Good news, baseball fans: if you enjoy the field and team management side of baseball and want to play through endless seasons managing your franchise to victory, then you’ll be glad to know MLB Manager 2016 ($4.99) is out right now. This is the latest edition in the mobile version of the long-running Out of the Park franchise of baseball simulators on PC. Last year’s edition finally added in the official MLB license for real team names and logos, instead of just having real players as in previous years.
Honestly, not a whole lot has been changed from the interface or feature list from previous years, and I admittedly wouldn’t mind seeing some of the game’s interface streamlined to a certain degree, but it’s a baseball simulation. How much can you really change on a year-to-year basis other than the rosters? And if you don’t care about those, if you have a lot of time invested into historical or fictional leagues in earlier versions of the game, well, they still work. But then again, 2016 opening day rosters…
As a weirdo baseball obsessive, I’m excited to lose large amounts of time to this. I’m the kind of person who subscribes to MLB.tv Premium…while being in the Rangers’ market. I used it to follow them when I live in Chicago but even when I live in Texas I happily subscribe. I’ve gone to the two-stadium doubleheaders in Chicago where you go to a White Sox and Cubs game in the same day, twice. I’m doing it a third time this year, and it’d be my fourth except the time I tried in 2013 got rained out. Though I did attend the longest doubleheader where both games ended in 9 innings in MLB history that year…and I wasn’t a fan of either team. I’m the kind of guy who unleashes a torrent of panicked profanity on Twitter whenever the Rangers are in the playoffs. I have a problem, and this game is sure to only make it worse.