The delay to the start of the 2020 season provided many opportunities for teams and those who cover baseball to get creative in reporting the MLB season that was supposed to occur. Here at Purple Row, we hosted our own season simulation using MLB The Show accompanied by Ben Kouchnerkavich’s play-by-play. At baseball-reference.com, another simulation using Out of the Park Baseball (OOTP) was used to simulate each day’s scheduled games with full box score reports, standings, etc. available on the site as it would if the season had been played out for real.
These simulation tools (or games) haven’t gone away and are regularly used for applications such as the recent Fangraphs Live twitch stream where Ben Clemens went back in time and drafted Mike Trout for the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 2009 amateur draft. I find these “what-if” scenarios quite appealing (reminiscent of Biff in Back to the Future 2) and it made me consider if the Rockies could use the OOTP time machine to cha