to the plate, then the result plays out. A batted ball flies from home plate to where it was played: grounders skip and hop across the infield, liners stay low and quick, fly balls climb and hang, popups go almost straight up and home runs carry out of the park. No two look quite alike. A fly ball can tower and hang or come in flatter and quicker. Some home runs drop into the seats you can see at the top of the ballpark picture and others sail out of view. A ground ball can be a hard grounder right at the fielder, a high chopper he waits on or a slow roller he charges. A grounder hit for a single may find its way between the infielders, and a blooper can drop in just past the infield. A double play always starts on a ball hit hard enough to turn two. When the play-by-play names the kind of ball, the animation shows that same ball. Ball four goes into the catcher's mitt and a hit batter's pitch drops at the plate. A strikeout is the pitch alone, with a K! flashing in front of the catcher. In modern games an intentional walk is signaled from the dugout, so no pitch is thrown. The ball follows the play as called, landing where the play-by-play says: a hit into the gap lands between the outfielders, and one down the line rolls into the corner while the outfielder runs it down. A foul fly is caught in foul ground beside the line.

Once the ball is fielded, follow it to every base where an out is made: across the diamond to first, to second and then first on a double play, back in to the cutoff man, or home to cut down a runner. Fielders move to make the play: the pitcher comes off the mound to field a bunt, a corner infielder charges in on one, an infielder charges a dribbler or slow roller that dies in front of him (even one that goes for a hit), the pitcher runs over to cover first when the first baseman flips it to him and a fielder who has to take a throw at a base gets there in time. On a steal, the catcher fires to the base the runner is going for. A wild throw to first sails past the bag. A dropped throw gets there in time and pops out of the glove, or rolls away when the batter takes an extra base on it. A wild pitch or passed ball gets past the catcher and skips toward the backstop while the runners move up, with Wild Pitch or Passed Ball flashing in front of the catcher. A strike three that gets away and lets the batter run to first looks the same. When a wild pitch or passed ball is its own play, the catcher also turns and chases the ball as it gets by him. With nobody on base, a ground out or a strikeout that isn't the third out goes around the horn before the ball comes back to the pitcher.

Baserunners run the bases too. Each one stays on his base with his name showing until the ball is put in play (or until he takes off on a steal or wild pitch), then runs to the base the play left him on, across the plate when he scores, or off the field at the base where he was put out, beaten by the throw. Every out but a strikeout gets an OUT flashing on the field: over the fielder who catches a ball in the air, or over the base where a runner or the batter is put out. When strike three comes with a runner going and the catcher throws him out, STRIKE 'EM OUT, THROW 'EM OUT! flashes over the field after his OUT. On a caught fly ball, runners wait for the catch before tagging up. On a fly ball or line drive with fewer than two outs, the runners on first and second take a lead about a third of the way to the next base while the ball is in the air. If it's caught they head back to their base (a runner doubled off on a liner is out there). If it drops in they keep going from their lead. The runner on third stays on the bag to tag up. With two outs everyone runs on contact. When the third out keeps a run from counting, such as the batter thrown out at first, the runner from third crosses the plate as that out is made with no OUT over home, and any runner moving up reaches his base at the same moment. When you have a send or hold call to make, the runners first run to the bases the hit gives them (a runner from second rounds third on a single, the batter reaches first), and the call comes up once the fielder has the ball and they're there. After your call, the play picks up from where they stopped. A throw home call works the same way.

The play result shows once the ball lands. A shorter play result display time makes it show sooner after. Click or tap the field (or press Esc) to skip straight to the result.

After the third out, the fielders jog off toward their dugout while the Side Retired banner is up: the visitors to the left, the home team to the right. Any runners left on base, plus a runner put out on the bases for the third out, head off to their own dugout on the other side. Next comes a score graphic with the home ballpark and its city (such as "Live from Boston at Fenway Park"), each team's runs, hits and errors and "Middle of 2nd" or "End of 2nd" under them. It stays up for a time set by the play result display time and doesn't show after the last out of the game. It sits at the bottom of the field. In edit fielder positions mode you can drag it anywhere for that ballpark, or click its Showing/Hidden button to turn it off. Then the next team's fielders come out from their own side and head to their positions. Click, tap or press Esc while either team is on the move to bring out the next half right away.

While a team's batting order is being introduced before its first time up, the defense warms up on the field: the pitcher throws his warm-up pitches, the first baseman rolls grounders to the other infielders, the outfielders play catch and the catcher throws down to second before the ball goes around the horn. When the introduction ends, everyone is back at his position for the first pitch.

On a device that can't keep up, the field shows the play the usual way instead.

Animations. The Animations button under Display in the right column, next to Button Labels, turns all motion and flashing on the board off, or back on, at any time. It's on by default. When you're signed in, your choice carries over to every game you play; otherwise it holds for the rest of that game. With animations off, the ball flight (pitch, baserunners, K!, OUT, Wild Pitch, Passed Ball and strike 'em out, throw 'em out marks included) doesn't play, the batting order introductions before each team's first time up are skipped, the fielders stay put between halves and before the first pitch and nothing flashes, blinks or pulses: no fireworks, no glowing border around the Game Over! banner after a walk-off and a steady glow where a home run left the park. The play result banners, Now Batting and the glow behind the fielder still fade in and out gently, and the next half-inning fades in. Every result still stays on screen for its usual time and a send or hold call comes up right away.

With reduce motion turned on in your device's settings, animations stay off, the button reads Animations: Off and a short note beside it says so.

Button Labels #

Each strategy button shows its name under its icon: Hit Away, Bunt for Base Hit, Steal 2nd, Pitch Around, Infield In, Resolve At-Bat and the rest, including the extra choices behind More. Labels are on to start. To go back to icons only, click Button Labels under Display, below the Game Flow voices in the right column. Click it again to bring the names back. When you're signed in, your choice carries over to every game you play.

Field Width #

The Field card opens at full width on a big enough screen, showing more of the ballpark background photo along the sides. The left-right arrows button in the card's top-right corner switches it between full width and its narrowest width. The slider next to it picks a width in between. When logged in, your width carries over to every game in every mode until you change it. Fielders and the ballpark photo you move with Edit Positions are saved separately for each width. A box or button you moved stays inside the Field card when the window gets smaller and goes back to its spot when there is room again.

Back Button and Leaving Mid-Game #

While a game is in progress, your browser's back and forward buttons keep you on the gameboard, so a stray click won't pull you out of the game. Reloading the page, closing the tab, or using the exit link at the top asks you to confirm first. Once the game is final, the back button works normally again.

Custom Fielder Positions #

Once a ballpark's photo is showing, a small icon next to the ballpark background toggle lets you drag each fielder, the DP DEPTH status badge, the play-result banner (the "STRIKEOUT SWINGING" message that flashes after each at-bat), the "Now Batting" message that announces each new batter, the scoreboard and the row of strikeout Ks under it to your own preferred spot on that photo. Every drop saves right away, so there's no separate save step. Phone screens always show the plain field diagram rather than a photo, so the drag icon isn't offered there. While the drag tool is active, fielders moved for a positioning call like Infield In show at their usual spots, so that's the spot you drag and save.

The boxes beside the field (ballpark info, Now Pitching and Now Batting) move the same way, and so do the buttons. The pitching and batting action buttons both show while you're dragging, even when it isn't that side's turn. The pinch-hit/pinch-run and change pitcher/replace fielders buttons only show when one of them is available right now.

Two reset icons sit next to the drag icon. Both show a circular reset arrow. The one with a small diamond inside puts the fielders, bases, batter and pitcher icons and the DP DEPTH badge back in their default spots. The one with a small box inside does the same for the scoreboard, the strikeout row, the messages, the boxes and the buttons. Hover over either one to see what it resets.

While the drag tool is active, a small compass appears beside it. Its arrows move the ballpark photo itself up, down, left or right, handy when part of the field is cut off at the card's edge. The center button puts the photo back in its usual spot. The fielders don't move with the photo, so line the photo up first, then drag the fielders onto it. The two reset icons leave the photo alone.

Your positions are saved just for you and just for that ballpark. Play a different game at the same park later and your custom layout is there waiting for you, still just for you; every other player still sees the default layout unless they've set their own.

Positions are remembered separately for each screen shape: tablet held upright, tablet turned sideways, and desktop. The field diagram is shaped a bit differently on each, so each one is set up on its own. Dragging fielders on a desktop leaves a tablet showing the standard layout until you drag them there too.

Signed-in players can also show a batter icon at home plate, facing the way the current batter actually hits. It's off by default. Turn it on (or off again) with the small +/× button that appears on it while the drag tool above is active, and drag it to your own preferred spot the same way as any fielder. A second pair of buttons on the icon, also only while the drag tool is active, bumps it one size larger or smaller, from Extra Small up to Extra Large.

A pitcher icon on the mound works the same way, with its own show/hide and size buttons. It shows a lefty or righty delivery to match the pitcher on the mound, and one spot covers both.

Signed-in players can also pick the scoreboard's own text color, handy if the default color is hard to read against a particular ballpark photo. A small color swatch and a Reset button appear on the scoreboard itself while the drag tool is active. Your chosen color applies everywhere the scoreboard shows up in dark mode. In light mode it only applies over a ballpark photo, so a light color can't vanish against the plain light field.

Signed-in players can also set how long the "Now Batting" message and the play-result banner stay on screen. While the drag tool is active, each one shows −/+ buttons on its corner. The "Now Batting" message is set in seconds, from 2 to 10 (4 by default). The play-result banner is set as a multiplier, from 1× to 3× (1.5× by default), so bigger plays still stay up longer than smaller ones: a home run holds longer than a walk at any setting. The next batter and pitch count wait for the banner to finish, so a longer banner also means a longer pause between plays.

Wild Pitch / Passed Ball #

With a runner on base, there's a small chance a pitch gets away before the batter ever swings — a Wild Pitch (charged to the pitcher) or a Passed Ball (charged to the catcher). How often each happens follows the season you're playing: a dead-ball staff threw fewer wild pitches than a modern one, and its catchers let more get by. A pitcher who threw more wild pitches than his league in his real season throws more here, and a catcher who allowed more passed balls lets more get by. Now and then the catcher's own throw behind a runner gets away instead, an error charged to him. Every runner on base advances one base immediately, and a run can score right then, including a walk-off that ends the game on the spot. It plays on the field as its own play: the ball gets away, the runners move up and the play-by-play tells what happened. Nothing needs clicking to go on.

The batter's own turn isn't decided yet when this happens. Once the play is over, the same plate appearance goes back to the start of its baserunning, offensive and defensive steps above, with the runners where they ended up. Any approach or defensive call either side had locked in before the wild pitch no longer carries over; both managers get a fresh look. It's still the same batter facing the same pitcher.

Uncaught Third Strike #

On a strikeout, there's a small chance the pitch gets away from the catcher instead of being caught cleanly — a Wild Pitch (charged to the pitcher) or a Passed Ball (charged to the catcher). When that happens, the batter isn't out after all: he takes off for first base, and any runner ahead of him who's forced to move does, same as on a walk. It's still a strikeout on the pitcher's and batter's own lines, just without the out.

This can't happen with a runner already on first and fewer than two outs — real baseball's own rule, since the batter isn't entitled to first base in that situation regardless of what the pitch does. Every other time, it's rare: most third strikes stay ordinary strikeouts.

More often, strike three isn't held cleanly but the catcher recovers in time and throws the batter out at first. It's still a strikeout, with the putout going to the first baseman and an assist to the catcher. How often this happens follows the season: catchers of the early eras handled strike three far less cleanly than modern ones.

Steal 2nd / Steal 3rd / Steal Home / Double Steal #

A steal button appears for each open base a runner can take: Steal 2nd from first, Steal 3rd from second, Steal Home from third, and Double Steal when runners on first and second can both go. Each button opens a confirm modal first showing the odds of stealing safely -- the double-steal modal shows a separate percentage for each runner (2nd and 3rd), since a double steal can throw out either runner independently. A runner's lead/jump (and the odds that come with it) is re-checked fresh at the start of every plate appearance he's still on base for, not just when a new runner reaches the base -- so the same runner can show different odds from one batter to the next.

You can send any runner, any time. Whether he makes it comes from real numbers: his own stolen bases and caught stealing that season, and the catcher's real record throwing runners out. A burner against a weak arm is close to a sure thing, and a slow runner against a strong arm is a long shot. A left-handed pitcher and a Hold Runner call both cut the odds of stealing second.

Every steal draws a throw, so the catcher can throw it away even when the runner beats it. He's safe with the stolen base and takes another base on the error. How often catchers throw wild follows their season's real error totals, which ran far higher in the dead-ball era.

A runner who seldom or never ran in his real season never gets a good jump, so his odds are always the poor-jump odds, and they never top the real success rate of that season's players who seldom ran (about 71% in 2023, under 50% in the 1960s). He can still go, but he won't steal like a base stealer.

Steal odds are scaled to the season you are playing. The game reads that season's league-wide stolen base and caught stealing totals and sets the baseline from them, so steals succeed at about the rate they did that year. Expect noticeably lower odds in a 1965 game than a 2025 game for the same quality of runner, and expect computer-managed teams to send runners less often in the low-steal eras.

Send the Runner From 3rd? #

If a runner is already on 3rd when you steal 2nd, he gets his own shot at breaking for home on that same throw down -- a delayed steal. Once the steal of 2nd has played out on the field (whether that runner ends up safe or caught), a "Send the Runner From 3rd?" modal opens. It says first how the steal of 2nd went, then shows his odds of scoring. Send to send him home, or Hold to keep him at 3rd -- holding is risk-free. If he's caught, it's scored as a caught stealing just like any other failed steal.

Continue to At-Bat #

Appears with at least one runner on base, as the green labeled button next to the steal buttons. While it's showing, the at-bat hasn't started yet, so the swing and bunt buttons stay hidden. This stays true after a steal, too: you're still in the baserunning step and can try another steal. Click Continue to At-Bat when you're done with the runners to move on to picking your offensive approach below. With the bases empty, this step is skipped automatically and you'll go straight there.

Changed your mind? A Back to Baserunning button sits next to the swing buttons and returns you to the steal buttons with the same runners and outs. It goes away as soon as anything else happens in the at-bat, such as a pitch, a substitution or a defensive change.

Hit Away #

Declares a normal at-bat — no special strategy. Like every button in this step, clicking it only locks in your approach; it hands the turn to the pitching side, who gets a chance to react before the at-bat actually plays out with Resolve At-Bat below.

Hit and Run #

Available with a runner on first or second, any number of outs. Locks in the play — the runner goes and the batter tries to make contact behind them once the pitching side clicks Resolve At-Bat. The early jump cuts both ways: it makes a runner forced out on a ground ball less likely to get doubled off (he's already past the usual force point by the time the ball's fielded), but it makes him more likely to get doubled off if the ball is actually a line drive that gets caught (he's caught that much further from getting back).

If the batter strikes out, the catcher gets a throw at the runner, and his odds come from his real stolen base record. A runner who seldom or never stole in his real season gets no good jump, so he's thrown out far more often than a real base stealer. From the mid-1950s through 1972 there's no throw on a runner who seldom stole: his real record already counts the times he was caught that way, so he stays put. A runner who beats the throw keeps the base he took and is credited with a stolen base. On a double steal where one runner is thrown out, the other keeps his base but, as in real scoring, gets no stolen base.

Bunt for Base Hit / Bunt Runners Over / Suicide Squeeze #

Bunt for Base Hit is always available and drags one down for a hit. With a runner on first or second, Bunt Runners Over also appears to sacrifice them into scoring position. With a runner on third and fewer than two outs, Suicide Squeeze also appears to bunt that runner home. Like Hit Away and Hit and Run, this only locks in the play — the pitching side still gets to react before it actually plays out.

Runner Advancement on a Bunt Single #

A bunt single always advances an existing runner exactly one base — a runner on first to second, a runner on second to third — never all the way home on the play itself. Unlike a regular single or double, there's no "Send the Runner?" decision here. A runner already on third still scores automatically, same as any other hit.

Bunting for a Hit with Runners On #

Your runners aren't running on a bunt for a hit, so if the batter is thrown out at first, only forced runners have to move up. A runner on second takes third if it's open. A runner on third stays put unless the bases are loaded; to bunt him home, call the Suicide Squeeze. With a forced runner aboard, the defense sometimes cuts down the lead runner instead, and with fewer than two outs it can turn a double play.

Bunt Out vs. Fielder's Choice #

On a bunt, the defense sometimes goes for the lead runner instead of the batter. If the batter is the one put out, the game log tags the play Bunt Out. If the lead runner is thrown out instead and the batter reaches first safely, it's tagged Fielder's Choice — the batter is charged with an at-bat but not an out.

More Batting Strategies #

The small caret at the end of the Offense group opens a second row of batting strategies. Each one is still a swing, with a different approach, and locks in your choice for the plate appearance the same way Hit Away does.

• Put the Ball in Play: a shorter swing. Fewer strikeouts and more balls in play, but less extra-base power. Always available.
• Sacrifice Fly Approach: the batter tries to lift the ball. More fly balls, and they carry deeper, so the runner on third has a better chance to tag and score. Fewer grounders, and a few line-drive singles become fly outs. Needs a runner on third and fewer than two outs.
• Hit to Right Side: the batter gives up some power to hit the ball on the ground to the right side, where a grounder usually moves the runner from second to third. Needs a runner on second and fewer than two outs.
• Work the Count: the batter is more selective. More walks and deeper counts, which run up the pitcher's pitch count, along with a few more strikeouts. Always available.

Tag-Up Decision #

On a fly out -- or a line out caught by an outfielder, at reduced odds since there's far less time to react -- with fewer than 2 outs and a runner on base, a modal opens automatically showing each occupied base's odds of tagging up safely. A foul fly caught by the left or right fielder offers one too. A foul caught by the catcher or an infielder never does. A line drive caught by an infielder never offers a tag-up -- instead, the defense gets an automatic chance to double off a runner caught away from his base, no manager decision involved. That chance is much higher when the fielder who made the catch is the same fielder who covers the runner's own base (he can just step on the bag or tag him directly) than when another infielder has to make a throw first. Toggle Send for whichever runner(s) should go -- the button below updates to Send Runner (or Don't Send Runner with nothing toggled) so it's always clear what confirming will do -- then click it, or Cancel to hold everyone. Sending a runner also forces every runner behind them to attempt the same play, since a trailing runner can't be left standing alone once the runner ahead of them commits.

Extra-Base Decision #

On a clean single, double, or triple, there's a small chance the batter-runner had a shot at one more base than the hit earned outright — 1st to 2nd, 2nd to 3rd, or 3rd to home. When it comes up, a modal opens automatically showing the odds of making it, based on the batter's speed and the fielding fielder's arm. Attempt to send the runner, or Hold to settle for the hit's normal base. An unsuccessful attempt is an out on the bases — the hit itself still counts. A successful attempt is scored as the next hit type up (a single stretched into 2nd is credited as a double, a double stretched into 3rd as a triple) in the box score and play-by-play log.

Runner Scoring Decisions #

On a clean single or double, an existing runner already on base can also get a shot at an extra base — 1st to 3rd on a single, or 1st to home on a double, for example. A "Send the Runner?" modal opens automatically showing the odds, based on the runner's speed and the fielding fielder's arm. Send to attempt it, or Hold to keep the runner at the base the hit earned. This is separate from — and can come up alongside — the batter-runner's own Extra-Base Decision above.

Throw Home or Cut It Off #

Once a runner is sent home on one of these decisions, the defense chooses what to do with the throw. If you're managing the defense, a "Runner Heading Home" modal opens with both choices and their odds. Throw Home gives you a play on the runner at the plate, but the batter-runner moves up a base on the throw (2nd on a single, 3rd on a double), and the catcher sometimes throws him out. Cut It Off concedes the run, keeps the batter at his base, and sometimes catches him too far off the bag. The batter can't move up into a base another runner already took. When the computer manages the defense, it throws home on nearly every runner, as real outfielders do, and cuts it off only when he's all but certain to score early in a game. A modal tells you which it chose. The Send the Runner? modal shows the batter's odds for both cases before you decide. The game log notes the runner's and the batter's results separately.

Send/Hold on a Ground Ball #

On a ground ball fielded cleanly by the defense, an unforced runner on 3rd, or on 2nd advancing to 3rd, is not sent automatically. With fewer than 2 outs and his base ahead open, a "Send the Runner?" modal opens showing the fielder and the runner's odds of getting there safely. Send to send him, or Hold to keep him at his current base. Holding is risk-free. If runners are unforced on both 2nd and 3rd at once, the lead runner on 3rd decides first, and the runner on 2nd gets his own decision if 3rd opens up. With the last out of the inning already in hand, or the base ahead occupied, the runner goes (or stays) automatically and no modal appears.

