Sell the Team: Oakland A's Rebuild Episode 1 

That's part of why I'm retiring. I don't enjoy it anymore.

​@@sgtmushroomhouse rules? Trading hard mode? It's not like you're forced to play this way

Well of course you think the game is easy and not fun when you play this way. Literally anyone can build a super team doing this. It’s a baseball simulation management game meant to be played in a realistic way to get the most out of it. There’s basically no difference between this and MLB the show if you’re just trading over and over again to get the best players

@@conehed1138 I do agree that trading hard mode helps a lot, but especially with my trading frequency, it takes a lot of work and time to run a save with hard mode on. It would be impractical to do for a series like this. It took me about 8 hours just to record this video, and the video itself is of course an hour long.

@@yokabomb My OOTP experience over the past 2 years or so hasn't focused on fleecing the AI at all. It's been developing a deeper understanding of the game and doing data analysis on the engine (probably why you referred to me as "the best OOTP resource"). If you want to watch someone play the game like real baseball, you're definitely not on the right channel. My goal always has been and always will be to grind the absolute maximum efficiency out of OOTP, whether that's on an incredibly difficult run, my work to understand the game, or a series like this.

My favorite part is when he goes “It’s Baseball time!” and baseballs all over the floor

Technically speaking, I can't really make it much more challenging than this without doing maximum difficulty or hard mode. I have a trade difficulty of 8 set (7 is default on OOTP 24, 5 is average), as you can see when I go over settings, with trade reputation disabled (which makes it easier to trade when you do it in bunches like I tend to), and set the AI to value ratings more heavily than default (which means fewer players are undervalued, and players are undervalued less frequently). I didn't do maximum trade difficult because I figured it would make it just tough enough to be unable to complete a convincing rebuild with Oakland's pathetic situation in OOTP 24 in 5 years. Clearly, I was probably wrong, and if I were to do another series like this, I would do it on the highest difficulty.

@@sgtmushroom I don't use trade reputation either, because it is too easy to artificially inflate your reputation by making a bunch of nothing trades. I don't use hard mode either, because I don't find it very realistic, being that you never get your an idea of who your trading partner wants on your team. I know, you can abuse the make it work now option, but if you are able to restrain yourself enough, it works out fine. I too have my player evaluation to heavily favor (60-25-10-5) ratings. My trade settings are 17-8. I just recently dialed them back from 18-8, which I admit was a bit too high. You're right. Rebuilding Oakland is a tough job. My main goal in the first year was to keep the team from skipping town. I succeeded. My second year, my goal was to reach the .500 mark. I failed. I had the same goal in Year 3, and I managed to barely succeed and actually snuck into the playoffs on the last day of the season, benefiting from a tie breaker. I made it all the way to the ALCS before losing in five. I don't expect you to use the maximum settings, but they definitely need to be turned up a notch - especially on the value of prospects. Otherwise, it is simply shooting fish in a barrel.

@@sgtmushroom Technically speaking, you couldn't make it less challenging, unless you went to default or below. At default, you can basically trade for players at will and rape team after team like you did at the offset. Hey, if that floats your boat, go for it. But that was a real downer for me, on what could have been a very interesting play through.

I will upload the files once I complete the simulation, but if you want to try my 2023 opening day A's, you can just replicate all the transactions I made in this video.

Have done it and it definitely does work. They won't be the best shortstops out there because of the lower TDP, but they are absolutely productive and usually top 5-10 fielders.