Baseball Mogul 2025 vs. Out of the Park Baseball 26

 February 28, 2025  Posted in Friday Starter 158 Views

Friday Starter is a weekly column of news and tidbits from the world of baseball video games—past and present, domestic and foreign.

Baseball Mogul 2025 announced

Breaking this news, which seems to only be announced via the Sports Mogul newsletter to this point: Baseball Mogul 2025 will release on March 27th this year. No announcement yet on new features, besides of course updated rosters. There are always some notable new improvements, though the general look and feel has been the same for two decades.

Anyone interested in helping contribute the finishing touches to the 2025 rosters and player ratings can sign up for a beta test here.

Baseball Mogul was my first love among GM games. I did an Expansion Team game as the Seattle Pilots, keeping their name and taking them forward to at least the ’90s before moving onto another sim. In terms of production value, the series has been lapped by Out of the Park Baseball over the past ten years or so. But Baseball Mogul has a simple functionality (and a speed to its processing) that has made it more fun to click around and try something new in, to me.

Screenshot from Baseball Mogul 2024

This has made it a more fun game to play manager in for me as well. I can quickly get through a full game and make interesting strategic decisions, and see how they play out.

Out of the Park has a lot of advantages, of course: It has more leagues available (though fewer leagues than it used to have), and better capabilities for making your own fictional league. It has 3D player faces, and now a 3D gameplay engine, though it’s still lacking a bit of polish. If you’re into that, OOTP also has Perfect Team, a card-collecting online multiplayer mode.

I don’t expect to convert anybody back to the older-looking baseball sim with fewer features, but… Maybe try out one of the older Baseball Mogul games and see how you like it. Unlike Out of the Park, all versions of Baseball Mogul between 2007 and 2021 are available for free from the official website. Even if you had previously purchased them, it’s such a kindness to spare you finding an old installer or key or disc, and I’m forever appreciative for it.

OOTP devs do a Reddit AMA

Speaking of Out of the Park, some of their devs did an Ask Me Anything at r/MLB this week. No huge revelations about Out of the Park Baseball 26, but here’s a quick summary of things that stood out:

  • Scouts in OOTP have always been listed as either “Favor Tools” or “Favor Ability,” which has always been a bit mysterious. In 26 they are shifting the balance between these two scout types to hopefully help make them similarly good in different areas. “Favor Tools” will identify players with a innate ability to max out their potential.
  • The devs confirmed World Baseball Classic qualifiers will be in the game as scheduled for 2025. Teams that have already qualified for 2026 will already be qualified in-game as well.
  • A semi-interesting comment here about the time it takes to negotiate new licenses to include in the game.
  • And another comment hinting at trying to bring in more of the leagues they had previously.
  • There are plans to include female players in the future, though this isn’t ready for 26.
  • No exit velocity/launch angle stats to be included in this year’s game. They want to work and make sure they get the numbers right in a helpful, predictable way instead of throw in fake numbers.

Japanese alternate box art for western baseball games

This isn’t a definitive collection or anything, but I wanted to show off a couple of alternate Japan-specific box arts I recently scanned:

Triple Play 2002 traded out Luis Gonzalez (who still cameos on the back) for a smattering of Japanese MLB players: Ichiro front and center, joined by Hideo Nomo, Kazuhiro Sasaki, Shigetoshi Hasegawa, Tsuyoshi Shinjo, and Kazuhisa Ishii.

Major League Baseball 2K7 puts six players on the cover, with three big names up top and three smaller names on the bottom. Ichiro, Daisuke Matsuzaka, and Hideki Matsui are the top row. Then Kenji Johjima, Kei Igawa, and Akinori Iwamura fill up the rest.

The world-famous MVP Baseball 2005 actually translated its menus into Japanese, unlike the two other games above. Famous nihonjin Manny Ramirez makes the cover alongside Ichiro, Hideki Matsui, Hideo Nomo (who I forgot pitched for the Rays), Kazuhisa Ishii, and Tadahito Iguchi.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a region alternate cover. Best I can tell, the last one was Lourdes Gurriel Jr. of all people for a Canada-specific cover of R.B.I. Baseball 19. Japan would have plenty of faces to include nowadays if The Show were so inclined.

Another mysterious Pro Yakyuu Spirits 2024 mod emerges

Last week this blog covered a KBO mod for Prospi 2024-2025 that seems to be jealously guarded by a tight-knit online community. Well, would you be interested in a mod for CPBL, the Taiwanese pro league?

Or, maybe a little more relevant to an English-speaking audience, Team Taiwan (featuring Corbin Carroll) vs. Team Japan (featuring Lars Nootbaar)?

This YouTube channel, Baseball Master (Bangqiu Master), is filled with footage of roster/player/graphics mods for various baseball games: Prospi new and old, MVP Baseball 2005, and Major League Baseball 2K12 chief among them.

It’s a big wide world out there of baseball video game mods. At least for the rare games that get released on PC.

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