Runner on 1st and 3rd, infield back. With fewer than 2 outs and the infield at normal depth or DP Depth, the runner on 3rd breaks on contact and the defense takes the force at second, the out at first, or both. He scores unless that play makes the 3rd out. No modal opens.

Infield In or Infield Halfway. The offense decides first whether the runner on 3rd goes on contact. The odds shown are his chances of beating a throw home. If he holds, the defense takes the force at second, the out at first, or both, and he stays at 3rd. If he goes, the defense chooses: Throw Home (he's out at the plate or beats the throw, and the batter is safe at first on a fielder's choice) or the sure out(s) at second and first, letting the run score. A human defense gets its own modal for that call; a computer defense decides on its own and the offense sees which way it went.

Pitch Around #

Nibbles at the edges of the zone against a dangerous hitter without fully surrendering the at-bat — more likely to walk them than an ordinary pitch, without giving up the free pass outright. Often runs the count deeper, so expect more pitches thrown than a normal at-bat. Clicking it just marks it as your call for this at-bat — it highlights to show it's active, and you're still free to adjust positioning or switch to Intentional Walk before clicking Resolve At-Bat to actually pitch it. Click it again to change your mind and pitch normally instead.

Intentional Walk #

Puts the current batter on first — no pitches thrown. Use it to set up a force play or avoid a hot hitter. Counts as a walk (BB) and also shows up on its own IBB line in the batting summary. Like Pitch Around, clicking it just marks it as your call for this at-bat — it highlights to show it's active, and it doesn't actually put the batter on until you click Resolve At-Bat. Click it again to change your mind before then.

Infield In / DP Depth / No-Doubles Depth #

Defensive alignment for the fielding side. Appears once the batting side has locked in its approach for this plate appearance. Clicking any of the three buttons just calls the alignment — it shows as a message between the pitcher and catcher and doesn't use up the batter's turn; clicking Resolve At-Bat is what actually plays it out, after which the defense resets back to normal positioning. With a runner on third, first base open, and fewer than two outs, Infield In guards the plate — a grounder fielded cleanly lets the defense throw home if he goes (see Send/Hold on a Ground Ball), but one that sneaks past a drawn-in infielder now has a real chance to go through for a single. With a runner on first and fewer than two outs, the infield already plays for two at normal depth. DP Depth moves the middle infielders one more step toward second for a slightly better double-play chance, and a few more grounders get through. No-Doubles Depth plays the outfield deep instead — a double is less likely to land deep (that mass shifts to a medium-depth double instead) and a runner trying to score from third on a triple has worse odds, at the cost of conceding more shallow singles. Infield In and DP Depth are alternatives to each other — calling one cancels the other — but since No-Doubles Depth is an outfield call, it can be called alongside either of them at the same time. Clicking the active alignment's button again cancels just that call and returns that part of the defense to normal positioning. Infield In and DP Depth also cancel themselves automatically if the runner they depend on is no longer where the call needs him — e.g. a stolen base, caught stealing, or pickoff that clears first (DP Depth) or third (Infield In) — since the alignment no longer means anything once that runner's gone.

The fielders on the field move to match every call that's on, the computer's calls included. Infield In brings all four infielders in on the grass, Infield Halfway brings them about half as far, Corners In brings in only the first and third basemen and DP Depth moves the second baseman and shortstop over toward second base. No-Doubles Depth backs the outfield up toward the wall with the corner outfielders shaded toward the lines, Outfield Shallow brings them in and Hold Runner puts the first baseman on the bag. They stay there through the pitch and the play, then go back to their usual spots for the next batter. Hold Runner stays as long as the same runner is on first. With Animations on they glide over.

Pickoff #

With a runner on base, the Pickoff button has your pitcher throw over before the pitch. With one runner on it throws to his base. With more than one, pick the base from the short list it opens. The throw gets the runner as often as that pitcher's real throws did that season: left-handers face first base and pick off far more runners there, and a quick runner gets back more often than a slow one. If the runner dives back nothing changes, and you can throw again or resolve the at-bat. If he's out, the batter stays up, and a pickoff for the third out ends the inning with the same batter leading off the next one. A pickoff that takes away the runner the batting side's call needed (a hit-and-run, a bunt or a squeeze) lets that side choose again. You get two called throws per batter, the limit real pitchers have had since 2023. Pitchers still throw over on their own now and then too.

More Pitching Strategies #

The small caret after Resolve At-Bat opens a second row of defensive calls. They work like Infield In and DP Depth: clicking one calls it, clicking it again cancels it, and the call shows on the field between the pitcher and catcher. While any of them is on, the caret is highlighted and the row stays open. The defense's calls stand whatever the batter does, including a bunt, a hit-and-run, or a pitch-around.

• Infield Halfway: halfway between normal depth and Infield In. The runner on third scores on a routine grounder less often than at normal depth, double plays are still on but turned a little less often, and fewer grounders get through than with Infield In. Needs a runner on third and fewer than two outs.
• Corners In: the first and third basemen move in for the bunt. Bunts are harder to beat out or put down cleanly, but a ground ball hit toward first or third gets past them more often, and double plays are turned a little less often.
• Outfield Shallow: the outfielders play in. They catch some bloops that would drop for singles, singles are fielded quicker, and their throws home are shorter, so a runner trying to score from second has worse odds. A ball hit deep is sometimes over their heads for a double, and doubles land deeper.
• Hold Runner: the first baseman holds the runner on first close. He's caught more often when he tries to steal second, on his own or as part of a double steal, and a computer-managed runner tries it less often, but ground balls to the right side get through more often. Needs a runner on first with second open. Hold Runner stays on for as long as that same runner is on first, so you don't have to call it every at-bat.

Infield Halfway and Corners In replace Infield In or DP Depth, since the infield can only play one depth. Outfield Shallow and No-Doubles Depth replace each other. Hold Runner can be on with any infield depth except Corners In.

Resolve At-Bat #

Plays out the plate appearance using whatever you locked in above: your Pitch Around or Intentional Walk call if either is active, otherwise the batting side's own approach. Always available once the batting side has picked an approach — including when a computer-controlled team is batting, in which case this is the human manager's own call as the pitching side.

How the outcome is decided #

Once the at-bat resolves, the result comes from a single weighted draw against a probability table built for that exact matchup. The table is assembled from three real stat lines: the batter's season, the pitcher's season, and their own league's season as the neutral reference point. In 1908 an American League hitter is measured against the 1908 American League, and a National League pitcher against the National League. When the two come from different leagues or years, both leagues count equally. They're combined using a formula that gives back the batter's own rate when he faces a league-average pitcher, and pushes past either one when batter and pitcher lean the same direction. A player with a thin season gets pulled toward the league average in proportion to how much of a full sample he has, so a September call-up with 20 at-bats isn't trusted like a 600-plate-appearance regular. Handedness, the ballpark, fielder range, pitcher fatigue, and times through the order each adjust the table before the draw. Pitching records track hits allowed but never break them into singles, doubles, and triples, so the sim has to split a pitcher's hits itself. It does that using the same season's real league-wide split, then nudges it by whether the pitcher is a groundball or flyball type. Because the split comes from the season being played, a 1912 game produces triples at 1912 rates and a 2024 game at 2024 rates, which are less than half as common. A real batting line counts every sacrifice bunt as a plate appearance. When a batter swings away he hits at his rate for the times he swung away, and the sacrifices come from the manager's own bunt calls. Outs on balls in play split between the ground and the air the way the season's own fielders recorded them, so a 1908 game keeps the ball on the ground and gives its infielders far more chances than a modern one. Older records have gaps. Many Negro League seasons list strikeouts for only some hitters, and early pitching lines often leave out sacrifice bunts or batters faced. A player whose line is missing a stat plays at his league's rate for it, and a league's pitchers are lined up with its hitters, so an average pitcher facing an average hitter plays out at that league's real rates. Two limits sit on the table. A stat the season's records don't carry stays at zero, which is why seasons before 1884 produce no hit batsmen. And hit by pitch is capped at five times the league rate for that season, because the log5 formula multiplies both sides' tendencies and that runs away on an outcome this rare. The cap only applies where both the batter and the pitcher are extreme, so an ordinary matchup and a hit-prone batter facing an average pitcher both play out exactly as their real numbers say.

03. Manager Controls #

Substitutions are made from small icon buttons on the Field card itself: a Defense group (pitching changes, fielder replacements) on the left, and an Offense group (pinch hitters/ runners) on the right. Hover over any of them for a tooltip naming what it does. Buttons only appear when they're legal to use — for example, Replace Fielders only shows up if you have at least one open position to fill. Each substitution button opens a popup where you pick the player(s) and confirm.

Pitching Change #

Click Change Pitcher on the left side of the Field card, pick a reliever from the bullpen list, then click Confirm Change. If a pinch hitter you sent up can't take the mound, this modal opens automatically and can't be dismissed until you pick a replacement. In a No DH game, the incoming pitcher also takes over the old pitcher's spot in the batting order — the Play-by-Play log records both as separate entries, one for the pitching change and one for the batting-order takeover.

In a single game or World Series game, both the bullpen card and this dropdown are capped to the 6 relievers with the most innings pitched in the selected historical year. In a season game, every reliever still eligible to enter is listed, with no cap, ranked by your current season-to-date innings pitched instead of that historical total, and each one's name is followed by his assigned bullpen role in parentheses (Closer, Setup, Middle, Long, or Mop-Up) if you've set one on the "Pitching Staff" screen. The list sorts by that role's importance first — Closer, then Setup, then Middle, then Long, then Mop-Up, then anyone unassigned — and by innings pitched within each group.

Below the bullpen entries, the dropdown also lists any starter on the roster who hasn't pitched yet today — a legal call if you want to bring one in ahead of schedule, even though he isn't part of the bullpen list above.

The bullpen list shows for the computer-controlled team's pitcher too, so you can see who's available on the other side — and Change Pitcher works for that side as well, if you'd rather make the call yourself. The CPU still manages its own pitching changes whenever you don't step in first.

Two buttons above the bullpen table, below the lineups on the right, switch between the pitching team's relievers and the batting team's, the same way the lineup panel's buttons switch between batting orders. Switching teams is instant and does not affect the game.

A reliever who has just entered the game can't be pulled again right away — real MLB rules require him to face at least 3 batters in a row (or 1, in a game set before 2020), or to pitch until his team's half-inning ends, whichever comes first. While that's still in progress, Change Pitcher is grayed out, and hovering over it shows how many more batters he needs to face. Once he's faced enough batters, or the half-inning is over, the button opens back up.

A CPU-controlled team won't make more than one non-emergency pitching change in the same half-inning — once it's swapped in a reliever to fix a lefty/righty matchup or because the current arm is worn down, it'll ride him out the rest of that half-inning rather than chasing another matchup right behind it. The one exception is a pitcher who's actually getting rocked: the CPU will still pull him even if it just made a change.

The CPU also leaves its pitcher in when the batter can't change the game, such as a big lead with the tying run nowhere near the plate. It won't go to the pen for a lefty/righty matchup there, gives a tiring reliever a longer leash, and with two outs lets whoever is on the mound finish the inning unless he's getting rocked.

In a season, the CPU won't call on a pitcher who has already appeared in well more games than he did in his real season at that point of the schedule. A pitcher who barely pitched that year stays a rarely used arm. If nobody left in the bullpen fits, the CPU sticks with the pitcher already on the mound.

In a No DH game, this modal also offers a Double Switch dropdown — pick a bench fielder to bring in at the same time as the pitching change, and the two swap spots in the batting order instead of each simply taking over his own predecessor's: the new fielder bats where the old pitcher would have, and the new pitcher bats where the fielder he's replacing would have. Use it to push the new pitcher's own next at-bat as late as possible. The CPU manager makes this same move on its own when it's replacing a weak-fielding starter at the same time it changes pitchers.

If your whole pitching staff has already appeared and a pitching change still has to happen (usually deep in extra innings, a lopsided blowout, or after you pinch-hit for your last pitcher), a position player takes the mound instead of the game getting stuck. A bench player who hasn't appeared yet goes first. If the bench is empty too, in a No DH game a fielder already in the game moves to the mound and keeps his spot in the batting order, and whoever held the pitcher's spot takes over his position in the field. A man who actually pitched for that team that season gets the call first and pitches with his real numbers; anyone else pitches with a flat, well-below-average arm. The catcher never leaves his spot, and the Play-by-Play log calls out each move.

Pinch Hit #

Click Pinch Hit on the right side of the Field card, pick a hitter off the bench, then click Confirm Pinch Hitter.

In a season game, a This Season/Historical toggle appears above the dropdown and switches every bench hitter's stat line between this season's totals so far and each player's real-world historical line. It defaults to historical. A single game or World Series game has no season-to-date line to switch to, so the toggle doesn't appear there.

Pinch Hit works for the computer-controlled team too, if you'd rather make the call yourself. The CPU still manages its own pinch-hitting whenever you don't step in first. It never pinch-hits for its own pitcher once no other pitcher is left to replace him. In a season from before teams had a closer, it lets a starter protecting a lead bat for himself and finish his game unless he is tiring. From 1946 to 1972, a starter on one of his complete-game days bats for himself whatever the score; from 1973, in season play, only while his team isn't behind. In season play, a CPU club pinch-hits about as often over the season as its league really did, so a dead-ball bench sees only occasional use and a 1985 National League bench gets plenty of work. From 1973 on, that limit never stops it from hitting for its pitcher. From the mid-1950s on, a bench player pinch-hits only as often as his real games allow and a regular who is short of his real at-bats keeps his turn.

Pinch Run #

Click Pinch Run for the base you want to run for, on the right side of the Field card (one button appears per occupied base with an eligible runner), pick a runner, then click Confirm Pinch Runner.

Pinch Run works for the computer-controlled team too, if you'd rather make the call yourself. The CPU still manages its own pinch-running whenever you don't step in first.

Fielder Change #

Click Replace Fielders on the left side of the Field card. The popup lists every open position with a dropdown next to it (defaulted to "No change"), so you can swap one position or several at once in a single submission — for example, sending in a new shortstop and a new left fielder together. Pick your replacements and click Confirm Substitutions.

In a season game, the same This Season/ Historical toggle from the Pinch Hit popup appears here too, in the popup's upper right — flipping it switches every position's dropdown at once, between each bench fielder's season-to-date batting and fielding-percentage line and their real-world historical one. It defaults to historical.

Replace Fielders is also available for the computer-controlled team's defense, if you'd rather make its substitutions yourself. The CPU still manages its own fielders whenever you don't step in first.

Late in a game, while protecting a lead, the computer manager replaces a fielder who's playing out of position or fielding poorly. It also sends in a bench player who is a clearly surer glove at a position than the starter there, judged by each player's real fielding percentage at that position. It makes at most two fielder changes a game this way, and holds back its last bench catcher. It only sends in someone who isn't a weak glove at that position himself.

Fielding poorly is judged against the season's own fielders: a fielding percentage of .940 or lower, or more than .015 under his league's average at the position when that's lower. A 1908 shortstop fielding .920 was about average for his day. Before the designated hitter, the computer manager also makes these changes only as often as managers in its league that season sent fielders in off the bench, so a dead-ball club mostly plays its regulars all nine innings.

Repositioning a Fielder #

Each position's dropdown in the Replace Fielders popup isn't limited to your bench — anyone currently in the game who has played that position before shows up too, labeled with where they're playing right now (e.g. "Currently playing 2B"). Picking one of these moves that player over and swaps whoever was already at the target position into their old position, so both stay in the game — no one is replaced. Only their positions change. Each player keeps his own place in the batting order.

04. Box Score & Game Log #

Lineup Panel #

The right column next to the Field card carries the full nine-spot batting order and stays visible the whole game. Each row shows the slot, player, position, their bats hand (L/R/S), and their season AVG, HR, and RBI. The batter at the plate is marked At bat, and the hitter due up behind them is marked Due up. Two buttons above the table switch between the batting team's order and the opposing team's; on the opposing team's order, Due up marks the slot that leads off their next turn at the plate. Switching teams is instant and does not affect the game. A † next to a name flags that slot as currently held by a substitute (pinch hitter or pinch runner) rather than the original starter.

Live Box Score #

The line score at the top of the Field card, and the batting, pitching, and fielding tables below the field, update automatically after every at-bat — no need to refresh the page. The pitching table tracks HR (home runs allowed) and WP (wild pitches) alongside the usual counting stats, and the fielding table tracks PB (passed balls).

The bottom row of the scoreboard names the half-inning and the team hitting. Next to that are the count and outs the way a ballpark scoreboard shows them: B (balls), S (strikes) and O (outs), each with a filled dot for every one. The count ticks up pitch by pitch, and a new out fills in once you see it made on the field.

Under the scoreboard, a row of Ks counts the strikeouts by the pitcher on the mound, like the K cards fans hang in the stands. A swinging strikeout shows a regular K and a called third strike shows a backward one, in the order they happened. A batter who reaches on a dropped third strike still counts. The row follows the pitcher: it starts empty for a reliever and switches sides every half-inning. It stays hidden until his first strikeout.

Fielding follows official scoring, so a few totals climb faster than you might expect. Your catcher is credited with a PO on every strikeout he holds; when he has to throw the batter out at first, the first baseman gets the PO and the catcher the A. A first baseman who flips a grounder to the pitcher covering first gets an A, and an outfielder whose throw is relayed for an out gets one too. Any play with two outs counts as a double play for everyone who handled the ball. An E is charged to whoever actually misplayed the ball, including a dropped pop-up or line drive, and a wild throw on a tag-up, a stretch for an extra base, or a runner sent home. Whenever the play-by-play says a throwing error let someone advance, that fielder's E moves in the same at-bat. When a first baseman drops a throw that would have retired the batter, he takes the E and the fielder who made the throw still gets his A.

How often fielders err follows the season you're playing. A deadball-era infield boots and drops far more balls than a modern one, and each player's own real fielding record decides how often he's the one who does it.

Earned runs follow the official rule as well. A run is unearned if the runner reached on an error or a third strike the catcher let get away, if it scores on an error or passed ball, or if it scores after the defense should already have made the third out. A pinch runner takes over the standing of the runner he replaces.

Runs are charged to the pitcher who put the runner on base. If a reliever comes in with the bases loaded and all three runners score, those runs go on the pitcher he replaced, even though he's already out of the game. A batter who reaches on a fielder's choice that retires one of those runners takes his place on the earlier pitcher's account. A reliever doesn't get the benefit of errors made before he came in, so a run can be earned for him and unearned for the team. The loss goes to the pitcher charged with the go-ahead run.

Walk-offs follow the official rule too. The game ends the moment the winning run scores, so any runner behind him doesn't score and is left on base. A game-ending hit counts for only as many bases as the winning runner moved: with runners on second and third in a tie game, a ball in the gap that scores the runner from third goes in the box score as a single with one RBI. A home run over the fence is the exception, and every run counts. The play-by-play says which run won it and what the batter was credited with.

Below each batting table is a summary line for the things that don't get a column of their own: doubles, triples, home runs, runners left on base, steals, caught stealing, intentional walks, and HBP (batters hit by a pitch), each naming the players involved. A batter credited more than once shows a count after their name, like Smith (2).

Once a season or postseason game is final, its saved box score follows each name with the player's total through that game, the way a newspaper prints it: Smith (6) for his sixth double, or Smith 2 (6) when two of them came in this game. Postseason games count the whole postseason. Single games and exhibitions keep the in-game count only.

The pitchers who got the decisions show their record through that game the same way: W, 10-2 for the winner, L, 3-4 for the loser and S, 35 for the save. The record stays as it was that day, so an old box score never shows a later total. Postseason games show postseason records. Single games, standalone World Series, All-Star Games and exhibitions show a plain W, L or SV. The game's newspaper prints the same records in its notes, like WP: deGrom (10-2).

A reliever earns a hold when he enters in a save situation, gets at least one out and leaves with his team still ahead. He can't hold the game he saves. Blowing the lead costs him the hold. Two or more setup men can hold the same game. A hold can still come with the win or the loss. Each one shows HLD, 12 next to his line in a season game (plain HLD elsewhere) and is listed after the save in the final line and the newspaper notes, like HLD: Betances (12). The old-time paper for 1976 and earlier leaves holds out, since nobody counted them back then.

Player Stats #

In the Batting or Pitching tables, click the small bar-chart icon next to a player's name to open a popup of their full current-season pitching, batting, and fielding lines. Below those is the player's real year-by-year career with career totals, with the season you're playing highlighted. Their age that season (as of June 30) shows next to how they bat and throw when the birth date is on file. The page stays where it is while the popup is open, so you can close it and open the next player's without losing your spot in the table.

