Play Two Out Rally

Today I wanted to share one of my favorite baseball games: Two Out Rally.

My preemptive apologies as most of these details were taken directly from their website. Keep in mind this isn't an interactive game like MLB 12 The Show or MLB 2K12. It's actually a simulator with an RPG twist. Hopefully the following wall of text does not deter anyone from trying it.

2 Out Rally is a multi-player online role-playing game MMORPG dealing with the on-field action, off-field drama, and general excitement of the game of baseball. Registration is simple, free, and required in order to play 2 Out Rally. By registering, you create a "scout" (your username) who will recruit players, run teams, and organize leagues.

Influence
Influence is the currency of your scout and gives him the ability to change events of the world in all sorts of ways, either through Gamechangers, finding new players, purchasing boosts for his players in either experience or cash, or starting new teams. Influence can be acquired in a number of ways:

1. Completing hidden in-game accomplishments either during a game, over the course of a season, or for the length of a career.
2. Winning special tournaments or participating in community events throughout the year.
3. Providing articles or content to build 2 Out Rally's story.
4. Serving as a Tester, Administrator, or Forum Moderator for 2 Out Rally.
5. Purchased from our store or other participating vendors.

Barry Brawn is a
PED monster!

Player Creation
When you start your scout's career, you will begin with enough influence to build your first player with a little left over. This will get you involved in the game and playing right away. In this section, we'll go over the basics for the decisions you will have to make and what those will mean for your character.

You'll want to pick from either a pitcher or a position player immediately, as their ability sets are completely different, and each choice you make will affect them differently. The three elements that will comprise your character design are Attributes, Skills, and Biographical elements. Here's what each of these means.

Attributes are the primary ability sets for your player and represent strength in a general area of the game. If you've played an RPG before, you're probably familiar with these, but if not, don't worry; it will make perfect sense. The point value of an attribute is the sum of all points in its Skill tree (see below). When a player has associated a majority of points into one attribute, that attribute is known as the Primary Attribute or Focus.

Skills are four abilities within each attribute. These skills represent pieces of the player's abilities and allow for more specific customization to the player. For example, the Speed skill is a part of the Athleticism attribute. Adding one point to the Speed skill will add a point to the overall Athleticism Attribute.

Biographical elements are those related to your player's physical size, background, and personality type.

As soon as you've selected either a pitcher or position player, there will be 3 attributes referenced with each selection you make, and every decision you make will alter them in some way. There are countless possibilities, so don't be afraid to experiment.

Burlington Blue Devils won
the wild card in the
red division of Tier C

Finding a Team & Playing the Game
After your player is created, they will need a team. Computer controlled teams will send you offers and are fine as a last resort, but you should prefer to play on a human controlled team with more skilled players and team upgrades for the possibility of free player training. Your player earns more experience when your team wins, so this is another advantage to human controlled teams. You can advertise your player using their forum or contact team owners directly using their private message system.

During your first few levels, this will be the only real development option probably available to you - earning valuable game experience. There are a few ways to earn experience in 2 Out Rally:

1. Playing in Games (a static reward for being on a team that plays games)
2. Winning, an increased experience bonus for every time your team achieves victory.
3. Moving up a League Tier, which will vastly increase the amount of experience you gain. Abusing lower levelled competition isn't going to get you to the big leagues.
4. Rushing Your Player, where your scout expends Influence to get extra training and immediately advance in level.

Every time you earn a set amount of experience, you will advance in level, which will give you 5 more skill points to spend on your development. As you advance in level, you will become eligible to compete in bigger and better leagues, before hopefully taking the stage of the WBL itself. The experience required will increase greatly with each advancing level, so advancing will become more and more difficult as you try to reach the apex of your career.

Training
Once you find a team and start earning your salary, the hard work really begins as you will want to make sure they train every day. If your team has upgrades, then some/all of your upgrades could be free. Training also provides the possibility of receiving a bonus, which varies. Some scouts choose to save their player's salary until they can afford the option with the best experience to cost ratio ($8,000), but you may risk missing out on bonuses.

There are three types of training: fitness, celebrity, and charity. Your player receives one skill point for every level of fitness training completed. Celebrity and charity training requires you to complete 10 levels, but provides you with 13 skill points or a 5% experience boost, respectively. The common consensus is celebrity training is your best option.

