Sim league baseball refers to data-driven simulation baseball leagues that allow players to work both as the owner, general manager and field manager. It goes beyond most fantasy leagues by simulating the outcomes between two teams and allowing players to actively manage a team throughout the season.

The best feature of sim league baseball? Its accuracy. Using advanced algorithms, the best sim games can take the lineups of two opposing teams and can consider issues such as pitcher vs. batter, situational hitting, park effects, and even weather conditions. That results in a game that is as close to reality as you can get.

Types of Sim Leagues

There are a wide variety of leagues for baseball fans to pick from, most of which are offered online through games such as Diamond Mind Online. The games have come a long way since the invention of fantasy baseball.

The following offers an overview of the main types of sim baseball leagues you can enter.

Current Season

Like most fantasy leagues, you can enter a sim baseball league that drafts players from the current season and uses all the information from the current ballparks. As a bonus, it’s fun to see how your season turns out compared to the “real” baseball season.

Single Season

Some companies, such as Imagine Sports, offer you the chance to play a single season from different years in baseball history. You can play single seasons from every decade since the 1940s.

Historical Sim Baseball

You can also choose to enter a league where you can draft from a player pool of more than 4,500 players who have played the game since the early 20th century. You also can choose your ballpark and then get the best players in history for that park (within your salary cap, of course).

Why Play In A Sim Baseball League?

A sim baseball league offers a lot of advantages over a regular fantasy game. The obvious difference is access to players from throughout baseball history. But perhaps the most significant difference is realism.

On the owner/general manager side, you can pick a ballpark and then build your team to perform well in that specific park. You can play in a standard league that gives you a set salary cap for a 25-player roster, or you can enter a custom league that allows for bigger salaries and a bigger team. You can also enter leagues with specific trading rules and guidelines around the impact of injuries, among many other factors.

It’s this flexibility and realism that attracts many to sim league baseball. While it’s still considered part of fantasy baseball, it goes far beyond what most fantasy leagues do.

Field Management

Once the team is built, players then switch hats and become field managers. They can set the lineups every day depending on where the game is played and the opponent. The software takes care of the rest, simulating the game and keeping stats for the league year.

Games offer a variety of ways to simulate games. In the case of Diamond Mind Online, the games are simulated three times a day, six days a week. This means it takes about nine weeks to complete a 162-game season.

No matter what version of the game you play, a sim baseball league offers unprecedented realism for baseball fans. For those who want to pick their era, players, ballpark and manage the team for every series, there’s nothing else that comes close.