Play-by-Play Panel #

A Play-by-Play button next to the "Now Batting" text on the Field card opens the full log in a popup. The Play-by-Play button under Game Flow, below the Boxscores buttons, opens the same popup. Every play for the current game is preserved, newest at the top, with a separator line marking each new half-inning. Most entries include a short broadcast-style commentary line above the batter/pitcher details — the same wording that flashed on the field diagram when the play happened. Substitutions are named in the log too — pinch hitters, pinch runners, fielder changes, pitching changes, and repositioned fielders are all named in the log as they happen, whether you made the move or the computer manager did. A wild pitch or passed ball can also show up on any pitch with a runner on base — a small, independent chance for baserunners to advance that has nothing to do with the batter's own at-bat; it's called out in the log the same way an error is. Pitchers also throw over to first on their own before a pitch, about as often as real pitchers of that season did, and every throw gets its own line whether the runner dives back or gets caught leaning. A pickoff you call with the Pickoff button (see Defensive Strategy) shows up the same way, labeled Picked Off or Pickoff Attempt (Safe). Each line gives the odds the throw had of getting the runner.

Strategy calls get their own lines too, whether you made the call or the computer manager did. A defensive call such as Infield In, DP Depth, Corners In, Outfield Shallow, Hold Runner or Pitch Around shows up the moment it's made. Changing or cancelling it before the pitch adds another line. The batting side's call (a hit and run, a bunt, a squeeze or one of the advanced approaches) shows up as the pitch is thrown, right ahead of the result, so the defense never sees the sign early. Hit Away and normal positioning get no line. An intentional walk is announced by its own entry the moment it's called.

The commentary line describes the play itself (who fielded it, where the ball went, how far it carried) and the moment around it. It notes when a run ties the game or puts a team ahead, a two-out RBI, a jam escaped, a batter's earlier at-bats in the game, and a pitcher who has retired several in a row or is running up his pitch count. Close, late-inning moments get a short setup naming the outs, runners, and inning before the call. The wording follows the season's era, so a 1910 game reads differently from a 1975 or 2015 game. Pitching changes, pinch hitters, pinch runners, defensive replacements, wild pitches, passed balls, and pickoff attempts get their own commentary lines in the log too.

Every play ends with its scorebook code in parentheses, such as (6-4-3 DP), so you can keep score by hand as you watch. The code comes from the same putouts and assists as the box score. Fielders are numbered 1 pitcher, 2 catcher, 3 first base, 4 second base, 5 third base, 6 shortstop, 7 left field, 8 center field and 9 right field.

• Ground outs list each throw: 6-3, 4-3, 3U (unassisted).
• Air outs: F8 fly out, L6 line out, P4 pop out, F5F foul out.
• Strikeouts: K swinging, ꓘ looking, K+WP or K+PB when strike three gets away.
• Hits name where the ball went: 1B7, 2B9, 3B8, HR7.
• BB walk, IBB intentional walk, HBP hit by pitch, E6 error.
• When the batter gets past first on an error, the code adds his base: E8, B-2 puts him on second.
• FC 6-4 fielder's choice, SF8 sacrifice fly, SH 1-3 sacrifice bunt, BG 5-3 bunt out.
• 6-4-3 DP double play, TP triple play.
• SB2 stolen base, CS 2-4 caught stealing, PO 1-3 picked off, DI defensive indifference.
• WP wild pitch, PB passed ball.
• A runner thrown out on the play follows the batter's code, such as F7, 7-2 DP for a fly out and a throw home.

As each batter steps in, a matchup line follows the play's commentary on the Field card. On the batter's first trip to the plate it gives a season average, home runs and RBI along with the pitcher's record, ERA and strikeouts, from the same stats the Now Batting and Now Pitching boxes show. On later trips it recaps the batter's results today and how the pitcher's outing is going: innings, runs, hits, strikeouts and pitch count. Commentary on the Field card types in one word at a time. The slider to the right of the Play-by-Play button sets how fast it types: drag right for faster, left for slower. Your speed sticks for the rest of the game.

When you're logged in, the Hide play-by-play button next to that slider hides the commentary on the Field card, and Show play-by-play brings it back. To resize the commentary box, drag one of its edges like a window. The pointer turns into a resize arrow over each edge that can move from where the box sits, and that edge follows your drag. Double-click an edge to put it back to its normal size. A taller box fills with the game's earlier plays above the current one, newest at the bottom, and you can scroll back through them. The text stays the same size. The Now Batting lines stay in place either way. Your choices are saved and carry over to every game.

Plays decided by a probability roll carry a small arrow underneath — click it to expand a breakdown of the odds behind that play, with the actual roll that decided it shown in parenthesis next to the percentages. When a roll picks among several outcomes, the one it landed on is named after the arrow. A long shot shows as <1% and a near sure thing as >99%, so a rare outcome can still win the roll.

A ball that just clears the fence for a home run isn't always a sure thing — the outfielder underneath it sometimes gets a real shot at the play. That home run can end up robbed for a fly out, deflect off his glove for a double instead, or squirt off his glove and still carry over the fence.

The board only stops for a click when a decision is yours to make. A wild pitch or passed ball plays out on the field and the game goes on. When the computer manager changes pitchers, sends up a pinch hitter or makes a throw call on your runner, a line under Now Batting tells you what it did, with nothing to dismiss. Its steals play on the field like any other play.

Win Probability #

Click Win Probability next to the Batting, Pitching and Fielding box score buttons to open the chart. It updates after every play. The line moves toward the top when the road team's chances rise and toward the bottom when the home team's do. The top of the chart shows the team currently favored and its chance to win.

Drag the chart by its title bar to move it anywhere on the screen. Click Pin to keep it open while you play: the rest of the gameboard stays usable and the chart updates after each play. A pinned chart stays in its spot on the page and scrolls along with the gameboard until you click Unpin or Close. On a phone, a pinned chart starts at the bottom of the screen.

To make the chart bigger or smaller, drag the striped grip in its bottom-right corner. The chart fills the new size. Resizing isn't available on a phone.

Your next game remembers the chart's size, where you put it and whether it was pinned. If you leave a game with the chart pinned open, it opens pinned in the next one. This is saved in your browser, so another computer or browser starts with the chart closed in the middle of the screen.

Hover over the chart, or tap it on a phone or tablet, to see any play: the favored team's chance at that moment, the score, the half-inning, and what happened. The chances come from the inning, outs, runners on base, and the score. Each club's real runs scored and allowed that season set who is favored at the first pitch, along with the home team's edge. A lead also counts for more in a low-scoring era than in a high-scoring one. On a finished game's box score page, the chart is in the Win Probability section.

Text Box Score #

Once a game is finished, a View Text Box Score link opens a monospace box score in a new tab — line score, batting lines, and pitching lines, styled like an old tabletop-sim printout. It shows up on the finished gameboard, a saved game's page, a season game's page, a World Series game's page, and the Advance Day screen once every game for the day is done.

Every finished game lists its attendance, like Att: 23,415. It's at the end of the text box score, under the ballpark name on a finished game's page and in the ballpark box on the gameboard once the game is over. The crowd starts from what the home club really drew per game that season and never tops its ballpark's seating. In a season, a club winning more than it did in real life draws bigger crowds and one falling short draws smaller ones. Postseason and All-Star games play to a full house. Attendance is for flavor only and has no effect on play.

Print Scoresheet #

Click Print Scoresheet at the top of the gameboard to keep score by hand on paper. A printable scoresheet opens in a new tab with both starting lineups already filled in: batting order, positions and each team's starting pitcher, plus the ballpark and the game date in a season game.

Everything else is left blank for you to fill in: a scoring box with a diamond for every inning through the 11th, two lines under each batter for substitutes, AB, R, H and RBI columns, a line score and pitching lines for the starter and relievers. Each team prints on its own landscape page.

Click Print Scoresheet on that page or use your browser's print command. To keep a copy on your computer, choose Save as PDF in the print window. The sheet always shows the lineups that started the game, even after substitutions.

Download Game Log #

After the final out, a Download Game Log link appears in place of the action buttons — click it to save the full play-by-play as a file.

Save Game #

If you're logged in, a Save Game button also appears after the final out. It stores the finished game's full box score in your account's history, viewable anytime from My Saved Games on the Baseball page.

After the Game Over banner and the announcer's wrap-up, the final box score opens on its own. From there, Save Game saves a single game to your history and Newspaper Article opens the game's write-up in a new tab, saving the game first if you haven't yet. Season and World Series games are saved as they end, so their article opens right away. All-Star, exhibition and Game of the Day games show the box score with no article. Close takes you back to the gameboard, and the Box Score button below the field brings it back anytime.

Manage Saved Games #

My Saved Games on the Baseball page lists every game you've saved outside a season or World Series. Click the × in the corner of a game's card to delete just that one — you'll be asked to confirm first. A Delete All Saved Games link sits at the bottom of the page; it also requires confirmation and removes every game on the list in one go. Neither option touches box scores from games played during a season or World Series — those are deleted only when that season or series itself is deleted.

Every Game of the Day you finish shows up here on its own, marked with the day you played it. Deleting it here leaves your result in that day's standings.

Share a Game #

Any finished game you're viewing — a saved single game, a regular-season or postseason game from a season, or a World Series game — has a Publish button. Click it to turn on a public link anyone can open, no account needed, to see that one game's final score and box score and to generate its newspaper article. Nothing else about your account is visible through that link — not your other games, your roster, or your season.

A game stays private until you publish it. Click Unpublish at any time to take the link down again — the page stops working immediately for anyone who still has it.

A published game shows a Published badge wherever it's listed — your My Saved Games page, a season's schedule, or a World Series' Game Log.

Restart Game #

Click Restart Game at the top of the gameboard to throw away the game in progress and start it over from the first pitch. You're asked to confirm first, since nothing from the discarded game is kept: no stats, no result and no change to the standings or the series. A season, World Series, All-Star or exhibition game goes back to its pregame screen, with both lineups rebuilt from your current saved lineups and rotation, so a lineup you fixed mid-game is used when you start over. A single game starts over with the same lineups it began with. The button isn't offered once a game is over or in a Game of the Day attempt.

Roll Back #

Click Roll Back at the top of the gameboard to take the game back to an earlier at-bat and play on from there. It lists every at-bat so far, newest first, grouped by half-inning with each one's play-by-play. Pick one with Go Back Here and confirm, and the game returns to the moment that batter stepped in: the same score, outs, runners, lineups, pitchers and pitch counts. Everything after it is erased from the box score, play-by-play and stats, and it can't be undone. The at-bat replays with fresh rolls, so it can come out differently. Innings played with Sim Ahead aren't listed one at-bat at a time, but you can still go back to an at-bat from before the sim. Roll Back isn't offered once a game is over or in a Game of the Day attempt. In a game against a friend, only the person who set up the game can roll it back.

Sim Ahead #

Click Sim Ahead at the top of the gameboard to have the computer manage both teams for a while. Pick where it stops: the start of an inning still ahead (the 7th is picked for you), or the end of the game. Every inning ahead through the 9th is offered, or the next inning once the game is in the 9th or extras.

Stopping at an inning hands the game back to you before the first pitch of its top half, with everything from the simmed innings in the game log, box score and line score. Whoever managed each team before (you or the computer) manages it again.

Simming to the end (or reaching the final before your inning comes up) lands on the normal final. The board shows the game's last play and the Game Over! banner with the final score, the same as a game you finish yourself. From there you report the result, continue the series or save the game the same way you would after playing it out yourself.

The button is for logged-in players and isn't offered once a game is over or in a Game of the Day attempt.

Report a Bug #

Click Report a Bug below the Play-by-Play panel and describe what happened. The current game state is attached automatically, so there's no need to explain the score or situation — just what looked off. You need to be logged in to send a report. A report can be up to 5,000 characters, and you can send up to 10 reports an hour.

05. Strategy Notes #

1. Batting Order and On-Base Skills #

   A lineup with high on-base hitters at the top of the order and power hitters in the middle gets more baserunners driven in.

2. Pitcher Fatigue #

   Each pitcher's limit is drawn from their own season workload — about 16 or 17 pitches per inning of their typical outing, so a one-inning reliever tires around 15-20 pitches while a workhorse starter can push past 100. The pitching card flags their name and pitch count in red once they cross that limit — and in a no-DH lineup, that same red flag (with a hover tooltip showing "Tired" and the pitch count) follows a pitcher into the "Now Batting" display when he's due up himself. The moment they cross it, their chance of allowing a hit or home run jumps 10% and keeps ramping up with every pitch further over, capping at a 20% increase once they're 50% past it. A Pitching Change before that point avoids the increased hit and home run chance.

   In a season game you play or watch, a pitcher worked well past his real-life innings also pitches worse until he rests. See Pitcher overuse effects.

   

3. Times Through the Order #

   A batter's odds against a given pitcher shift with how many times he's already faced him in this game, separately from the pitch count. The first look is the batter's worst, at a 5% lower chance of a hit or home run. The second is neutral. The third and any after it are his best, at a 5% higher chance. The count resets for each new pitcher, so a reliever's first batter is on his first look no matter how many plate appearances that batter has already had.

   This stacks with pitcher fatigue by addition rather than multiplication: a starter who is both 50% past his pitch limit and facing a lineup for the third time allows hits at a 25% higher rate, not 26%.

4. No-Hitter & Perfect Game Protection #

   When the CPU is managing a team, it won't pull a starting pitcher who's working a no-hitter or perfect game — pitch count, matchup, and "getting shelled" thresholds all stand down until a hit is allowed. The one exception is an All-Star Game, where every pitcher still rotates out on schedule regardless of how the outing is going.

5. The Pitcher at the Plate #

   In a No DH game, the pitcher's slot is the weakest spot in the order, and the sim treats it that way. A pitcher with enough real at-bats that season hits his own line; the rest — most of them, since a pitcher rarely gets even 50 at-bats — are measured against how that season's pitchers hit as a group, which in most eras is somewhere between .110 and .200 with almost no power.

   That makes the pitcher's spot worth planning around. Bunting a runner over costs you less there than anywhere else in the order, and pinch hitting for the pitcher in a late close inning usually buys more than the innings you give up. ManagerAI applies the same reasoning when it runs a team.

6. Small Ball #

   Steals, bunts, and Hit and Run work best with a fast runner on base and a contact hitter at the plate — not as a default on every pitch.

   

7. Extra Innings #

   In regular-season games from 2020 on, every half-inning from the 10th on starts with a runner on second base. He is the player who bats just before that inning's leadoff hitter. The play-by-play names him at the start of each extra half-inning. If he scores, the run counts against the pitcher but is unearned. Postseason games and the All-Star Game play extra innings the traditional way, with the bases empty.

   With the winning run already in scoring position, a bunt to move him to third, or a pinch runner if he is slow, is often worth it.

8. Hit and Run and Double-Play Risk #

   A runner breaking early makes a ground-ball double play noticeably less likely (he's already past the usual force point by the time the ball's fielded, so the defense often settles for the sure out at first), which is why it's often called with a double-play situation on the line. Without the hit-and-run, a grounder that isn't turned into two usually gets the runner at second instead, leaving the batter on first. The tradeoff: if the batter instead lines out, that same early jump makes the runner more likely to get doubled off, since he's caught further from getting back. That downside is rarer with a batter who makes contact reliably.

9. Pitch Around and Intentional Walk #

   With first base open and a power hitter up, an Intentional Walk or Pitch Around can set up a more favorable matchup against the next batter.

10. Infield In and DP Depth #

    Infield In cuts down a run at the plate when it matters most. With a runner on first and fewer than two outs, your infield already plays for two at normal depth, the same as real infields did in every era, so you never need a click to get the double play. DP Depth cheats the middle infielders one more step toward second for a slightly better shot at two. Both calls trade away infield range, so each is best suited to situations where that tradeoff is worth a grounder sneaking through for a single. Late in a close game, No-Doubles Depth plays the outfield deep to guard against an extra-base hit, at the cost of conceding more singles.

    With the bases loaded, a grounder back to the pitcher is usually turned home to first (1-2-3): the runner from third is forced at the plate and no run scores. Grounders to the rest of the infield still go to second.

    

11. Late-Game Substitutions #

    Pinch Hit replaces a weak bat, Pinch Run replaces a slow runner, and a Fielder Change upgrades late-inning defense, once your bench is available.

12. What a Good Glove Gets You #

    Every fielder plays to his real season, measured against the other players at his position that year. A part-timer with only a few games there is treated as close to average.

    • Range: a fielder is measured against the other players his own team used at his position that year, since his pitchers' real hits allowed already include that team's defense. Play the regular and the staff pitches to its real season. A rangier glove turns some would-be hits into outs, and a weaker one lets some outs through for hits. On a drafted team or an All-Star squad, where the staff comes from many clubs, he is measured against his league instead. This covers grounders, line drives and fly balls. Range counts for less on a fly ball, since most outfielders reach most of them. Range needs innings played in the field, which the records leave out for most seasons before 1955, so fielders in those years play with average range.
    • Double plays: the man covering second counts most, then the fielder who started the play, then the first baseman. A slick double-play combination turns noticeably more than a poor one. Double plays also follow the era: a dead-ball defense turns about half as many as a modern one, the way real teams of that time did with small gloves and rough infields. In a game with a chosen run environment, the chosen year sets the rate.
    • Outfield arms: an outfielder's real assists set how often runners score, stretch a hit or tag up safely against him. An infielder's arm is the same for every player at his position.
    • Passed balls: a catcher who was charged with more passed balls than his league lets more pitches get by, including on a dropped third strike. Wild pitches stay on the pitcher.
    • Errors: each fielder's real error rate decides how often he boots a play. With runners on, some of an infielder's errors come on the force or the tag instead, so the batter is still out and the runners move up a base. Which infielder fields a grounder follows the season too: a dead-ball pitcher fielded about twice today's share.

    That gives a defensive replacement late in a close game real value: a better glove in center or at second base takes away hits and turns more double plays.

13. Ballpark Dimensions #

    For ballparks with known fence distances (shown in the Field card's left column), the home team's actual outfield dimensions nudge home run chances up or down — a shorter fence makes it a little easier to clear, a deeper one a little harder, and it applies to both teams playing there, not just the home team. A tall wall over a short fence doesn't get the same boost as a short fence with a normal wall — think Fenway Park's Green Monster, whose short distance is offset by its height.

    These effects follow the park the game is actually played in. A season game at a team's second home site, or a single game where you picked a different ballpark, plays like that park. The Field of Dreams plays a little small, the way its first big-league game did.

    Dimensions follow the park as it was in the season you're playing. Fences moved over the years, so the 1915 Polo Grounds and the 1950 Polo Grounds play differently. Some older parks, mostly from the 1800s and many Negro League home parks, have no recorded distances, and a few others are missing one or two. Where any distance is missing, home run chances are shaped by that park's real-world scoring history instead.

    A wall's height also shapes what happens on a fly ball that just barely clears the fence. A low fence lets an outfielder reach over and take more home runs away. At a park with a notably tall wall he has little real shot at robbing it, so the ball is more likely to clang off the wall for a double instead of carrying clean over. A park's home run totals over a season stay where its real hitters put them; the wall only changes how its close calls play out. A robbed home run or a ball knocked back into play is called as its own play in the game log, naming the outfielder. A handful of parks with a well-known wall nickname, like Fenway's Green Monster or Wrigley's ivy, name that wall directly when the play happens at it. Wrigley's ivy and Fenway's deep center-right "Triangle" also carry their own small, real chance of swallowing an otherwise-clean catch outright: at Wrigley, a lost ball is ruled a ground-rule double, and at Fenway, it's ruled a triple.

    At a park with a close, tall wall, like Fenway's Green Monster in left or League Park's right field wall, a deep single can be called and shown coming off the wall. Everywhere else, the outfielder cuts off a deep single before it reaches the wall.

    

06. Starting a World Series #

1. Step 1

   Choose a Mode #

   From the Baseball home page, click the World Series card, then choose Historical to recreate a real World Series matchup, or Custom to build any matchup you want.

   

2. Step 2 — Historical

   Pick a Season #

   Choose a season and click Choose Season. That year's actual AL and NL pennant winners load automatically, and the season picker gives way to the matchup card — click Change season in that card if you want to pick a different year. Either side can be swapped for any other team on record, from any season, if you'd rather play a hypothetical matchup. When a real World Series was played that year, a short description of what actually happened appears beneath the matchup. Optionally give the series a Series Name to tell it apart from others later — handy if you recreate the same matchup more than once; leave it blank and the series list falls back to "Team A vs Team B." Check Computer-controlled under either team to have ManagerAI run that side's lineup and in-game decisions for the whole series instead of you. Click Start World Series to lock it in.