Gamecast
2 Out Rally is wrapping up their 13th season. They have shown they are constantly updating and evolving this game for their users. One of the latest updates added Gamecast, which is quite similar to MLB Gameday. It allows you to replay the game and see how it actually happened. Check out the preview here.

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So why am I telling you all of this? It's fun!

If you're interested in joining 2 Out Rally, then I encourage you to click the link below and try it out. Using this link will credit me with the referral. Feel free to ask me any questions. Thanks!

Starting a new team in season 14!

http://www.twooutrally.com/referral.php?rid=5088 <-- Click here to start playing!

The Boy and His Baseball Game

I hope to join Full Spectrum Baseball in their fantasy baseball league opportunity and here is a story to outline all of my credentials.

Dear Mr. Fantasy recently wrote an article entitled Fantasy Baseball: An Early Form of Social Media. He recollected his first fantasy baseball league in 1992. Twenty years ago! I thought it would be neat to recollect my fantasy baseball history as well.

The title of this post was inspired by a story written by Day[9]TV, "The Boy And His Game."

If you read my introductory post when this blog was first created in September of 2011 or read my About section, then you know I have been a huge baseball fan since I was very young. I could not play well, so I did the only things available to an nonathletic nerd: I went to games, followed the statistics, and collected baseball cards. When that wasn't enough, I decided to take it a step further and created my own fantasy baseball league. Of course I never called it fantasy baseball because I did not yet realize it existed.

This began with a simple game I received when I was only ten years old. It involved placing baseball cards into their corresponding positions on a mat shaped like a baseball field, then you would spin a wheel to determine the fate of the batter (single, double, strikeout, etc). This enhanced my craving for more baseball cards and held my interest for a while until I yearned for more.

I decided to expand upon this idea sometime after my parents purchased our family's first computer, an Apple Macintosh Performa LC 500 series. It was an "all-in-one" with the system built into the monitor. The most unique feature was the CD-ROM drive that popped out like a cassette. I eventually got the hang of how to use a computer and wanted to use it for everything.

All of the data I created and recorded before the computer has since been lost because everything at the time was done by hand. A new era began in 1996 when I was a mere twelve years old. Of course I cannot recollect everything from that time period as it was half a lifetime ago, but I can infer everything I found stored in my 15 year old binder.

"Ryan's Baseball League" was not your typical fantasy baseball league. It began simply as a transposition of one team's record into another fictional team I created. The leagues were laid out identically to the MLB at the time and teams were matched up by randomly assigning them from out of a hat (i.e. Phoenix Falcons = Houston Astros, Denver Avalance = California Angels, etc). I gathered the data from our local newspaper since we did not have the internet quite yet and calculated the standings. Keep in mind, I was only twelve years old.

I asked some of my friends to become managers in my league in 1997. Eight people agreed to join and I decided to take the league a step further by drafting the players to the teams as well. I do not recall how the players were drafted, though I am certain some favoritism was involved for teams with human managers. I determined both league's MVP, Cy Young, Rookie of the Year, and wrote a story about their playoff race.

The most notable addition to this season was the addition of two new teams to bring the team total to 30 and balance the leagues at 15 teams each. Why is this special? The Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays and Arizona Diamondbacks were added to the MLB in 1998, so how on earth did I come up with the standings? I wish I could recall how I decided upon the team standings in 1997 because it may explain what happened next.

The league continued into 1998 with the addition of two more managers. I must have stumbled upon MacPaint while I was feeling exceptionally creative because I made logos for all 30 teams. Most of them are pretty lame, then I remember I was fourteen. I have to admit I am quite proud of my logos I created for the Charlotte Spurs, Atlanta Heat, Cleveland Cobras, and San Antonio Suns. My girlfriend liked the Denver Avalanche, Houston Black Hawks, Jacksonville Manta Rays, and Seattle Squids. This was also the year I discovered Comic Sans as you can see from the photos.

The league rolled along without much change from the previous season. The standings were determined and the playoff stories were written. One of the newest additions to the league included statistical leaders to support my awards. A quick glance at Baseball Reference shows I must have gathered the data from the newspaper once again.

The most exciting thing I discovered from this binder was the last photo I included in the album, Stadiums of "Ryan's League." The first thing I asked myself when I rediscovered these pages was "Did I to figure out park factors?" I was a smart kid, but I don't believe I can credit myself for that.