   

3. Step 2 — Custom

   Pick Two Teams #

   Choose a season and click Choose Season for each side independently — the two sides don't need to share a year, so a 1927 team can face a 1975 team. Once both sides have a season, pick a team for each. Optionally give the series a Series Name to tell it apart from others later — handy if you set up more than one series with the same matchup; leave it blank and the series list falls back to "Team A vs Team B." Choose which side gets Home Field Advantage, check Computer-controlled under either team to have ManagerAI run that side's lineup and in-game decisions for the whole series instead of you, pick a Run Environment, whether to Adjust for league quality and whether to Neutralize home parks for the series (see Build a Custom Season), and click Start World Series.

   

4. Step 3

   Pregame #

   Before each game of the series, you'll land on a pregame screen for that matchup. Each side's batting order and defensive positions are pre-filled from that team's saved lineup on the series board's Lineups tab, vs RHP or vs LHP to match the other side's starting pitcher. The starting pitcher defaults to the next arm in that team's rotation, in the order set on the Pitching Staff tab. The #1 starter starts Game 1, the #2 starter Game 2, and so on, cycling back around after the last starter in that team's rotation (four for a club that really ran a four-man rotation, five for most others). Auto-simmed games use the same saved lineups and rotation. Adjust either lineup or either starting pitcher as you like, then click Play Ball to launch that game. It plays exactly like a Single Game.

   Same lineup-builder as everywhere else: each batting slot's dropdown surfaces players with experience at that slot's position first and labels every player with their eligible positions, and the Starting Pitcher dropdown is limited to that team's actual starters. Drag a slot's ⠿ handle onto another to swap those two batters and their fielding positions with each other, or tap a slot's ▲ or ▼ arrow to move it one spot up or down.

   Each game uses the DH rule the real World Series used that year. Before 1976 there was no DH. From 1976 through 1985 every game used the DH in even years and no game did in odd years. From 1986 on the home park's league decides, except 2020 and 2022 onward, when every game used the DH. A game without the DH shows a No DH tag above the lineups, and each pitcher's batting spot follows the Starting Pitcher pick. When a saved lineup was set with the DH and the game has none, the DH sits and the pitcher bats ninth. When it was set without the DH and the game uses one, the best hitter on the bench bats in the pitcher's spot. Earlier postseason rounds in a season follow the home park's league rule, and a season's DH Rule setting overrides both.

   If you checked Computer-controlled for a side back on the matchup screen, its lineup here is still editable — pre-filled with ManagerAI's own pick — but that side stays computer-managed once the game starts unless you click Manage Both Teams next to Play Ball to take it over for this one game. If both sides ended up Computer-controlled (e.g. you chose Just Watch for this game), that button reads Watch Game instead, and plays the game out one at-bat at a time with ManagerAI managing both dugouts.

   The series board's Ballpark tab shows both teams' home parks with their dimensions and trivia. Pick the photo used for games at each park from its collection, or upload your own. A World Series tied to one of your seasons shares that season's Ballpark pick. A standalone World Series uses your single game pick for that park, so a change here also shows up in single games and All-Star games you play there. On a standalone series, the pregame screen's Choose or upload a ballpark photo link above the lineups opens the same pick for the host park.

   

5. Step 4

   Continue the Series #

   When a series game ends, its final screen shows a Continue Series → button in place of the usual Save Game button. The series standing at the top of the gameboard already includes the game you just finished. The game's result is saved as soon as the final out is made: the win is credited and both teams' rotations move ahead. Clicking the button takes you straight to the pregame screen for the next game. Once a team wins enough games to clinch, you're returned to the Baseball home page instead, with the series champion announced.

6. Bullpen Roles

   ManagerAI Reads Bullpen Roles in World Series Play #

   Both teams' bullpens get closer, primary and middle setup, long relief, and mop-up duty assignments automatically as soon as the series is created — best-ERA arms into setup and middle relief, the saves leader as closer. ManagerAI holds each side's assigned closer for a true save situation or a late tied game and reaches for a starter outside the rotation if long relief and mop-up are both empty, and the bullpen list on the gameboard shows each reliever's role, sorted by it.

   Want to change any of it? Each series' Game Log links to a Lineups screen and a Pitching Staff screen for either team — set batting orders, rotation order, and bullpen roles between games, the same way you would for a full season.

   A season's own postseason bracket also tracks which relievers pitched in earlier series games and prefers a rested arm over a tired one. A standalone World Series (Historical or Custom mode) doesn't carry appearance history between games, so its bullpen decisions weigh role and ERA only, without a rest-day preference.

7. Series Progress

   Game Log & Series Statistics #

   A link on the pregame screen (and, once the series is decided, the champion screen) opens the series' Game Log: every completed game's score and Player of the Game, the current series standing, and cumulative batting, pitching, and fielding stats for both teams, with a Total row for each team at the bottom of every table. Click any game in the log to open a read-only box score for that specific game, including a collapsed Game Log section with the full play-by-play.

   

   Sim Series has the computer play every remaining game until one team clinches, whether the series hasn't started yet or is partway through. A progress window shows each game's final score; close it to go to the champion screen. If a game gets stuck, the sim stops there so you can try again.

   Once a World Series is decided, the Game Log also names the World Series MVP: the player with the best series across every game, at the plate and on the mound. The honor goes to someone on the champion unless a player on the losing side had a truly standout series. The team fielding totals leave double plays blank, since every fielder on a double play is credited with one.

   From the Game Log, use the Lineups and Pitching Staff links to set either team's batting orders, rotation order, and bullpen roles between games — the same management screens a full season has. If this series is part of one of your seasons' postseason brackets, there's also a link to that season's own Team Statistics page.

8. My World Series

   Delete a World Series #

   My World Series on the Baseball page lists every standalone series you've started, in progress and complete (a season's own postseason bracket is reached from that season's dashboard instead). Click the × in the corner of a series' card to delete it — you'll be asked to confirm first, since this permanently removes all of that series' games and every saved-game box score from games played during it. This can't be undone. A Delete All World Series link at the bottom of the page does the same for every standalone series at once.

   

9. Home Field

   Best-of-Seven, 2-3-2 #

   The series runs best-of-seven, hosted 2-3-2: the home-field team takes Games 1, 2, 6, and 7, and the other side hosts Games 3, 4, and 5. In a Historical series, home field goes to whichever team had the better regular-season winning percentage. In a Custom series, you choose which side gets it.

07. Starting a Season #

1. Step 1

   Pick a Year and Team #

   From the Baseball home page, click the Full Season card. Choose a season and click Choose Season, then pick any team from that year — not just the pennant winners — to manage as GM. Negro League and other independent black baseball teams aren't offered here — see Run a Negro League Season for those.

   

2. Step 2

   Set Season Options #

   Optionally give the season a Season Name to tell it apart from others later. Leave it blank and the season list falls back to the year and team name. Choose whether Injuries are in effect for the season (pitcher fatigue and rest are always on), whether Pitcher overuse effects are on (see Pitching Staff), set a DH Rule override if you'd rather not use that year's historical default, and turn on Include All-Star Game if you want an in-season All-Star break — see below. Turn on Field of Dreams game to move one mid-August game to the Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa. Every team's Schedule shows a box at the top pointing to that game, and its newspaper story covers the setting. Auto-Sim and Sim Week ask before simming it, in case you'd rather play or watch it. Turn on Real lineups and starting pitchers to have each game start the lineup and pitcher each team really used that day (AL and NL seasons). The games themselves are still simulated. Injuries are turned off when this is on. When a real starter needs rest or isn't on the active roster, ManagerAI picks a replacement and the game log says who and why. Your own team's pregame lineup starts out as the real one, and you can still change it. Forgot to check it? The season owner can turn it on or off later from the season's Lineups tab. Games already played stay as they were. Turning it off asks whether to turn injuries back on. The box starts checked if the season had injuries on before. Players healed when injuries went off stay healed. New injuries start with your next game. Click Start Season to lock it in.

   

3. Alternate Setup

   Build a Custom Season #

   From the Seasons list, + Build Custom Season builds a season out of any teams you pick, instead of reproducing a real year's schedule with every team from the league. Pick a year, check any teams you want from it, then optionally repeat with a different year before continuing — mix teams from any years you like, at least two teams total. Select all checks every team left from that year at once.

   

   On the next screen, choose which of your picked teams you'll manage as GM and a Season Style: a regular season with playoffs afterward, a regular season leading into knockout rounds, a split season played in two halves, or a tournament that skips straight to the bracket.

   

   Either regular-season style needs Games Per Team (each team's games are spread as evenly as possible across the others you picked, so even a short season faces many different opponents, and with leagues and divisions about 40% come against division rivals, 40% against the rest of the league and 20% against the other league, or about two-thirds against its own league when there are no divisions), and standings from that schedule seed the postseason bracket. A tournament has no regular season and no standings to seed the bracket from, so pick a Bracket Seeding instead: the order you picked teams in, or a random draw.

   Every style but Split season needs a Playoff Bracket Size for the postseason instead of a real year's playoff format. Regular season + playoffs and Tournament also ask for one Playoff Best-Of length applied to every round. Regular season + knockout rounds asks you to set a best-of length for each round of the bracket separately — for example, a best-of-3 semifinal followed by a single-game final.

   A bracket size smaller than your picked pool leaves the rest out of the postseason — by standings for a style with games, or by pick order for a tournament, which has none. It defaults to your full pool size so leaving anyone out is a choice you make on purpose.

   Open Team Names and Ballparks on that screen to give any team a new city, nickname and abbreviation. The abbreviation fills in from the name as you type, and you can change it. A renamed team keeps its colors and players and plays the same as the real team. It gets a new icon made from its abbreviation, and its new name shows everywhere in that season: standings, schedule, scoreboards, box scores and game log. Leave the name blank to keep the real one. Two teams in the same season can't share a name or an abbreviation. Pick a Ballpark to have a team play its home games in any park, renamed or not. Leave it on Team's home park to keep its real one. None of this changes the real team in other seasons or modes.

   A Split season plays its Games Per Team in two halves, half the games in each, so the number has to be even. Each half has its own standings, and Standings shows a First Half, Second Half and Overall table. The first-half winner plays the second-half winner in one final, using your Playoff Best-Of length, with home field going to the team with the better full-season record. If the same team wins both halves, no playoff is played and that team is champion.

   A tie for a half title goes to the team with the better record against the other tied teams in that half, then the better run differential in that half, then a coin flip. The Season Log notes when each half is clinched. A split season has one standings table per half, so leagues and divisions aren't offered with it.

   For either regular-season style, Leagues and Divisions splits your teams into one or two leagues. Give each league a name and a number of divisions (or none, for a single league table), name the divisions, then put every team in a league and division under Team Alignment. Divisions can be different sizes. Leave a name blank to use the default shown in the box.

   Each league's playoff field is its division winners plus the number of Wild Cards you set, for example 2 division winners and 2 wild cards. With no divisions, the league leader counts as the division winner. Seeding works like this:

   • Every division winner makes the playoffs, even with a worse record than a wild card team.
   • Wild cards go to the best remaining records in the league.
   • Division winners are seeded above wild cards, each group ordered by record.
   • When a league's playoff field isn't 2, 4, 8 or 16 teams, the top seeds get first-round byes. With 6 teams, seeds 1 and 2 sit out the first round while 3 through 6 play.

   With two leagues, each one plays its own Wild Card, Division Series and Championship Series rounds (as many as its field needs), and the two league champions meet in the World Series. A league can send up to 8 teams, or 16 with one league. The playoff spots set the bracket size, so the Playoff Bracket Size picker is hidden once leagues are on.

   Standings show each division's table, the full league tables, and a wild card table for any league with two or more divisions and at least one wild card. Division titles and playoff spots are announced in the Season Log as teams clinch them. The schedule still gives every team the number of games you picked, against every other team in the season.

   Choose All-Star league at the top of the screen for a league of All-Star teams. Every season's real AL All-Stars and NL All-Stars from 1933 on are listed on one page, along with the All-Star teams from your own All-Star Games, including the ones picked during your seasons. Check as many as you like from any seasons and add them all at once. Every season style works for an All-Star league. Switching back to Team-based league clears the All-Star teams you've picked.

   An All-Star team brings every player on its real squad, each playing as he did that year. Early squads carried as few as four pitchers, so a short squad is filled out to a full 13-man staff and 17 position players with the best players from that year who aren't on another team in your season. Its home games are played in that year's All-Star Game ballpark. A player on more than one of your picked teams plays for each of them.

   If your picked teams come from more than one DH era, you'll need to explicitly force the DH on or off for the whole season rather than using the historical default. Everything else — standings, stats, and the bracket itself — works the same as any other season, except that player names on League Leaders, Awards and the Players list show their team's year after them, for example Greg Maddux (1993).

   Run Environment sets the league every player's stats are measured against. The default, Each team's own era, uses every player's real numbers as they were. Pick a year to play every game as if it were that season: a hitter who walked twice as often as his own league walks twice as often as that year's league, and strikeouts, home runs, hits and steal success all sit at that year's levels. Neutral era plays as 1977, the season closest to the long-run average since 1920. The setting covers every game in the season, including the postseason and the All-Star Game. DH, rotation size and how each manager runs his team still follow each team's own year.

   Adjust for league quality (off by default) accounts for how much stronger the competition got over time. A player from a weaker league keeps less of his edge over his league when he faces stronger competition. A player from a stronger league keeps more. With a year picked, every player is measured against that year's competition. With each team's own era, the two leagues in each matchup meet in the middle. Ty Cobb's .367 in 1911 plays closer to .340 against 1990s competition. League strength comes from David Gassko's league quality study. Every season after 2004 counts as equally strong. Players from the same league and year are unaffected unless a different year is picked.

   Neutralize home parks (off by default) takes each player's own home park out of his stats. A Cubs hitter from the 1960s loses the home run boost Wrigley Field gave him, and a pitcher from a park that held down hitting gets that edge taken back. Singles, doubles, triples, home runs, walks and strikeouts are each adjusted by how that park played compared with its team's road games, averaged over neighboring seasons in the same park. Park data comes from the Seamheads ballpark database. Before 1906 only home runs are adjusted, and Negro League players keep their stats as they are. The park the game is played in still counts as usual.

   

   A Tournament season has no regular season, so it skips the Schedule screen entirely, and Advance Day opens straight into the bracket instead of a day-by-day game list — the same bracket screen described under Postseason below. Everything else about it works the same as any other bracket: Play, Auto-Sim, and managing an opponent's side all behave identically.

4. Alternate Setup

   Custom Draft Season #

   Custom Draft Season on the home page or the My Seasons page builds a league whose rosters come from a draft. First pick the teams in your league, the same way as a custom season. Each team starts with an empty roster. The year you pick on that screen only decides which teams are in your league. It does not decide which players you draft.

   

   If you come back to a league you started picking teams for but didn't finish, pick a year to keep going or click Start Over.

   

   On the next screen, set the Player Pool: every team drafts players' real seasons from From Season through To Season. From Season starts at 1903, the first season of modern baseball, but you can pick earlier seasons from the list. Use the same year twice for a one-season draft or the full range for an all-time draft. If the range doesn't have enough players at every position for the number of teams you picked, you'll be told which positions are short. Widen the range or pick fewer teams. The rest of the options (team you manage, season style, leagues and divisions, playoffs, DH, injuries, All-Star Game, run environment) work as they do for a custom season.

   Check Include Negro League players under Player Pool to add the Negro League seasons inside your From and To Season range to the draft. Negro League records are incomplete. Many seasons are missing strikeouts, walks or hit-by-pitch totals for most hitters, so those players use their league's average in place of the missing numbers. A Negro League season counts only inside the range you pick, so a range with no Negro League years adds no one.

   After the draft, the league's owner can turn the same setting on or off on the League Members page. Turned on, Negro League players join the free agents and any team can call them up. Turned off, the unclaimed ones leave the free agents and anyone already on a team or in its Minor Leagues stays. Each change shows on the league's Transactions page for everyone in the league.

   Roster Size sets how many players each team drafts, from 30 to 40. The draft has one round per player. A bigger roster needs a bigger player pool, so you may need to widen the season range.

   You can also set the roster's makeup. Position players (13 or more) and Pitchers (9 or more) are the fewest of each every team must draft. The defaults, 17 and 13, mean two players at each position, a DH (or a third catcher without the DH), five starting pitchers and eight relievers. With fewer than 17 position players, a team needs one player at each position, a backup catcher and a DH (or third catcher), and the rest are bench players who can play anywhere. Every staff has at least five starters.

   Reserves are drafted players who start the season in your Minor Leagues. Your last picks that don't fit an active spot become your reserves. They count toward the roster size but not the active roster, so a 30-man roster with 4 reserves plays with 26. Call one up from the roster screen when a spot opens, or send someone down to make room. When a player gets hurt, the computer manager's call-up can come from your reserves too. In September the active roster grows and more of them can come up.

   Spots left over after the position players, pitchers and reserves can go to any hitter or pitcher, so a 40-man league with the default makeup can carry 25 hitters and 15 pitchers, 20 of each or whatever mix you like. Every player outside the reserves stays on your active roster all season, postseason included.

   Also on that screen, open Team Names and Ballparks to give any team a new city, nickname and abbreviation. The abbreviation fills in from the name as you type, and you can change it. A renamed team keeps its colors and gets a new icon made from its abbreviation. Its new name and abbreviation show everywhere in that season: the draft, standings, schedule, scoreboards, box scores and game log. Leave the name blank to keep the real one. Two teams in the same league can't share a name or an abbreviation. Pick a Ballpark to have a team play its home games in any park, renamed or not. Leave it on Team's home park to keep its real one. None of this changes the real team in other seasons or modes.

   Team Logos #

   Upload your own logo for a draft league team. On the Active Roster page, click Change logo next to the team name. As commissioner, you can set the logo of any team in the league, computer teams included, from the link on the League Members page. A friend in your league can set only their own team's logo. Everyone in the league sees it in the standings, schedule, scoreboards, box scores and on the game screen. Use a PNG, JPEG or WebP image up to 5 MB. The whole image is fitted into a square, so nothing gets cut off. Press Remove Logo to show no logo at all. Logos must be family-friendly.

   

   Starting the draft sets a random draft order, shown on the draft page. It's a snake draft, so the order reverses every round. You pick for your team, and the CPU picks for the others.

   Check Draft for all teams on the options screen to make every pick yourself. The draft room then follows the team on the clock: the heading names the team you're picking for, and the roster and available players are that team's. You still manage the team you chose once the season starts. Auto-pick lets the CPU make the current pick for you and shows who it took in the Draft Picks window, CPU drafts the other teams hands every team but yours back to the CPU for the rest of the draft, and Auto-draft the rest hands every team, yours included, to the CPU.

   Drafting with Friends #

   Check Draft with friends on the options screen to run a league with other players. You are the commissioner. Every friend who will play must already have their own account on this site, and it must be verified. A friend who has only just signed up can't be added until their account is verified.

   Step 1: the next page lists every team, each run by the computer to start. For a team you want a friend to have, change Run by to A friend and start typing their username. Click their name when it shows up. Their name then shows on the team, and the league shows up in their My Seasons list. We also email them the league name, their team and a link to it. To undo it, press Reset next to their name. The team goes back to the computer, and you can pick again. Teams with no friend on them are drafted by the computer. The draft order starts out random, with #1 picking first. Use the up and down arrows next to a team to move it in the order.

   Step 2: press Start Draft when every friend is on a team. Until the first pick is made, the Change friends or draft order button in the draft room takes you back to make changes.

   Each friend picks only for their own team. The draft room updates on its own when someone makes a pick, so everyone can see whose turn it is. The Commissioner box in your draft room lets you pause and resume the draft, auto-pick for a friend who is on the clock, switch a friend's team to the CPU and hand it back to them later. A friend gets their team back starting with their next pick.

   You can change who has each team at any time, during the draft or the season. Open League Members from the Commissioner box in the draft room or from the season dashboard. Put a friend on any computer team, press Swap for another friend to give a team to someone else or press Reset to hand a team back to the computer for good. A friend added during the draft picks for their team from its next pick on. A friend added during the season manages that team from then on. Every friend you put on a team, including one swapped in, gets the same email.

   Once the season starts, it shows up in each friend's Seasons list. Every friend can see the schedule, standings, stats and box scores. Each friend manages only their own team's roster, lineups and pitching staff. Each friend plays their own team's games from Advance Day. A game between two people's teams is played head-to-head (see Head-to-Head Games), unless you turn Remote play off. Only you sim days. Only you can delete the season.

   If a friend can't get to a roster move, you can release a player for them. Pick their team on the Roster screen. It's marked (friend's team). Use Release next to the player, with the same rules as a release by the team's owner. Every other move on that team stays with your friend. The league's transactions show the release was made by the commissioner.

   After you play or sim a game, each friend whose team was in it gets an email with the final score and a link to the box score. Sim several games or a whole week at once and each friend gets one email listing all of their team's games from that sim. To stop these emails and the team emails above, use the Turn off game emails link at the bottom of any of them, or check Turn off game emails on your profile page. Your newsletter setting stays as it is.

   Trading with Friends #

   Once the draft is done, owners can trade players with each other from Trades on the season dashboard. The commissioner's team and every friend's team can trade. Computer teams can't.

   Under Make an Offer, pick the team you want to trade with, tick the players you give and the players you get, then press Send Offer. You can offer anyone on your active roster or in your Minor Leagues. A player on the injured list can't be traded. The other owner sees the offer under Offers to You and can Accept, Decline or Counter it. A counter starts from the same players, which you can change before sending it back. You can withdraw your own offer until it's answered.

   An accepted trade waits on the commissioner, who approves or vetoes it. When it's approved, the players change teams right away. Each player keeps the season he was drafted from, joins his new team's active roster or Minor Leagues (wherever he was before) and leaves his old team's lineups, bullpen role and rotation spot. His stats so far stay with his old team. A team that ends up over its roster limit has to send someone down before its next game. Any other open offer that included a traded player is cancelled.

   The commissioner can set a Trade deadline on the League Members page. Trades can be offered and completed through that day. Without one, trading runs until the regular season ends. The deadline shows on the season's Key Dates. Every finished, declined or vetoed offer is listed under Trade History. Each traded player also shows in the league's Transactions.

   CPU teams make their picks as soon as they're on the clock and stop when it's your turn. Each real player can be drafted once, so taking one of his seasons takes the others off the board too. A pick that would leave your team unable to fill every roster spot is blocked. You can leave in the middle of the draft and come back later to pick up exactly where it stopped.

   The draft room shows the round and pick, who's on the clock, this round's order and the latest picks. Your Roster lists every roster spot with the players you've taken; open spots are highlighted so you can see what you still need. A player who can play several positions goes wherever leaves your other spots fillable. On a roster bigger than 30, the spots past the core 30 are listed as ANY.

   Your staff needs at least five starters. Past those five, a starter can fill any bullpen spot, so you can carry a deep rotation of swingmen the way many older clubs did. A reliever can't fill a rotation spot. Extra starters work out of the bullpen during the season.

   Available Players shows each player with the season he's drafted from, the team he played for that season (every team, in order, when he was traded), his main and other positions, how he bats (Right, Left or Switch) and throws, with - when it isn't known, and his line that year. A pitcher's line includes his ERA and WHIP, the two numbers his draft value is built from. Search by name, filter by position (SP and RP for starters and relievers), hitters or pitchers, or a narrower range of seasons, and sort by draft value or a stat like HR, OPS, ERA or WHIP (lowest first). A position filter includes everyone who played there, so a first baseman who played a few games at shortstop shows up under SS. Team narrows the list to one or more franchises, counting every city and name a franchise played under, so the Braves cover Boston, Milwaukee and Atlanta. A player traded during a season shows up under each team he played for that year. Check Filter team to match team currently drafting to have Team switch to the franchise of whichever team is up to pick, after every pick. Unchecking it sets Team back to all teams. Picking a team yourself also turns it off. The room remembers this setting for each draft, so it stays the way you left it when you reload the page or come back later. Draft value is the same rating the CPU drafts by: runs above an average player of his own season. The list only shows players who fit a spot still open on your roster, so the player count and pages shrink as your roster fills up.

   

   If the pool runs out of players at a position you still need, such as catcher, the list opens up to everyone left. The player you take fills that spot and plays out of position there, the way a club short a catcher puts someone else behind the plate. CPU teams do the same, taking a hitter for a fielding spot and a pitcher for a pitching spot when they can.

   When CPU teams are on the clock, a Draft Picks window lists each of their picks as it's made: the pick number, the team, and the player's season, name and position. It also appears when you open a draft that starts with CPU picks. Once it's your turn again, press Continue to get back to the room, already updated with their picks. When the last pick of the draft is in, Continue takes you to your new season.

   

   When you're on the clock, Auto-pick lets the CPU make that pick for you, using the same ratings it drafts by. Auto-draft the rest hands every remaining pick, yours included, to the CPU, and the Draft Picks window shows each one until the draft is over. It asks you to confirm first, since you can't take your picks back once it starts.

   Check CPU teams draft only from their own franchise to have each CPU team take players who played for its franchise in the draft's seasons, so the Yankees draft Yankees. When none of its franchise's players fit an open roster spot, that team drafts from everyone. Your own picks, Auto-pick included, aren't affected. The setting stays with the draft until you change it.

   

   CPU teams rate each player-season against the rest of the major leagues that year, so a 2.00 ERA in 1968 and a 3.50 ERA in 2000 can rate about the same. Hitters are rated on runs created plus the position they played most, pitchers on ERA and WHIP, and a short season counts for less than a full one. A CPU team only drafts for roster spots it still has open, and it moves first on positions where the good players are running out, like catcher and shortstop. Every CPU team finishes with a full roster: two players at each position, a DH (or a third catcher when the DH is off), at least five starters and a bullpen. A CPU team puts a starter in its bullpen when he pitched better than the relievers left. On a bigger roster, a CPU team fills its ANY spots with whoever stands out most over the players left at his position, rating an extra starter as a reliever. Two drafts from the same player pool won't go the same way.

   When the last pick is in, the season starts on its own. Every team gets its schedule, lineups against right- and left-handed starters, a five-man rotation and bullpen roles, built from the players it drafted, and you land on the season dashboard (or the bracket for a tournament). Change your own team with the usual Roster, Lineups and Pitching Staff screens. Each player plays from the season he was drafted from all year, and his stats in your league are kept separately from his real ones. League Leaders, Awards, the dashboard's leaders panel and the Players list show that season after his name, for example Babe Ruth (1927).

   Full draft results in the draft room lists every pick made so far: overall pick, team, player, the season he was drafted from and when he was taken. View it round by round or team by team. After the draft, open it from the Draft Results button on the season dashboard.

   Players nobody drafted are the league's free agents. When a CPU team loses a player to a long injury, or sends down a player who is struggling badly, it calls up a replacement from its own Minor Leagues or the free agents: a starter for a rotation spot, a reliever for the bullpen, or someone who played the same position. Each real player is still only in the league once, so a free agent whose other season was drafted isn't available.

   On the Roster screen, a player you send down goes to your Minor Leagues and keeps the season he was drafted from, so calling him back up or moving him to another team brings the same season along. Free Agents lists the best undrafted players at each position with the season they'd play from. Call one up to add him to your active roster. To find anyone else, type part of his name in Search free agents (accents don't matter) and pick a position if you like. Every available season of each match is listed with its own Call up button. Clear the search to go back to the best-by-position list.

   To drop a player for good, use Release next to his name on your active roster or in your Minor Leagues. He becomes a free agent as the same season he played for you, listed first under Released in Free Agents, so any team in the league can call him up, CPU teams included. The stats he put up for you stay with your team, the draft results still show who picked him, and the release is listed in the league's transactions. You can't release someone if it would leave your active roster without enough healthy players for a game, without a healthy pitcher or with nobody who can play a position. Call someone up first.

5. Alternate Setup

   Run a Negro League Season #

   From the Baseball home page, click the Negro Leagues card instead of Full Season. Choose a season, then pick a Negro League or other independent black baseball team from that year to manage as GM — the year list here only offers years those leagues played. Negro League seasons are free for every signed-in player.

   

   Real day-by-day schedules aren't reliably on record for these leagues, so the schedule you get is generated to match each team's real total games for the year, alternating home and away to keep it fair, rather than the real, as-played schedule a Full Season uses. Everything else — lineups, standings, stats — works the same as any other season.

   Each team plays its home games at its real home park of record for that year, such as Greenlee Field for the 1930s Pittsburgh Crawfords or Rickwood Field for the Birmingham Black Barons. Many clubs rented major league parks, so you will also see Griffith Stadium, Yankee Stadium, Comiskey Park, and others. A few traveling clubs, like the Cuban Stars, have no home park on record and play without one.

   Some team-years can't be picked. Their surviving records list too few players to field a full team (at least 10 players, with 8 position players including a catcher, plus 3 pitchers), or leave them with no other team in their league to play. A year where no league has two such teams left isn't offered at all. The setup page lists every team left out under Some teams aren't available. In a season you started earlier, unplayed games against these teams are gone from the schedule, and games already played against them stay in your standings and stats.

6. Season Option

   Injuries #

   Turning on Injuries when you start a season means players can get hurt as the season goes on — after a game a player appeared in, and occasionally on a hit-by-pitch during the game itself. Older players are somewhat more likely to get hurt. This only applies to regular-season games; it has no effect on single game or World Series mode, or on a season's own postseason bracket.

   An injury comes in one of three severities: day-to-day (back in a few games — he can still be started in the meantime, just at reduced effectiveness), short-term (out several weeks), or season-ending. A short-term or season-ending player is unavailable for lineups, pinch hitting, pinch running, and defensive replacements until he's healed, but keeps his spot on the active roster — see Manage Your Active Roster below for how that's shown. A hit-by-pitch injury during a game removes that player immediately and puts in a replacement, the same as any other forced substitution.

   For any other team in the league, ManagerAI calls up a replacement on its own once a short-term or season-ending injury opens a real gap in that team's active roster — you make that call yourself for your own team, from the Active Roster screen's "Minor Leagues" list. When the injured player returns and your roster is over its limit, you send someone down before your next game. Every injury and every activation off the injured list is reported in the season log.

   The team dashboard's Current Injuries card keeps a running log of every injury the team you're viewing has had this season, same detail as the Active Roster screen — a healed player stays listed there too, marked as returned, rather than dropping off once he's back.

7. What's Next

   Season Home #

   You'll land on your season's home page with the team and year on record. A confirmation message reports how many teams were found for that year — the full historical league, not just the team you're managing. From here you can jump to the schedule and standings; league leaders and full team/player stat browsing are still being built.

   A team picker at the top switches whose dashboard you're looking at — record, streak, next opponent, and the roster/lineups/pitching-staff quick links all follow whichever team is selected. That's not limited to your own team: pick any team in the league (or jump in from its standings row) to check in on — or take over — a CPU-controlled team's active roster, lineups, or rotation order.

   

8. What's Next

   Getting Around a Season #

   Every season screen — the dashboard, Advance Day, roster, lineups, pitching staff, schedule, and players — shares the same row of buttons at the top and bottom of the page. The button for whichever screen you're on is highlighted.

   The dashboard's top row also carries a second, league-wide grouping — standings, league leaders, team statistics, and the season log — beneath the common row. Those four screens are only reachable from the dashboard: visit one directly and its own nav rows show just that grouping plus a Dashboard button, rather than the common row.

   Where a screen has a team picker (Advance Day, roster, lineups, pitching staff, schedule, players), the nav buttons carry that selection with them — jumping to another screen from a CPU-controlled team's roster keeps that same team selected instead of dropping you back to your own. A Postseason button joins the row automatically once the season's postseason bracket exists. The Exhibitions button leads to games that don't count toward the season.

9. What's Next

   Advance Day #

   "Advance Day" lists every game on the schedule for the season's current date, including both games of a doubleheader. Your own team's game is always listed first. For each unresolved game, choose Play to play it in the gameboard (or Resume if you've already started it), or Auto-Sim to let the computer play it out headlessly. Play asks whether you'd like to manage the away team, manage the home team, or Just Watch the computer manage both sides. This works for your own team's games too, so you can sit back and watch the computer run your club, or take the other dugout for a game. The date only advances once every game on it is finished, so a doubleheader keeps both rows visible until both games are complete.

   

   To resolve a full day at once, use Auto-Sim All to sim every game left on the date, or Auto-Sim All Except My Team to sim everyone else's games while leaving yours for you to play manually (shown only on days your own team has a game). Either button — and the per-game Auto-Sim button — opens a progress window listing each game and updating it to its final score as the sim finishes; if a game gets stuck mid-batch, the batch stops there and the rest are left unresolved so you can retry.

   To move faster, Sim Week sims every game left on the current date and the six days after it, moving the date forward as each day finishes. Sim Week Except My Team does the same but stops on the first date your team plays, after simming the other games on that date, so you can play yours. Sim Week always stops at the All-Star break and at the end of the regular season, so it never starts the postseason for you. The progress window groups the games by date. Injuries, rest days, roster moves and standings all update day by day, the same as advancing one day at a time.

   Your opponent's lineup on the pregame screen is always editable, but stays computer-managed once the game starts. To take over both dugouts for that one game instead, click Manage Both Teams next to Play Ball.

   

   Once a game is finished, its final score becomes a link to that game's full result page.

   Arriving here from a CPU-controlled team's screen keeps that team selected — navigating on from Advance Day to roster, lineups, or pitching staff stays on that same team instead of dropping back to your own.

   Once every scheduled game is played, Advance Day shows a Season Complete message. If a postseason bracket was generated, it links to it, whether or not your team made it in.

   A Tournament-style custom season has no regular season to list here at all — Advance Day opens straight into its bracket instead.

10. What's Next

    Postseason #

    Once every scheduled game is played and a postseason bracket was generated, Advance Day links to it. Every round's series is listed, whether or not your own team made it in — a Your Team badge marks whichever one you're actually watching for.

    Clicking Play on any series, your own team's included, asks which side, if either, you'd like to manage for the next game. Choose Manage for whichever side you'd like to control, or Just Watch to let the computer play both sides. That choice is asked again before every game of the series, so it can change from one game to the next.

    Either way, Auto-Sim is always available to skip straight to a final score for the series' next game without playing it out.

11. Season Almanac

    Download a Season Almanac #

    Once the regular season and the postseason are both over, the season dashboard shows a Season Almanac box. Click Generate Almanac and the site puts together a book-style recap of the whole season as a PDF. A long season can take a minute or two. The box changes to a Download Almanac (PDF) button on its own when the book is ready. The almanac stays there to download again any time.

    The almanac has a table of contents and numbered pages. It covers:

    • The season: final standings, the pennant races, the longest winning and losing streaks, the season's most lopsided and longest games, league leaders, every award winner and the league's attendance leaders.
    • Team by team: a chapter for every club with its record and finish, home and road records, month-by-month results, streaks, best and worst 10-game stretches, its record against each opponent, team leaders, notable games, injuries and roster moves, its attendance (with its biggest crowd of the year), then full batting and pitching tables.
    • The postseason: every series with game-by-game scores, a short recap, its top hitter and pitcher (plus the Series MVP for the title series) and a summary of the champion's path.
    • Registers: every player's batting, pitching and fielding line, A to Z, followed by the season's no-hitters, cycles, three-homer games, long hitting streaks and other individual feats.

    Everything in the almanac comes from what happened in your season: its box scores, stats and Season Log. Notable games and feats appear only when the Season Log recorded them. Demo seasons have almanacs too. Once one is generated, it's ready for everyone who views that demo.

12. Season Option

    In-Season All-Star Game #

    Turning on Include All-Star Game when you start a season adds a 3-day break in the third week of July: Monday and Wednesday off league-wide, with the All-Star Game itself on Tuesday. Advance Day pauses there and offers Setup All-Star Game instead of a game list — the season won't move past the break until it's played.

    If the schedule doesn't run through mid-July, as with a short custom season, the All-Star Game is played the day after the last regular-season game instead, before the postseason starts. A custom tournament has no regular season, so the option isn't offered for it. In a custom season whose teams aren't an even American League and National League mix, the clubs are split evenly between the two squads instead of by league.

    That link leads to a short setup step: check Computer-controlled under either league to have ManagerAI run that side instead of you, then click Continue to Lineups. If both leagues end up Computer-controlled, the lineup screen offers Watch Game in place of Play Ball, playing the game out one at-bat at a time with ManagerAI managing both dugouts, instead of a regular-season game's Play/Manage choice. ManagerAI manages a computer-controlled side liberally here — changing pitchers every inning or so and working the bench in partway through the game — rather than the more conservative approach it takes in a regular-season game.

    Ballpark is set to that year's real All-Star Game host by default; pick a different park from the dropdown on this same screen if you'd rather play somewhere else.

    Squads are built from this season's own stats so far, not real history: 3 catchers and 2 at every other position per league, plus the 5 best starters and 7 best relief arms, ranked by how this season's simulated games have actually gone. This is a separate game mode from the standalone All-Star Game on the Baseball home page, which instead replays a real historical year's actual selections.

    Like every other exhibition mode, the game itself is saved and can be resumed, but nothing that happens in it counts toward any player's season stats.

    Once it's created, this game is also listed on the season's own Schedule page, right on the break's date, with a link to set it up or (once finished) its final score — you don't have to wait for Advance Day to reach the break to find it. It's also mixed into My All-Star Games on the Baseball home page alongside any standalone games you've played; see Finding and Deleting a Game below.

13. Season Screen

    Exhibitions #

    An exhibition is a game between any two teams in your season that counts for nothing. Use it to try a lineup, a rotation order or your CPU manager settings before you play the real thing. It works in every kind of season (full seasons, custom seasons, tournaments and Custom Draft Seasons) at any point, including during the postseason and after the season is finished.

    Click Exhibitions in the season's button row. Pick the Away and Home teams, choose which side you manage (one, both, or neither to just watch), then click Set Lineups. The lineup screen works like any season game's, including Manage Both Teams.

    Both teams play exactly as they would in their next real game: today's active roster, lineups and rest-day lineups, the starter due up in the rotation, bullpen roles, which relievers are rested, day-to-day injuries, the season's run environment and its CPU manager settings, including any you set for a single team.

    Nothing from an exhibition is added to the season. Stats, standings, the season log, the rotation turn, bullpen rest, games played and injuries stay as they were, and the season's date doesn't move. Nobody gets hurt in an exhibition.

    Because rest isn't recorded, every exhibition starts from the same rested staff. Playing several in a row won't tire anyone out, so exhibitions are good for testing lineups and manager settings but won't show how a rotation or bullpen holds up over a stretch of games.

    The Exhibitions screen lists every exhibition for the season, in progress or finished. Click one to resume it or see its final score and box score, or click its trash icon to delete it. Deleting the season deletes its exhibitions too.

14. Schedule

    Browse the Full Schedule #

    "Schedule" on the season dashboard shows a team's games as a monthly calendar, Sunday through Saturday. It opens on the month the season is currently in. Use the month buttons to move between months, the team picker to switch whose calendar you're looking at or "Jump to date" to open the month holding a specific day.

    Each game day shows the opponent's logo with vs for a home game or @ for a road game. Home games sit on the team's color and road games on a plain square. Days with no game are left empty, and both games of a doubleheader share one square (marked DH). A played game shows W or L with the winner's runs listed first (e.g. L 4-2) plus the innings when it went extra (e.g. W 5-4 (11)). Click it to open a read-only box score for that game, including a collapsed Game Log section with the full play-by-play.

    The postseason follows the regular season on the calendar. Each playoff day shows a dashed placeholder naming its round and game, such as Division Series Gm 3, with "If necessary" on games a series might not need. Once the team's series is set, its games replace the placeholders. A team that didn't make that round keeps the placeholders.

    The Next Game panel beside the calendar shows the team's next opponent, both teams' records and each side's probable starter with his season W-L and ERA.

    For a Full Season, the matchups and dates are the real, as-played schedule from that year, so you can set your lineup exactly as it stood on any given day. A Negro League Season is the exception — see Run a Negro League Season.

    

15. Newspaper

    Generate a Newspaper Article #

    Open any completed game — a regular-season game from the Schedule, a saved single game, or a World Series/postseason game — and click Generate Newspaper Article, below the Game Log, to get a full write-up of that game — headline, subheadline, and a story built entirely from that game's own box score and play-by-play. Nothing is invented: every name and stat in the article traces straight back to what actually happened on the field, so it can never disagree with the box score above it.

    Right after the final out, the final box score's Newspaper Article button opens the article straight away. To attach photos or name the newspaper, use the button on the game's own page instead.

    Every completed game also gets a Player of the Game, shown next to the final score and named in the write-up — whoever had the strongest overall performance, at the plate or on the mound, for either team.

    

    Generating the same game's article twice always produces the exact same write-up — it isn't re-randomized on every click. Anyone viewing a game you've published to a public link (see Share a Game, below) can generate its article too.

    Before the article generates, you can attach up to 3 photos to go with it — or skip that step and generate it with none. Only you can attach photos to your own games; a visitor viewing one of your published games sees whatever photos you've already added, but can't add their own.

    To change the story, click Edit Article at the bottom of one of your own game's articles. The headline, subhead and story open as plain text, filled in with the generated article. Start each paragraph on a new line and click Save. Click Start from blank to write your own from scratch. Anyone who sees that game's article sees your version, in the modern or the broadsheet page, with your headline printed exactly as you typed it. Click Restore generated article to go back to the original. Articles must be family-friendly.

    Click Close at the bottom of the article when you're done. If the article opened in its own tab, that tab closes and you're back at the game. Otherwise it takes you to the game's page.

    

    The headline and lede match the season it was played in — an early 1900s game opens like a period wire report, while a modern-day game opens like today's sports page.