Unfortunately that is where the binder ends and I can only assume why because of a combination of several reasons: 1) My friends no longer cared for baseball as the Pirates were constantly losing, 2) I was in middle school and had trouble finding the time, 3) Girls became attractive once they lost their cooties, and 4) I found fantasy baseball online.

As you can see, I am a fantasy baseball veteran and intend to manage at least five teams this season. I have not placed higher than fourth since returning in 2010, but plan to change that this year. Although I experienced I hiatus from the sport during the mid-2000s, I am following the game more closely than ever. Why else would I have a blog about baseball?

If there is prevailing interest in my childhood baseball league binder, then I may properly scan all the pages from my binder to include in the album but keep in mind it's extensive. Leave a comment or contact me via Twitter/Facebook/email if you're interested!

Fantasy Nomad Show

Michael Pichan invited me to be a guest on the Fantasy Nomad Show. We both participated in the fantasy baseball mock draft almost a month ago (has it been that long already?) and we compared our notes against each other. My segment starts around the 46 minute mark after some talk about basketball. Here's the show description and a link to the show. I apologize in advance for my microphone. :(

The Fantasy Nomad Show, brought to you by RotoInfo.com, returns to the air waves for 2012 with the same great Fantasy Sports Insight and Analysis and Great Guests including:

Scott Malewig ( @Sports_25toLife & @fakebasketball ) of TheFakeBasketball.com joins the show to help you score some early season success in your Fantasy Basketball leagues and help overcome the injuries that seem to be stacking up in this shortened NBA season.

Ryan Sendek ( @AATH_Baseball ) from AnalysisAroundTheHorn.blogspot.com compares notes with the Fantasy Nomad, from their recent Expert Fantasy Baseball Mock Draft, to help you identify some draft trends and values.

For more Fantasy Sports Insight bookmark RotoInfo.com and follow them on twitter @RotoInfo_Com to get "All Your Fantasy Sports News All The Time."

Outro song "Believe In Make Believe" performed by rapper JZac. Be sure to follow JZac on Facebook and on You Tube to hear more of his work and find out when he will be in concert.

Listen to internet radio with RotoinfoXcomX on Blog Talk Radio

Ryan's microphone makes baseball fans cry.

Choose My Fantasy Baseball Team Names

"Super Baseball 2020 is a futuristic baseball video game... The game follows the basic rules of baseball, but there are several upgrades since the game takes place in the year 2020. The most obvious difference from real baseball is that some of the characters in this game are robots. All the human characters are equipped with powerful armor, computer sensors, and jet-packs for improved offense and defensive skills." -- Wikipedia

I decided to choose a theme for my fantasy baseball teams in 2012: Super Baseball 2020. This decision caused me to dust off my Super Nintendo and ProPad controller, connect them to our television, blow out the old cartridge, and play a couple games last night. No emulators for me!

Oh, sweet childhood nostalgia. I sincerely hope mentioning this game causes a stroll down one's memory lane. Here's a little background info courtesy of Steve from RVGFANATIC:

When Super Baseball 2020 came out nearly 20 years ago in 1991, 2020 seemed like it would never come. It's a bit of a trip to think we're only a short decade from seeing our favorite Major League ball players all replaced with robots who can leap in the air 50 feet to rob potential game winning home runs. 10 more years...


In the year 2020, baseball rules and regulations have drastically changed. Now the emphasis is on a large fair playing field, making action quicker and more exciting. The foul zone has now been reduced to strictly behind the catcher. One can score hits all over the field!


Also new in 2020 is the usage of money to upgrade your robot players into super soldier robots of destruction. Earn or lose money on positive and negative plays alike. Adds a bit of depth and strategy to the ol' baseball formula.


One of the coolest things about Super Baseball 2020 for me as a kid was NO DOUBT about it those futuristic looking blue glass plates that cover the audience. Not just used to cosmetic purposes, in the year 2020 balls that are hit on the glass plates are in play! This leads to what I like to call "Wall Ball" and balls potentially rolling down several planes of glass for miles and miles, allowing you to stretch singles into doubles or even triples! No other baseball game offers this, so it made SB 2020 very unique and fun to play.