    When either team is from 1976 or earlier, the article prints as a 1970s-style broadsheet on aged newsprint. It has a big headline, the story next to your photo, a sidebar with the final score, the line score and the game's key scoring plays, and full box scores in each team's colors. Games between two teams from 1977 on keep the modern page.

    The modern page is called ActionSims Baseball Times and the broadsheet is called The ActionSims Herald. For any of your own games, the attach photos step also has a Newspaper Name box. Type a name of your own and click Generate Article. Every article you open from then on uses that name, on either page. Clear the box to go back to each page's own name. Visitors to your published games always see the default name.

    The write-up follows the shape of the game itself — a scoreless stretch that finally breaks, or a run that changes the game late, gets called out, while a pitching change that didn't affect the outcome is left out of the story. The headline and opening line also fit the final margin: a one- or two-run win can be "edged," a lopsided one reads as a rout, and an extra-inning game is never called a rout.

    For a season game, the write-up also frames the matchup itself — how each team's franchise history compares, and whether the two are division rivals — before getting into the game's own story. Early in a season, before there's much of a season narrative to draw on yet, it says so rather than reading more into a handful of games than is there.

16. Standings

    Check the Standings #

    From the season dashboard, "Standings" shows how every team in the league is faring, computed fresh from that season's own completed games. Switch between three views: Division, which groups teams the way that year's league actually aligned them; League, spanning every division in the American or National League; and Wild Card, which ranks the non-division-leaders competing for a wild card berth. Each team's record, winning percentage (shown the traditional scoreboard way, like .571 rather than 0.571), and games behind the group leader are shown, with your own team highlighted. The Wild Card tab only appears once a league has split into three or more divisions that year — earlier eras with just one or two divisions per league have no separate wild card berth to chase, so the tab is left off entirely rather than showing an empty race.

    Every row's team name links to that team's stat page, and "Dashboard" opens its own season dashboard — including CPU-controlled teams, not just the one you're managing. From any team's dashboard you can reach its active roster, lineups, and pitching staff screens the same way you reach your own.

    

    A Stats toggle above the table switches between these standings (the default) and each team's real-world historical won-loss record for that year instead.

    

17. League Leaders

    Browse the League Leaders #

    From the season dashboard, "League Leaders" ranks every player in the league across a full set of batting and pitching categories. Batting: AVG, OBP, SLG, OPS, HR, RBI, 2B, 3B, BB, SO, and SB. Pitching: ERA, SO, W, SV, BS, HLD, CG, SHO, BB (allowed), HR (allowed), and G. Fielding: FPCT. Switch categories using the tabs across the top, or jump straight to one from the dashboard's own leader snippets. Rankings are computed fresh from that season's completed games, with your own team's players highlighted. Blown saves and pitching walks/home runs allowed rank highest first: the pitcher at the top of the BS tab is the one who blew the most saves. ERA ranks lowest first. AVG, OBP, SLG, OPS, ERA and fielding percentage only include players who've cleared a minimum-playing-time threshold, scaled to how many games their own team has played so far. Early in a season, before anyone qualifies, those categories show "No qualifiers yet".

    The FPCT tab shows a separate top-15 list for each defensive position — catcher, first base, second base, third base, shortstop, left field, center field, and right field — instead of mixing every position into one ranking. A player only shows up in a position's list once they've cleared that position's own minimum-playing-time threshold.

    A Stats toggle above the table switches every ranking between these simulated numbers (the default) and each player's real-world historical line for that year instead — the qualifying threshold still scales to this simulated season's own games played either way, only the ranked stat line's source changes. Real records only split outfielders into left, center and right field from the 1950s on, so an earlier outfielder's historical fielding percentage is his whole outfield line. He's listed at each outfield spot he played, qualifying by his games there. Holds weren't kept in the real records this toggle reads, so the HLD tab is empty on the historical side and player stat tables show a dash there instead of a count.

    Advanced categories sit at the end of each group: OPS+ and wOBA for batting, ERA+, FIP and WHIP for pitching. They use the same playing-time thresholds as AVG and ERA. FIP and WHIP rank lowest first. See Read the Advanced Stats.

    

18. Awards Watch

    MVP, Cy Young, Rookie, Reliever of the Year and Gold Glove Watch #

    From the season dashboard, "Awards Watch" tracks who's leading the race for MVP and the Cy Young Award as the season plays out. Switch between the two races with the tabs across the top. Each table shows AVG/HR/RBI/OPS (MVP) or W-L/SV/SO/ERA (Cy Young) for context, but the ranking itself runs on a real sabermetric formula rather than any single one of those columns: MVP by Bill James' Runs Created, and Cy Young by the Cy Young Predictor (Bill James and Rob Neyer's formula, also used by ESPN's own tracker), which weighs wins, saves, and strikeouts alongside ERA so a reliever's one scoreless inning can't outrank a real workhorse season. Like the batting/ERA titles on the League Leaders screen, only players who've cleared a minimum-playing-time threshold show up.

    In a full league replay, each award is ranked separately for the American and National Leagues, matching how the real MVP and Cy Young are awarded -- one winner and set of runner-ups per league, not a single league-wide ranking. A custom season's hand-picked pool of teams doesn't have a real AL/NL split to run those races within, so it gets one combined award instead.

    The Rookie of the Year tab tracks first-year players. A player counts as a rookie if he came into his season with fewer than 130 career at-bats and fewer than 50 career innings pitched, the same limits MLB uses. Batters and pitchers share one race: each is measured against the best hitter or pitcher in his league that season, so a rookie who hit close to the league's top bat can beat a rookie who pitched well behind its top arm. There's no playing-time minimum, so a late call-up can make the list.

    The Reliever of the Year tab covers the bullpen. Starters never qualify: a pitcher can start no more than one of every ten games he appears in, and he needs about 32 innings over a full season (less earlier in the year). Relievers are ranked by the same Cy Young Predictor, with 2 points taken off for each blown save. In early eras where saves were rare, innings and ERA decide the race.

    The Gold Glove tab names one fielder at each position, catcher through right field. Each fielder is compared with everyone else at his position that season: plays made (putouts plus assists) against the average for the games he played, errors against the average for his chances and, for catchers, runners caught stealing against the average. A catcher's putouts mostly come from strikeouts, so only his assists count toward range. A part-timer with a short, error-free line won't beat an everyday fielder with good range. Fielders need games at the position in about two-thirds of their team's games, the same bar as the fielding title on League Leaders. Pitchers aren't tracked as fielders, so there's no pitcher Gold Glove. The award is given in every season, including years before the real Gold Glove began in 1957.

    The Platinum Glove tab ranks the Gold Glove leaders by how far each stands above the rest of his position, so a shortstop who laps the field can beat a first baseman with bigger putout totals.

    The All-MLB Team tab appears once the regular season ends. It names a First Team and a Second Team, each with a catcher, first baseman, second baseman, third baseman, shortstop, three outfielders, five starting pitchers and two relievers, plus a designated hitter in seasons that used the DH. Like the real All-MLB Team, one team is picked from both leagues. Each batter is placed at the position he played most, with left, center and right field counted together as outfield. Batters are ranked by Runs Created and need the same playing time as the MVP race. Starters are ranked by the Cy Young Predictor, and relievers the same way as Reliever of the Year. No player is named twice.

    Once the regular season ends, this screen locks in the winner along with the 2nd and 3rd runner-ups for each award (and league, where applicable). Gold Glove names a single winner at each position. The newspaper recaps of the season's final day announce the Rookie of the Year, the Reliever of the Year, the Gold Glove winners, the Platinum Glove and both All-MLB teams.

19. Team Statistics

    Browse Team Statistics #

    From the season dashboard, "Team Statistics" breaks every team's season down into five tabs: Scoring (runs scored/allowed, run differential), Pitching (team ERA and full pitching line), Batting/Fielding, Bullpen (performance from relievers only, excluding rotation starts), and Situational (home/away, one-run game, and extra-inning records). Every table lists the whole league at once, with your own team's row highlighted, and reflects every game completed so far this season.

    

    On the Scoring, Pitching, and Batting/Fielding tabs, a Stats toggle switches between these simulated numbers (the default) and each team's real-world historical line for that year instead. Bullpen and Situational have no real-world equivalent to switch to — Lahman doesn't track either at the team-season level — so those two tabs always show simulated data and leave the toggle off.

    The Advanced tab shows each team's advanced batting and pitching (OPS+, ERA+, FIP and more), with the same Stats toggle. See Read the Advanced Stats.

20. Attendance

    Check Season Attendance #

    From the season dashboard, "Attendance" lists every team's home crowds for the regular season: home games played, total and average attendance, its home park and seating capacity, how full the park was on average and how many sellouts it drew. The table starts with the biggest total draw. Click any column heading to sort by it. The bottom row shows the whole league's totals.

    Played and simmed games both count. Postseason games aren't included. A team that played a few home games somewhere else shows the park where it played most of them. Games played before attendance was added to the box score have no crowd figure, so they aren't counted.

    In a Draft Season, crowds depend on the size of the home park, how full parks ran in that era and how well the home club is playing. A visiting club with a winning record draws a few more fans.

21. Key Dates

    See the Season's Key Dates #

    The season dashboard's "Key Dates" card lists the season's big events in date order: Opening Day, the All-Star Game, the Field of Dreams game, a Draft Season's trade deadline, the last day of the regular season, the awards and each postseason round through the World Series. Click an event to open its page, such as the All-Star Game box score, the awards or the postseason bracket. "Full Calendar" (also "Key Dates" in the dashboard's buttons) opens the full list, which adds the teams playing and each result once it's in.

    Events your season doesn't have are left off, such as the All-Star Game when it's turned off. Postseason games have no set dates, so each round shows the day it's planned to start. A tournament has no regular season, so it lists its rounds without dates. Awards are named as soon as the regular season ends.

22. League Highlights

    Follow the Season Log #

    The dashboard's "Season Log" widget surfaces notable events from the team you're viewing — Cycles, 3+ home run games, 5+ RBI games, inside-the-park home runs, grand slams, no-hitters and perfect games, walk-off wins, a pitcher giving up three straight home runs, hitting and home run streaks, blowouts, 1-0 pitchers' duels, marathon extra-inning games, players sent down and called up, and (when the season's Injuries option is on) injuries and activations off the injured list all show up here as soon as they happen, newest first. Each entry links straight to that game's box score — including a season postseason World Series game or the in-season All-Star Game, not just regular-season games.

    

    Click "Full Log" from the widget (or its own button in the dashboard's league-wide row) for the complete season log covering every team, filterable by team or by event type.

    

23. League Highlights

    Track Player Moves #

    If your season allows player moves, the dashboard's "Recent Transactions" card shows the last few moves involving the team you're viewing — who moved, which team he came from, which team he went to, and when.

    

    Click "Full History" for every move made across the entire league this season, filterable down to one team.

24. Players

    Browse Roster Statistics #

    From the season dashboard, "Players" shows a team's full roster as three tables -- batting, pitching, and fielding -- current through the latest completed game, with each player's position(s) alongside their line. Pick a team to browse its roster, or pick All Teams at the top of the Team list to see every player in the league in one set of tables, with a Team column showing where each one plays. Sorting a column then ranks the whole league. A name search looks within whatever the Team list shows: the chosen team, or the whole league with All Teams picked. Click any player to open their individual season stat page. There, each stat table for this season sits directly above the same table for that player's real year, so you can compare the two lines. To keep each table focused, a pitcher who hasn't recorded an at-bat doesn't clutter the batting table, and a position player with no pitching appearances doesn't clutter the pitching table — either still shows up the moment they actually bat or pitch, even just once.

    

    The batting table includes an HBP column (times hit by a pitch), next to BB, on the roster table, the individual player page, and the historical career page. Every column header on the roster tables sorts, so you can rank a roster by it.

    Next to AVG sit OBP (on-base percentage: hits, walks and times hit by a pitch over plate appearances), SLG (slugging: total bases per at-bat) and OPS (OBP plus SLG). They show on the roster table and its totals row, the individual player page, the historical career page and the World Series series stats.

    

    A Stats toggle switches all three tables between these simulated numbers (the default) and each player's real-world historical line for that year instead — the same roster (and the same batting/pitching table exclusions above) either way, only the stat line each row reports switches.

    In a Draft Season, or a custom season with All-Star teams, the Team list also has Free Agents and All Teams + Free Agents. Free agents are the players nobody in the league has. Each one is listed with the real season he's available as next to his name, with that season's real stats whichever way the Stats toggle is set, since he hasn't played in your league. A player with more than one available season gets a row for each. Each table lists the top 100 free agents for its current sort, so click a column to rank them by it (HR, ERA, OPS and so on) or search by name to find a particular player. Clicking a free agent's name opens his real career stats. Totals rows aren't shown while free agents are listed.

    From an individual player's stat page, a View Historical Career Stats link opens their full real-world career line — every year of that player's actual MLB career, not just this simulated season — with pitching shown first for a player who was primarily a pitcher.

25. Advanced Stats

    Read the Advanced Stats #

    Player pages, career pages, the Players screen and the Advanced tab on Team Statistics each add an Advanced Batting and Advanced Pitching table beneath the regular ones. Hover over a column heading for a reminder of what it means.

    OPS+, wRC+ and ERA+ compare a player with his own league that season and adjust for his home park, so 100 is always league average. A simulated line is measured against the simulated league it was played in. A real-world line is measured against the real league that year. Pitchers' hitting is left out of the league average, as Baseball-Reference and FanGraphs do. In a custom season every team counts as one league.

    A dash means there isn't enough to go on: fewer than 10 plate appearances or 3 innings, a stat the old records never kept (strikeouts for most Negro League hitters) or an ERA+ for a pitcher who hasn't allowed an earned run.

    OPS+

    On-base plus slugging against the league, park-adjusted. 150 is 50% better than average.

    wOBA

    Weighted on-base average: each way of reaching base counted by its run value, on the OBP scale.

    wRC+

    Runs created per plate appearance against the league, park-adjusted.

    ISO

    Isolated power: slugging minus batting average.

    BABIP

    Batting average on balls in play, with home runs and strikeouts left out. For a pitcher, the same thing allowed.

    BB%, K%, BB/K

    Walks and strikeouts per plate appearance (per batter faced for a pitcher) and walks per strikeout.

    ERA+

    ERA against the league, park-adjusted. Higher is better.

    FIP

    Fielding independent pitching: an ERA built only from home runs, walks, hit batters and strikeouts.

    WHIP

    Walks plus hits per inning pitched.

    K/9, BB/9, HR/9, K/BB

    Strikeouts, walks and home runs allowed per nine innings and strikeouts per walk.

26. Ballpark

    See Where Your Team Plays #

    "Ballpark" shows the home park your team played in that season, with its location and a photo where one is on file. If a team changed home parks partway through the season, every park it called home that year is listed, not just the one that hosted the most games.

    Each park shows its photo collection. Click "Use this photo" on any of them to use it for this season's games, or upload your own. This is useful for an older season whose default photo does not match the era you are playing, such as a ballpark from before a renovation. The pick only applies to this season. Every other season, including ones you play at the same park, keeps its own pick or the default. The photo in use is marked "Currently used."

    See Ballpark photo collection for how sharing, tags, and upvotes work.

    

27. Ballpark Photos

    Ballpark Photo Collection #

    Every ballpark has a photo collection that you can open from the season Ballpark screen or from a single game, All-Star game, or standalone World Series. It holds the curated photos, photos other players have shared, and your own uploads. Click a photo to see it full size.

    When you upload a photo, add a few tags such as nightgame or 1970s so players can tell photos apart. Type a word and press space, and it becomes a #tag. No # is needed. Click the × on a tag to remove it. You can change the tags on your own photos at any time. Your upload is private unless you tick the box to share it. It then shows "Share requested, awaiting approval" and stays private until an admin approves it. After that, every player can pick it for games at that park, and it appears with its tags under Fan Photos on that ballpark's public page, credited to your username with a link to your forum profile.

    You can delete your own private photos at any time. Once a photo is shared, click "Request removal" instead and an admin will remove it. If a photo you picked is removed, your games go back to the park's default photo.

    Click the arrow on any photo to upvote it, and click it again to take the vote back. The count shows how many players like that photo.

28. Active Roster

    Manage Your Active Roster #

    From the season dashboard, "Active Roster" shows your team's current roster against the active-roster size for where the season currently stands: 30 players through August, expanding to 40 — effectively your whole team-year — for September call-ups, then back down to 30 for the postseason. Players are grouped by position — pitchers first, split into "Rotation & Bullpen" (anyone with a rotation slot or bullpen role) and "Unassigned Pitchers" (anyone without one), then each fielding position, then a Utility group for anyone with no tracked experience at a position or DH.

    The initial 30-man roster is up to 2 players at each fielding position, ranked by games played there, plus one more spot for the everyday designated hitter (a 3rd catcher instead, in a year or league with no DH), and up to 13 pitchers by innings pitched that season, with any thin spots filled out by games played. Every pitcher who made 10 or more real starts for the club gets one of those 13 spots, even when that leaves the bullpen a man or two short, so a club's deadline pickups and late call-ups are there to make their starts. A pitcher who pinch-hit often but never played another position still counts as a pitcher. A two-way player who doesn't make the pitching staff can still take a position-player spot. A required-position warning shows up if a position ends up with nobody who's ever played it. Once the roster expands in September, new additions aren't held to that position breakdown. If the roster is still over 30 when the postseason begins, your next game won't start until you send enough players down.

    

    Below the active roster, "Minor Leagues" lists everyone else in that team-year's history who isn't currently rostered, grouped by position the same way. Click the ↑ button next to a minor-league player to call him up, or the ↓ button next to an active-roster player to send him down — either one saves immediately and every section on the page (position groups, Minor Leagues, the roster-size count) updates together, no separate submit. The roster can't exceed its current size limit.

    

    Players also move on and off the active roster on their own during the season. A reliever who has been hit hard over a real stretch of innings, or a part-time position player who isn't hitting over a real stretch of at-bats, can be sent down, with a fresh player from the team-year's history called up in his place. "Hit hard" and "isn't hitting" are measured against the league's own numbers this season, so the bar fits the era you're replaying. Being tired never gets a player sent down: a worn-out arm or bat just sits a day or two. A closer, a starting pitcher, and a player who starts most days are never sent down this way. The season log shows each move with the numbers behind it.

    These moves happen for every team. To make every roster move on your own team yourself, uncheck Automatic roster moves near the top of your team's Active Roster screen. Computer-managed teams keep making them either way.

    When a player who starts in one of your lineups (including a spot lineup) is sent down, the best player left on the roster takes his spot in that lineup: someone who plays the same position if possible, then a nearby position, then the best available bat.

    A player who changed teams mid-season in real life belongs to exactly one club here. In a season through 1919 or from 1973 on, it's the team he played the most games for that year; otherwise, and in a standalone World Series, it's the team he finished that year with. He won't appear in the other team's Minor Leagues list, and that team can't call him up.

    Every active-roster player has a "Move to..." dropdown — pick another team to move him onto that team's roster instead, subject to its own roster size limit. A Minor Leagues player has the same dropdown — moving him sends him to the other team's Minor Leagues list instead of onto its active roster, so a follow-up call-up is still a separate step.

    

    Picking a team pops up a confirmation before the move actually happens.

    

    Confirm it and he's gone from his old team's roster and on the new one, with his stats split between the two teams from that point on, the same way a real mid-season trade would.

    

    If the other team's active roster is already full, a dialog tells you so instead of letting the move through.

    

    Send one of their players down to Minor Leagues first to make room, then try the move again.

    

    A moved player plays for his new team using his own real numbers from that year. He can be picked for lineups, the rotation, and bullpen roles, and the computer manager will use him off the bench or out of the bullpen like anyone else. A moved pitcher shows up under "Unassigned Pitchers" until you give him a rotation slot or bullpen role on the Pitching Staff screen, or use "Auto-Fill Bullpen Roles" there.

    A team picker at the top isn't limited to your own team — switch it to any team in the league to manage that team's active roster instead, including one ManagerAI is otherwise running for you.

    Whoever's on the active roster is the full pool a season game can draw from — a player left off can't be selected for that day's starting lineup or brought in as a pinch hitter, pinch runner, defensive replacement, or reliever, even if he has a full stat line for the team-year. Call him up first if you want him available; he's playable again the moment he's back on the active roster.

    When the season's Injuries option is on, an injured player shows a red status badge next to his name — his severity, what's hurt, and (unless it's season-ending) when he's expected back. He keeps his roster spot the whole time, but a short-term or season-ending injury doesn't count against the roster's size limit, so you may see the roster list a player over the usual 30 while he's out. This frees up a real spot for a call-up. A day-to-day injury still counts against the limit; he can still be started, just at reduced effectiveness.

    When an injured player comes back, he counts against the limit again. If that puts your team over it, Advance Day tells you how many active players you have and links here. Your next game (Play, Auto-Sim or Sim Week) won't start until you send someone down. In a league with friends, the same goes for each friend's own team. Computer teams send down their least-used player on their own and the season log says who went down.

    A Stats toggle above the roster switches every player's line — on both the active-roster and Minor-Leagues rows — between what this season's own simulated games have produced so far (the default) and that team-year's real-world historical stats.

    The vs.-RHP/vs.-LHP lineups are set on the Lineups screen. See Lineups below.

29. Lineups

    Set Your Vs.-RHP and Vs.-LHP Lineups #

    From the season dashboard, "Lineups" lets you set a batting order, fielding positions, and starting pitcher for your team — separately for facing a right-handed starter and a left-handed one. Only players on your active roster are eligible; the DH slot appears when the season's DH rule is in effect, and the fielding positions cover the pitcher's spot when it's not. Whoever's on the active roster and isn't in that lineup's starting nine shows up as the bench — it's not set directly, so adding or dropping a player from the active roster updates the bench automatically. Once saved, that lineup becomes the default whenever you play a game against a starter of that hand — you can still adjust it on a given day's pregame screen without changing what's saved here.

    

    Each vs.-hand lineup saves itself the moment you change a player, position, or the Starting Pitcher — there's no separate save button to click. A "Saved." note appears under the lineup once a change goes through; if a change would leave the lineup invalid (like the same player in two slots), the card shows what's wrong instead and doesn't save until it's fixed.

    Each batting slot's player dropdown lists players with active-roster experience at that slot's defensive position first, and shows every position a player is eligible for next to their name. The Starting Pitcher dropdown lists your regular rotation first, followed by any other pitcher on the active roster who's started a game this season — a swingman or emergency starter — for when you want to hand him the ball instead. One of those below-the-rotation arms shows up in orange if he's pitched too recently to really be available. Full-time relievers who haven't started stay off this list either way. When the season's DH rule is off, the pitcher's batting slot is locked and always mirrors the Starting Pitcher dropdown.

    To reorder the batting order, grab the ⠿ handle on the left of any slot and drag it onto the slot you want to trade places with. Dropping swaps those two slots' players and their fielding positions with each other; nothing else in the lineup moves. On a No DH lineup, you can drag the locked pitcher slot too — wherever you drop it becomes the new locked slot, still tied to the Starting Pitcher dropdown, and the slot it came from opens back up. On a tablet or phone, or anytime you'd rather click than drag, use the ▲ and ▼ arrows on the right of each slot to move that slot one spot up or down in the order; it trades places with its neighbor the same way a drag does.

    A team picker at the top isn't limited to your own team — switch it to any team in the league to set that team's lineups instead, including one ManagerAI is otherwise running for you. For a CPU-controlled team, the batting order saved here is what ManagerAI uses; the starting pitcher, though, always follows that team's actual rotation turn once a game is set to be played, so it won't get stuck starting whoever was saved here if the rotation's moved past them.

    The same Stats toggle the Active Roster screen uses is available here too, switching every batter and pitcher dropdown's stat line between this season's own simulated numbers so far (the default) and real-world historical stats.

30. Lineups

    Spot Lineups #

    Below your vs.-RHP and vs.-LHP lineups, "Spot Lineups" lets you set up one or more additional named lineups that stand in for the default on a schedule — "every N games" — instead of every single game. Every team starts a new season with one already created for you: Rest Lineup, set to run every game, with bench players swapped in wherever one of them can cover a starter's position. When the bench can't cover everyone, the regulars who really sat the most get the cover first. From 1973 through 1989, a backup catcher always covers the catcher before any other spot, and a player called up to replace one who was sent down takes his place in the Rest Lineup when he can play that position. Through 1945, from the mid-1950s through 1972 and from 2023 on, the bench player who covers a position is the one who really played it most that season. You're free to rename it, change how often it runs, edit who's in it, or delete it outright — if you delete it, a fresh copy is generated again the next time you visit this page.

    

    The Rest Lineup no longer benches the same players every time it runs. Each regular gets days off based on how many games they actually missed in real life, spread out across the season instead of piled onto the same handful of days. A player who's sitting out today also can't be called off the bench later in that same game. Everyone plays in the postseason no matter what.

    Add a spot lineup of your own from the form at the bottom of the section: give it a name, how many games apart it should run, and which of your two default lineups (vs RHP or vs LHP) to start from — it's cloned from that lineup, then editable exactly like any other lineup on this page, drag-and-drop swapping and ▲ ▼ arrows included. Click a spot lineup's Edit link to change its batting order, fielding positions, name, or frequency together on one screen — that edit screen carries the same historical-vs-season Stats toggle the main lineups and Active Roster screens use.

    

    A spot lineup's cadence counts your team's completed games this season — game 10, 20, 30, and so on for a "every 10 games" lineup. When a game lands on that count, the spot lineup takes over automatically for that game instead of your usual default, for both CPU-managed teams and your own — on your own team's pregame screen, a note tells you which spot lineup is in effect, and you can still adjust it there before you play, the same as any other pre-filled lineup. If more than one spot lineup would apply to the same game, the more frequent one wins.

31. Pitching Staff

    Set Your Rotation Order and Bullpen Roles #

    From the season dashboard, "Pitching Staff" lets you set your starting rotation order and assign pitchers on your active roster to bullpen roles — closer, primary and middle setup (RHP/LHP), long relief (RHP/LHP), and mop-up duty. Each rotation slot's dropdown lists your regular rotation first, followed by any other pitcher who's started a game this season — a swingman or emergency starter, shown in orange if he's pitched too recently to really be available — so you can hold him in reserve there instead of giving him a bullpen role. A pitcher who's never started isn't offered for a rotation slot. In-game pitching decisions respect these assignments whenever practical, starting with holding your assigned closer for a true save situation instead of guessing from season stats.

    

    Both sections save on their own the moment you change a pick, the same way the Lineups screen works, with a short "Saved." note under the section you changed. If a change isn't allowed, such as putting the same pitcher in two rotation spots, the section tells you what's wrong instead of saving.

    Every bullpen role you haven't set yet is pre-filled for you from your active roster's relief pitchers — best ERA arms into setup and middle relief, your saves leader as closer, and so on — so the screen starts out with every role filled unless your roster genuinely doesn't have enough arms. Any role you change is kept exactly as you set it going forward.

    Seasons through 1945 had no closers or setup men, so closer, setup and middle relief start out blank for those teams. Their relief pitchers are pre-filled into long relief and mop-up duty instead. You can still assign any role yourself, and the computer manager will use it.

    Picking the blank option at the top of a bullpen role's list leaves that role unassigned, and it stays that way instead of being filled back in for you. In-game pitching decisions then fall back to the stats-based pick for that role. Rotation slots work differently: every one of them has to be filled, since the rotation always has to have somebody to hand the ball to.

    Auto-Fill Bullpen Roles, next to the Bullpen Roles heading, re-runs that same assignment against your active roster right now and overwrites every role with it, including any you set by hand. Use it after an injury, trade, or other roster move to get a fresh set of picks instead of updating each role yourself.

    Most teams' rotations have 5 slots, and a starter needs 4 days off between starts. A team whose real ace started well over a fifth of its games, as many did in the 1960s and '70s, has 4 slots on 3 days' rest. A Negro League or other independent black baseball team's rotation has 3 slots on 2 days' rest. Each matches how those teams actually ran their pitching staffs.

    A single pitcher can hold more than one bullpen role at once.

    Pitcher overuse effects. A pitcher's ratings come from the innings he really threw that year, so a pitcher worked far past them wears down. Once his innings this season run well past his real-life pace for this point of the schedule (about half again as many, plus a few innings), batters get more hits off him. The effect starts small and grows the further past his real workload you push him, up to the same boost a tired pitcher gives up late in a long outing. A 60-inning reliever thrown 200 innings feels it fully.

    Every pitcher list where you pick a pitcher (the Starting Pitcher on the Lineups and pregame screens, the rotation and bullpen picks here and the Pitching Change list in a game) starts his name with "[Past his real-life workload, will pitch worse]" once he's past that point. Rest him and the warning goes away as the season catches up to his innings.

    The setting is on by default. The season's commissioner can turn it off at any time with the Pitcher overuse effects box at the bottom of this screen, or exempt single pitchers with the Exempt from overuse effects checkboxes below it. It only applies in regular-season games you play or watch. Simulated games and the postseason are never affected.

    A team picker at the top isn't limited to your own team — switch it to any team in the league to set that team's rotation order and bullpen roles instead, including one ManagerAI is otherwise running for you.

    The same Stats toggle the Active Roster and Lineups screens use is available here too, switching each pitcher's G/IP/W-L/ERA/GS/SV line between this season's own simulated numbers so far (the default) and real-world historical stats.

32. CPU Opponents

    CPU Teams Follow a Real Rotation #

    Each CPU-controlled team tracks its own starting rotation and every starter's rest across the season. On the pregame screen, a CPU opponent's starter is whoever's next in line and has had enough days off — not automatically their ace every game. Early in the season, or after an off day throws the order out of sync, a team may reach back to its best arm on short rest instead. From the mid-1950s through 1972 that best arm never goes the day after he pitched, or on 1 day off after a start.

    Rotation size follows the team's own history. A club whose real ace started well over a fifth of its games, as many did in the 1960s and '70s, runs a four-man rotation on 3 days' rest. From 1973 on, a club runs four only if its ace really made 40 or more starts. Negro League clubs run three starters, and everyone else runs five.

    Before teams carried closers, a rotation didn't turn over in strict order. In those seasons the day's starter is the rested one furthest behind his real share of the team's starts, and a workhorse rests only as long as his real workload allowed. The rotation also holds every pitcher who made five or more real starts, so a club's spot starters take their turns too. Ed Walsh, who started 49 of the 1908 White Sox' games, goes again on two days' rest; Mordecai Brown, with 31 starts for the Cubs, keeps his four.

    From 1946 until the designated hitter arrived in 1973, the rotation works the same way: it holds every pitcher with five or more real starts, and the day's starter is the rested one furthest behind his real share. Every starter keeps the team's normal rest, so a four-man rotation still goes on 3 days. From the mid-1950s on, no starter runs more than one start ahead of his real number. Once every rested starter is there, the one who has started least takes the ball, so starts a club's real roster made with arms who aren't on the season roster go to the back of the rotation instead of the ace. Jim Lonborg, who started 39 games for the 1967 Red Sox, makes about 40.

    From 1973 on, the rotation turns over in order, but a starter who gets well ahead of his real number of starts hands his turn to one of the club's other real starters. From 1973 through 1989, a starter who falls a full start behind his real number of starts takes the next turn once he's rested, the way a club skipped its fifth starter after an off day. Rick Mahler, who started 39 games for the 1985 Braves, makes about that many. The 2000 Braves' fourth and fifth starters share their turns with Andy Ashby, who made 15 starts for Atlanta after his trade from the Phillies.

33. CPU Opponents

    CPU Bullpen Rest Tracking #

    A CPU-controlled bullpen also tracks each reliever's last appearance across games. When a pitching change comes up, ManagerAI still holds its closer for an actual save situation or a late tied game, but among the rest of the bullpen it favors arms that have had a couple of days off over whoever pitched yesterday.

    A reliever who pitched on each of the last two days, or three times in the last week, is unavailable and won't be listed in the bullpen at all. The assigned closer gets one extra day of leash on the "two days in a row" part of that rule, since a real closer does occasionally work a 3rd straight day. In seasons whose closers worked two innings (the mid-1950s through the 1980s), and from 1990 through 2022, the closer may go past three appearances in a week while he has pitched fewer games than his real season at that point. This applies to your own team's pitching-change picker as well as ManagerAI's. If every reliever is unavailable, the full bullpen is listed again.

    If nobody assigned to long relief or mop-up duty is left in the bullpen, ManagerAI reaches for the team's other starters, the ones not currently in its rotation. This applies to your own team's pitching-change picker too, so you'll see those starters listed as options in the same situation.

    ManagerAI uses its bullpen the way the team's own era did. In the dead-ball era a starter usually finishes his own game, including many he's losing: a starter who's been hit hard comes out only about as often as his era went to the bullpen at all. A pitcher who finished half his real starts or more can go the full nine before he tires. A closer is brought in to protect a late lead about as often as that season's real save totals call for, and setup and middle relievers are only brought in for the 7th and 8th innings from 1990 on. Before the designated hitter, a pitcher due up late is pinch-hit for about as often as managers of his era actually did, whether his team is ahead or behind, and so is a regular in the lineup. Each batter gets one such decision a game. In the dead-ball era a pinch runner goes in about as often as managers of that season used one.

    Before teams carried closers (through 1945, in both leagues), a club's relief work went to its regular starters between turns, and nobody held a bullpen role. In those seasons no closer, setup, long relief or mop-up role is assigned automatically, and a rotation starter at least two days past his last start is listed in the bullpen. A pitcher who has already appeared more often than his real season's pace is the last one called on, so a call-up who pitched twice that year doesn't end up in 80 games. A reliever in those seasons can also work as long as his league's relievers really did, often two or three innings, before he tires.

    From 1920 through 1945, each starter finishes about as many of his starts as he really did, win or lose. On his other days he comes out at about the length of his real unfinished starts. A starter working a shutout with a lead also stays in to finish it, until he reaches his real number of complete games.

    From 1946 until the designated hitter arrived in 1973, each starter finishes about as many of his starts as he really did, win or lose. On his other days he comes out at about the length of his real unfinished starts. Rotation starters at least two days past their last start are listed in the bullpen too, the way that era's swingmen relieved between turns, and each pitcher's relief work stays close to his real number of relief games. A starter working a shutout with a lead also stays in to finish it, until he reaches his real number of complete games. Either way, a starter going for a complete game comes out in extra innings once he reaches 165 pitches. From the mid-1950s on, relievers worked about two innings at a time: the closer comes in to protect a lead from the 8th, stays in through a lefty/righty matchup and finishes the game, and any reliever can go two innings before he tires. A closer who has already saved more games than his real share at that point of the season hands save chances to the next reliever. Into the early 1950s, a pitcher who has been hit hard enough to come out does come out, even when every reliever has already pitched more than his real season's share; the one least over it comes in.

    From 1973 on, in season play, each starter also finishes about as many of his starts as he really did, though never by staying in tired while his team is behind, and otherwise comes out at about the length of his real unfinished starts. Into the late 1980s, a starter working a shutout with a lead also stays in to finish it, until he reaches his real number of complete games. From 1990 through 2022, a starter who has thrown seven scoreless innings with a lead stays in to finish the shutout, until he reaches his real number of shutouts. When that era's relievers worked about two innings at a time, as they did into the late 1980s, the closer comes in to protect a lead from the 8th, stays in through a lefty/righty matchup and finishes the game; a closer who has already saved more games than his real share at that point of the season hands save chances to the next reliever. Any reliever can go two innings before he tires; by 2000 the closer has the 9th alone, finishes a four-out save he's brought in for, and also hands save chances to the next reliever once he's past his real share. In DH-era seasons from the mid-1980s on, a tiring starter going for a complete game comes out once he reaches 135 pitches.

    In seasons whose leagues used about 1.6 relievers a game or more (the mid-1980s on), a pitcher the manager decides to pull always comes out. If every reliever has already pitched more than his real season's share, the one least over it comes in, and the closer takes the game when he is the only arm left, even with his team behind.

34. CPU Opponents

    Lineups Adjust to the Opposing Starter #

    A CPU team keeps a separate lineup for facing a right-handed starter versus a left-handed one. On the pregame screen, it fields whichever one matches today's probable opposing starter — including your own, if you haven't set a lineup yet — instead of running out the same batting order regardless of who's on the mound.

    A spot lineup (see below) takes priority over this vs-RHP/vs-LHP pick whenever its "every N games" cadence lands on today's game — the opposing starter's hand only decides which lineup applies on days a spot lineup doesn't.

    

35. My Seasons

    Delete a Season #

    My Seasons on the Baseball page lists every season you've started, in progress and complete. A tag at the top of each card says what kind of season it is: Full Season, Negro League Season, Draft Season, Custom Season, Custom Tournament, Custom Split Season or Custom League + Knockout. Click the × in the corner of a season's card to delete it — you'll be asked to confirm first, since this permanently removes that season's full schedule, any postseason series it played, and every saved-game box score from games played during the season or its postseason. This can't be undone, so make sure it's really the season you want gone. A Delete All Seasons link at the bottom of the page does the same for every season on the list at once, in progress and complete alike.

    

08. Playing an All-Star Game #

1. Step 1

   Pick a Year #

   From the Baseball home page, click the All-Star Game card, choose a year, and optionally check Computer-controlled under either league to have ManagerAI run that side's lineup and in-game decisions instead of you. Click Set All-Star Game to build the rosters and continue to the pregame screen.

   Ballpark is set to that year's real All-Star Game host by default, so the field card shows the actual park name and dimensions. Pick a different park from the dropdown if you'd rather play somewhere else. It lists the parks that have a ballpark photo.

   The park also decides who bats last. The league of the club that played there that year is the home team, so a game at Three Rivers Stadium in 1994 has the National League at home. If no club played at the park that year, the American League is home in odd years and the National League in even years.

   ManagerAI manages an All-Star Game differently from a regular one: it changes pitchers every inning or so instead of riding a starter, and starts working the bench in partway through rather than waiting for the late innings, so more of the roster gets into the game.

2. The Rosters

   Roster Selection #

   American League and National League rosters are the actual players selected as All-Stars that year — not a computed "best players" ranking. There's nothing to pick or adjust: the two squads are set as soon as you choose a year. A real All-Star roster commonly runs 30+ players deep, wider than a regular season roster.

   Because a league's squad is drawn from as many as 15 different real clubs, there's no single "team" behind the scenes the way a Single Game or World Series matchup has one. Each player's stats, defensive eligibility, and tendencies still come from his own real season — only park factor is different: with no real home ballpark for an All-Star Game, every plate appearance plays out under neutral (league- average) conditions.

3. Step 2

   Pregame #

   Both lineups are pre-filled from each squad's best available players at every position, with the strongest arm on the roster set as the starting pitcher — there's no rotation to work through the way World Series does, since it's a single game. Adjust either lineup, defensive positions, or either starting pitcher as you like, then click Play Ball. It plays exactly like a Single Game.

   Same lineup-builder as everywhere else: each batting slot's dropdown surfaces players with experience at that slot's position first and labels every player with their eligible positions. Drag a slot's ⠿ handle onto another to swap those two batters and their fielding positions with each other, or tap a slot's ▲ or ▼ arrow to move it one spot up or down.

   If you checked Computer-controlled for a side back on the setup screen, its lineup here is still editable — pre-filled with ManagerAI's own pick — but that side stays computer-managed once the game starts unless you click Manage Both Teams next to Play Ball to take it over for this game. If both leagues ended up Computer-controlled, that button reads Watch Game instead, and plays the game out one at-bat at a time with ManagerAI managing both dugouts.

   Click Choose or upload a ballpark photo above the lineups to pick the host park's photo from its collection, or upload your own. Your pick is remembered for that park in every single game or All-Star game you play there afterward.

4. Final Screen

   Exhibition Only #

   When the game ends, its final screen shows a Continue → button in place of the usual Save Game button. Clicking it records the final score and takes you to a result screen with the winner, score, and pitching decisions.

   An All-Star Game is exhibition only — it never affects any Full Season's stats, roster, or rotation, and it isn't tracked as an "All-Star appearance" anywhere else in the app.

5. My All-Star Games

   Finding and Deleting a Game #

   My All-Star Games on the Baseball page lists every All-Star Game you've started, in progress and complete. Click the × in the corner of a game's card to delete it — you'll be asked to confirm first, since this permanently removes that game and its box score. This can't be undone. A Delete All All-Star Games link at the bottom of the page does the same for every standalone game at once; a season's own in-season All-Star Game isn't affected — delete that season instead.

   An in-progress game's progress is checkpointed automatically as you play — there's no separate Save button to remember. If you leave before it finishes, clicking that game's card here picks it back up exactly where you left off, inning and all, instead of starting lineup selection over. Once a game finishes, its result is permanent and always reachable from this list.

   A season's own All-Star Game (see In-Season All-Star Game above) shows up here too, mixed in with any standalone ones you've played — this list isn't only for the Baseball page's standalone mode. That season's own Advance Day and Schedule pages also link straight to it.

09. CPU Manager Settings #

From your Profile, you can adjust how the computer manager plays — when it pulls a tiring starter, when it calls on the closer, how often it bunts, and more. This is an advanced feature. The standard settings already reflect realistic managing, so unless you understand what a given setting changes, you're usually better off leaving it alone. Every field defaults to "Use the standard setting," and a Reset to Defaults button clears anything you've changed.