Instead of a lame 7th inning stretch, in 2020 the 7th inning means the WILD CARD INNING where both teams receive a major dosage of added power. You can call "time out" and replace your pitcher, fielders, base runners or hitter with a robot off the bench, or upgrade if you have the cash. Throughout the course of a game, robots will lose energy and give warning signs before completely breaking down. Be sure to replace them as once they start to leak, so to speak, they become close to ineffective (hit/power/speed all drastically dip).

Perhaps there are some teams you remember whenever you played this game yourself. I recall always choosing the Mechanical Brains or Korea Dragoon while growing up, though last night I played as the Battle Heroes and Tokyo Samurais.

I intend to draft at least four teams this season and as many as six, so more votes will help me. As an additional challenge for myself, I will attempt to draft my teams toward an equivalent statistical goal as the teams chosen. (i.e. American Dreams. Hitting:10/10, Pitching:5/10)

Without further ado, here is the poll:

Fantasy Baseball Team Names: Which team names should be chosen from Super Baseball 2020?   American Dreams Tokyo Samurais Naples Seagulls Taiwan Megapowers Korea Dragoon Battle Angels Battle Heroes Ninja Blacksox Aussie Battlers Mechanical Brains Metal Slashers Tropical Girls    pollcode.com free polls

I've thought about this before, but how cool would it be to see a modern day version of Super Baseball 2020 using today's players from Major League Baseball? How awesome would it be to see the guys wearing cybernetic suits and jet packs? Justin Verlander could hurl the ball upwards to 300 miles per hour, Jose Bautista would launch the ball into the stratosphere, and Yadier Molina would be a fielding abomination behind the plate. Would Albert Pujols still be "The Machine" or would the robot? I'll keep dreaming.

Thanks for your participation and walking down memory lane with me.

Pittsburgh Pirates Offseason Outlook

I provided a followup piece to the Pittsburgh Pirates Report Card for Mr. Bill Ivie on Baseball Digest. It was actually published on December 1st, so it is lacking the latest information regarding their acquisitions of Erik Bedard, Nick Evans, details on the Rule V draft, etc.

http://www.baseballdigest.com/2011/12/01/bd-off-season-outlook-pittsburgh-pirates

The website was removed. The article can now be found here: Pirates 2012 Offseason Outlook

I apologize for the delay, but you can believe it's been a crazy week with the winter meetings and all.

Please go check it out if you've not already. Thanks for reading!

Pirates Report Card, etc

I have not posted anything recently, but rest assured I did not stop writing. I simply took a small vacation to visit family and friends in Pennsylvania.

Mr. Bill Ivie allowed me to volunteer my work regarding the Pittsburgh Pirates and it was recently published. Please check it out:

http://www.baseballdigest.com/2011/11/24/bd-report-card-pittsburgh-pirates

The website was removed. The article can now be found here: Pirates 2011 Report Card

In more recent news, the St. Louis Cardinals still have not made any public progress with Albert Pujols, while the Pirates signed veteran shortstop, Clint Barmes, and offered Derrek Lee arbitration.

Typing on an iPod is not too fun, so don't expect another post until after my return to St. Louis next week.

Happy Thanksgiving.

AATH_Baseball on Twitter

I did something today I told myself I would never do...

Analysis around the Horn is now on Twitter.

http://www.twitter.com/AATH_Baseball

The link can also be found in the Twitter tab below the logo.

All are welcome to join and encouraged to share with your friends.

MLBTR Free Agent Prediction Contest

I invite anyone who participated in MLB Trade Rumors Free Agent Prediciton Contest to share their predictions. All choices are now locked, so I wanted to share mine with the world.

My MLBTR Free Agent Predictions

I came close when I tried to predict the outcome of the World Series and guess what team would win each game, but it was only a 1 in 70 chance, so I'm not expecting much from this contest. Why? If you weigh all the possibilities equally, then there are 1,600 options or a 0.0625% chance of choosing all 50 selections correctly. Granted, it is highly unlikely a player like Albert Pujols will sign with the Pirates, Prince Fielder will retire, or Jose Reyes will go to Japan.

AATH Now on Facebook

Analysis around the Horn is now on Facebook.

http://www.facebook.com/analysisaroundthehorn

The link can also be found in the Facebook tab below the logo.

All are welcome to join and encouraged to share with your friends.