Each settings page starts with three presets: By the book (every setting standard), Old school (starters go deeper, more bunts and hit-and-runs, fewer bullpen moves just for a lefty/righty matchup), and Modern bullpen (quick hook, frequent matchup moves, few bunts). Each works within the team's own era, so a quick hook on a 1927 club is quick for 1927, not for today. Picking one fills in the individual settings under Advanced, where you can still adjust any of them before saving.

The choices are kept within real season workloads, so no setting can produce a pitcher's season no real pitcher ever had. A few combinations that contradict each other can't be saved, for example letting the closer work fewer days in a row than other relievers. The page points to the setting that needs changing, including when the conflict is with a setting the page inherits.

These are your global defaults — they apply to a single game, season, custom season, or World Series that doesn't already have its own override.

You can also override these settings for just one season, custom season, World Series, or All-Star Game — a CPU Manager Settings link on that mode's own screen takes you there, and changes to a season, custom season, or World Series apply going forward from when you save them. During a one-off single game, a CPU Manager Settings button on the gameboard lets you try out different settings for that game only; nothing there is saved once the game ends.

On a season or World Series' own CPU Manager Settings page, a dropdown lets you go a level more specific still: instead of one setting for every CPU-controlled team, you can give one particular team its own personality — say, an aggressive small-ball club playing alongside a conservative, starter-heavy one in the same season.

1. Starter Workload #

   How long a starting pitcher is allowed to keep going: how much extra rope he gets past his normal workload before fatigue alone pulls him, and how many earned runs he can allow in one outing before he's pulled regardless of pitch count. The earned-run limit rises with the run scoring of the team's own league and season, so a five-run limit becomes six in 2000. A lower-scoring season keeps the five-run limit, since starters in those years routinely pitched through four or five runs.

2. Bullpen & Save Situations #

   How relief pitchers are used, and when the closer gets the call: how long a starter pressed into relief duty can go, which innings and leads count as a save situation, and how quick a hook the setup man gets in a tight 8th inning.

3. Blowout Handling #

   How big a deficit, from the 7th inning on, before the losing team turns to its mop-up reliever instead of a better arm.

4. Small Ball #

   How often the offense plays for one run instead of swinging away: how often it bunts with a runner on and nobody out, and how often it calls the hit-and-run. The squeeze is called at the same chance as the sacrifice. The chances scale up for an era that bunted more, so a dead-ball club bunts, runs the hit-and-run and squeezes about twice as often, in less close games too, and sacrifices about as often as its real league did. From 1973 on, the bunt and squeeze follow the league's real sacrifice totals up or down, so an American League club with the designated hitter bunts about a third less than a National League club whose pitchers still bat, and who bunts follows each hitter's own real sacrifices: the light-hitting shortstop lays one down, the cleanup hitter almost never does. The same two settings also set how often the manager uses the other batting strategies: Sacrifice Fly Approach, Hit to Right Side, Put the Ball in Play and Work the Count. Raise them and he calls all of these more; lower them and he calls them less.

5. Bench Usage #

   How readily the bench comes in for the starting lineup: the batting- average edge a pinch-hitter needs, and the stolen-base edge a pinch-runner needs over the man already on base. From the mid-1950s through 1972 the stolen-base edge isn't used: any faster bench runner can go in, and the league's real pinch-run total holds the season.

6. Postseason Leverage #

   Whether the closer can be brought in late in a close game the team is trailing, not just to protect a lead. This applies automatically in the World Series and postseason; you can also opt it into the regular season.

7. Late-Game Timing #

   When the computer manager starts thinking tactically late in a game: pinch-hitting, pinch-running, defensive replacements, sacrifice and hit-and-run calls, and reliever matchup moves. A season through 1989, before bullpen specialization, never starts before the 8th. Doesn't apply to the All-Star Game, which has its own timing below.

8. Middle-of-the-Order Protection #

   The stricter bar a bench bat has to clear before the computer manager pinch-hits for one of the team's best hitters instead of an ordinary one.

9. Same-Handed Pinch-Hitting #

   How much better a bench bat needs to be when the swap doesn't also flip the matchup from same-handed to opposite-handed.

10. Base Running Aggressiveness #

    How willing the computer manager is to send a runner on a tag-up, stretch, or scoring decision, and how often it steals. Steal attempts follow each runner's real season attempt rate. For a season that never recorded caught stealing, such as most of the dead-ball era, that rate counts the attempts his steals would have taken at his league's success rate. This setting runs every runner more or less often than that (from half as often to half again as often), so a team's real base stealers still run the most.

11. Reliever Matchups #

    How often the computer manager goes to the bullpen specifically to fix an unfavorable matchup, rather than for fatigue or a rough outing. The chance is set for a modern bullpen and scales down for an era that used relievers less, so a 1920s manager rarely makes this move.

12. All-Star Game Rotation #

    How quickly the computer manager works through the pitching staff and bench in an All-Star Game.

13. Intentional Walks #

    When the computer manager considers pitching around a hitter instead of pitching to him. In a season from 1955 through 1972 or from 1990 through 2022, the computer manager walks the hitters that year's managers really walked, at their real pace, in any inning of a close game, so these settings don't decide who is walked there. They still apply in single games, the World Series, the All-Star Game and every other era.

14. Pitching Change Pace #

    How many non-mandatory pitching changes the computer manager allows itself in one half-inning.

15. Rest & Workload #

    How much rest a starter needs between starts, and how heavily a reliever can be leaned on over a season or World Series. The rest setting applies to a five-man rotation. A team whose real ace started well over a fifth of its games ran a four-man rotation, and keeps one here on 3 days' rest, as in much of the 1960s and '70s. From 1973 on, a club runs four only if its ace really made 40 or more starts.

10. Player Images #

You can give players your own photos. Open Player Cards & Logos on the Baseball home page, then Player Images, and search for a player by name (accents don't matter, so "Acuna" finds Acuña), or pick a season and team to see that team's players as cards, pitchers first. Pick a league too to shorten the team list.

Drag a JPEG, PNG or WebP file from your computer onto a card, or click or tap the card to choose one. The card shows a preview and asks where the photo goes. Use for all seasons makes it his photo everywhere. On a team's card, Use for 1927 only (with that card's year) makes it his photo for that club and year alone, which suits a player who changed uniforms or was traded midseason. That season photo takes the place of his all-seasons photo for that club and year (see Which photo a player shows). If you drop photos on several cards, Save all for all seasons saves them all at once.

When you save a photo, it's shrunk to fit within 300 by 400 pixels and saved as a WebP image (or a JPEG on browsers that can't make WebP). Portraits never display larger than that, so a full-size camera photo would take up storage space without looking any better. Your browser gives each site a limited amount of storage, and small photos leave room for a large collection and load quickly on game screens. Shrinking also removes hidden details saved in the file, such as where and when the picture was taken. Files up to 20 MB are accepted, and smaller images are never enlarged.

Each card says which photo it's showing, and has a remove button for each kind. Removing a season photo brings back his all-seasons photo. Search results also list every season photo a player has, with a Change link to that team's cards and a Remove button. Point at a season photo with your mouse to see it larger. Show players with my photos lists everyone you've added a photo for, by last name, or by team (each player under his last team) with Sort by: Team, 60 players to a page. Narrow it by name, or pick a season to see who you have from that year and then a team from that season. Clear all images deletes every photo you've added. It first tells you how many photos will go and asks you to confirm, so you can press Cancel and use Export photos to keep a copy. Photos waiting unsaved on cards are discarded too. A message confirms when they're gone. If you haven't added any photos, it says so and deletes nothing.

Your photos also show on a season's roster screen (active roster and Minor Leagues) and on each player's season stats and career stats pages. On a drafted team, a player's season is the real club he played the most games for in his drafted season.

During a game, the Now Batting and Now Pitching boxes show the batter's and pitcher's photos whenever they have one, changing with every new batter and pitching change. Hover over either photo to see it larger. Each player shows the photo for the real team-season he's playing as. In an All-Star Game that's the club he played the most games for that year, and on a drafted team it's his real club in his drafted season. Hovering over a fielder's name shows his photo above his stats. Lineup cards don't show photos.

To see the fielders' photos on the field at their positions, pick a choice from Photos on the field under Display in the right column. Off (the starting choice) shows a fielder's photo only while you hover over his name. Before each at-bat shows every fielder's photo above his name while you set up the at-bat, then hides them while the play runs and brings them back for the next batter. Always keeps them up the whole time, play included. While it's on, the − and + buttons beside it make the photos smaller or larger, from a quarter of the name label's width up to its full width. A fielder you have no photo for keeps his plain name label. Your choice and photo size are remembered for all your games, in every ballpark.

When at least five players in a team's batting order have photos, that batting order is introduced before the team's first time up: the visitors before the top of the 1st and the home team before the bottom. Each player's card shows his photo (or a silhouette if he has none), name, position and stats for a few seconds. With the DH, the starting pitcher's card comes last. In a season game the stats are his season so far, except in his team's first game, which shows his real stats from the year being played. The defense warms up on the field while the cards play. With animations off, the batting order isn't introduced. Drag the lineup by its title to move it out of the way. Press Skip Lineup to go straight to the game.

Your photos stay in this browser on this device and are never uploaded to ActionSims. Clearing your browser's site data deletes them, and they don't follow you to another browser or device. Private browsing windows may not allow saving photos at all; the page tells you when that's the case.

To keep a copy, press Export photos on the Player Images page each time you add photos, since a backup only holds the photos you had when you made it. It saves one ZIP file to your computer with every photo you've added, both all-seasons and season photos. Export photos and logos saves your team logos in the same ZIP. To bring them back, in this browser or another one, press Import and choose that ZIP, or drop it on the Export and Import box. First pick what happens when a player already has that photo: Skip duplicates keeps the one you have, Replace existing uses the one in the backup. When it's done, the page says how many photos were imported, skipped or failed, with the reason for each failure. Save or discard any unsaved photos on the cards before importing. The ZIP stays on your computer and is never uploaded.

11. Team Logos #

You can give teams your own logos the same way you add player photos. Open Player Cards & Logos on the Baseball home page, then Team Logos, and pick a season to see its teams as cards (all leagues, or one league if you pick it), or search by team or franchise name. Defunct leagues and clubs, like the Federal League's Baltimore Terrapins, are there too.

Search results show one card per club name, with its years. A franchise that moved or changed names gets a card for each: the Dodgers show up as the Brooklyn Robins, the Brooklyn Dodgers 1932-1957 and the Los Angeles Dodgers, among others.

Drag a JPEG, PNG or WebP file onto a card, or click or tap the card to choose one. The card shows a preview and asks where the logo goes:

• Use for all Los Angeles Dodgers seasons (with the card's franchise) makes it the franchise's logo for every year.
• Use for Brooklyn Dodgers 1932-1957 covers the years that club played under that name. Change the two years before saving to cover a different stretch.
• Use for 1955 only (on a league and season card) is for that one team and year.

A team shows its single-year logo first, then a range covering that year, then its franchise logo, then the site's own logo. Two ranges on one franchise can't share a year. If a new range overlaps one you already saved, the card lists it and offers to replace it. If you drop logos on several cards, Save all for all franchise seasons saves each one as its franchise's logo.

Logos are shrunk to fit within 300 by 300 pixels without being cropped, and transparent backgrounds stay transparent.

Each card says which of your logos it's showing and lists every logo that touches its years, each with a Remove button. Removing one brings back the next one in line. Show teams with my logos lists every club you've added a logo for, and Clear all logos deletes them all. It first tells you how many logos will go and asks you to confirm, so you can press Cancel and use Export logos to keep a copy. Logos waiting unsaved on cards are discarded too. A message confirms when they're gone. If you haven't added any logos, it says so and deletes nothing. Your logos replace the team logo wherever the site shows one, including box scores, World Series and playoff results, and saved game cards. Drafted teams you renamed and All-Star squads keep their usual look.

Like player photos, your logos stay in this browser on this device and are never uploaded to ActionSims. Clearing your browser's site data deletes them.

To keep a copy, press Export logos on the Team Logos page. It saves one ZIP file to your computer with every logo you've added and where each one applies. Export photos and logos saves your player photos in the same ZIP. To bring them back, press Import and choose the ZIP, or drop it on the Export and Import box. Either page restores everything in the backup, including older photo-only backups. Pick Skip duplicates to keep the logos you have, or Replace existing to use the backup's. Replace also removes a saved year range that a range in the backup overlaps; Skip leaves it alone. If two ranges in the backup overlap each other, neither is imported. When it's done, the page says how many were imported, skipped or failed, with the reason for each failure.

12. Bulk Import #

If you have a large collection of player cards and team logos sorted by season, you can add it all at once. Open Player Cards & Logos, then Bulk Import, and choose a ZIP of your collection or drop it on the page. The page shows the folder layout and file names it reads, and how to make the ZIP on Windows or macOS.

Collections you've downloaded can go in as they are: ZIP files, RAR files and self-extracting .exe files, several at a time. An .exe is only read as an archive and is never run. Player photos take their season from the archive or folder name, such as 2024MLBPlayerPhotos; when there isn't one, the page asks you which season they're from. Logos take their years from their file names. Uniforms, ballparks, programs and other pictures are skipped. Password-protected, multi-part and 7-Zip archives can't be read.

Bulk import is experimental, and some archives may import only partly or not at all. If one doesn't work, contact us and tell us what happened and what kind of archive it was.

Player cards go in season folders as First_Last.jpg. A card is saved for the team he played for that season. For a player who was traded that season, it's saved for each of his teams; to give one team its own card, add the team after a dash, as in Al_Kozar-CWS.jpg. For a season you have no card for, another of his cards stands in, as explained in Which photo a player shows.

Logos go in a season folder's MLB Team Logos, Cap Logos or Zekes folder, and the years in each name set the seasons it covers. Choose a Preferred logo style before importing. A team with logos in several styles uses that style first, and the other styles only fill seasons it has no logo for.

Nothing is guessed. A file that matches no player or team, or more than one (two players with the same name that season, or a city with two teams and no team letter), isn't imported. When it's done, the page says how many were imported and lists every file left out with the reason, so you can rename them and import again. Files you already imported are skipped unless you pick Replace existing. An ActionSims backup ZIP dropped here is restored like a backup.

Like everything else here, archives are read in your browser and your images are never uploaded to ActionSims. Keep the page open until the import finishes.

13. Game of the Day #

Every day there is one matchup that everyone plays: usually two teams from the same season between 1903 and 2025. Some days the staff pick a special matchup, which can bring together teams from different seasons. Each team's season then shows after its name, and the home team's season decides whether the DH is used. The card on the front page and the Baseball home page shows it. A new matchup starts every night at midnight Eastern time. You need to be logged in to play.

The Game of the Day page shows each team's chance of winning before the first pitch, favorite first. It's the same number the Win Probability chart starts from on the gameboard.

Click Play, then pick the team you'll manage. The computer manages the other team. The ballpark, the DH rule for that season and both starting lineups are the same for everyone, so every game is played under the same conditions. Your team is named at the top of the gameboard for the whole game. You can make any change for your own team once the game starts. The computer makes all changes for its team.

Your game goes into the standings as soon as the final out is made. Click See Standings to see where it ranks. Each team has its own standings table, and your game is ranked against everyone who managed the same team. A win ranks ahead of a loss. Among wins (or losses), more strategy points rank higher. Ties are broken by run differential, then runs scored, then whoever finished first.

Strategy points score the calls you make for your own team, by how they turn out. Hits and home runs with no call behind them earn nothing, since the win and the score already count. The Points column in the standings shows each game's total. Your result lists where your points came from. Games finished before box scores were added show a dash.

• Stolen base: +2 for second, +3 for third, +5 for home. Caught stealing: -2.
• Sacrifice bunt that moves the runner up: +2, and +1 more if your team scores later that inning. Bunt hit: +2. Squeeze that scores a run: +3.
• Hit and run that moves the runner up without a double play: +2. Hit and run that ends in a double play: -2.
• Put the Ball in Play or Hit to Right Side that moves a runner up: +1. Sacrifice Fly Approach that drives in a run: +2. Work the Count that draws a walk: +1.
• Pinch hitter who gets a hit: +2, plus +1 for each run he drives in. Pinch runner who scores: +2.
• Save: +5. Hold: +3. Blown save: -3.
• New pitcher brought in with runners on: +1 for each runner left on base when the inning ends, -1 for each one who scores.
• Intentional walk or Pitch Around: +1 if the other team doesn't score the rest of that inning, -1 if they do.
• Infield in with a runner on third: +1 if no run scores on the next batter's play, -1 if one does.
• Pickoff throw you call that gets the runner: +2.

Below the day's standings, Points Standings add up everyone's strategy points across every Game of the Day for This Week, This Month and This Year. A week starts on Monday, a month on the 1st and a year on January 1, each at midnight Eastern time. Only your best game each day counts, picked the same way the day's standings rank, so replaying a day can't pile up points. Each row shows your total points, games played and wins. Players are ranked by points, then wins, then fewest games, then whoever reached the total first. Your own row is highlighted.

To play a friend, type their username or email under Play a friend, then pick the team you'll manage. Leave it blank to play the computer. Your friend manages the other team from their own screen. Both of your results count in the standings (see Head-to-Head Games).

You can play again as often as you like. Each finished game gets its own row in the standings. A game you leave before the final out doesn't count.

Click Box Score under any final score in the standings to see that game's line score, batting and pitching lines and play-by-play, yours or anyone else's. It also shows who managed which team. Games finished before box scores were added don't have one.

Each game you finish is also added to My Saved Games on its own, marked with the day you played it (for example, Game of the Day, October 31, 2026). Open it there for the box score, newspaper and text box score, or to publish it. Against a friend, each of you gets it in your own saved games. Deleting it from your saved games doesn't remove it from the standings.

After any finished game, win or loss, you can add a short comment of up to 140 characters. It shows under your name in the standings. Type it in the box below your result and click Save. To change or remove it later, click Edit next to it in the standings. Keep it clean: this is a family-friendly site and staff remove comments that aren't.

14. Head-to-Head Games #

In a head-to-head game you manage one team and a friend manages the other, each from your own screen. Your friend needs their own account on this site. Find a friend by their username or the email address on their account.

Starting One #

• Single Game: on the opponent step, type your friend's name under Or play a friend. You manage the home team.
• Exhibition: pick the one team you manage and type your friend's name. They manage the other team.
• Game of the Day: type your friend's name under Play a friend, then pick your team. Both lineups are the same ones everyone plays with. Both of your results count in the standings.
• World Series and All-Star Game: type a friend's name under a team on the setup screen.
• Seasons: the commissioner puts friends on teams from League Members on the season dashboard. Any game between two people's teams is played head-to-head. A game between your team and a computer team plays the way it always has. You play it yourself from Advance Day.

Turning Remote Play Off #

In a league, the commissioner can uncheck Remote play on the League Members page (or in a draft's lobby) at any time. With it off, a game between two people's teams isn't played head-to-head. Its row on Advance Day says Computer manager plays, and the computer manages both teams when the commissioner auto-sims it. This covers the postseason too. Owners still set their own rosters, lineups and pitching staffs, and still play their own games against computer teams. A head-to-head game already under way when it's turned off can still be finished. Check the box again to go back to head-to-head play.

Lineups #

Each of you sets your own lineup. You don't see the other lineup until the first pitch. The game starts as soon as both lineups are in. Whoever finished first waits on a page that opens the game by itself. Your games are listed under My Head-to-Head Games on the Baseball home page. Click Open to set your lineup or go back to the game at any time.

Taking Turns #

The panel above the field names your team and says Your move or Waiting for your friend. You only see the controls for your own team and only on your turn. The team at bat moves first: steals, pinch hitters and runners and the batting call. Then the team in the field makes its moves: pitching changes, defensive changes, the intentional walk and infield depth. The team in the field throws the pitch. A send-or-hold call belongs to the team at bat. The throw on a runner sent home belongs to the team in the field.

When the team in the field brings in a new pitcher, the team at bat gets another turn to send up a pinch hitter against him before the pitch. The new pitcher has to face a batter before he can be taken out.

While you wait, your board checks for your friend's move every few seconds and shows their play the same way it shows yours.

The Decision Timer #

Each decision has a time limit, shown in the panel. It starts at 2 minutes. When time runs out, the CPU manager makes that one decision and the player gets their team back for the next one. The person who set the game up (the commissioner, in a league) can change the time limit or turn it off with Time for each decision. The commissioner can also hand either team to the CPU manager while its player is away and hand it back later. One team always stays with its player.

After the Final Out #

The game is recorded as soon as it ends, the same as any other game in that mode. Click Done to go back to the season, series or game it was played from. In a league, only the commissioner sims days. If the commissioner sims a head-to-head game before it's finished, the CPU manager plays it out for both teams.