Name: Baseball Mogul 2009
Genre: Sports Management Simulation
Platform: PC

If you’ve ever played fantasy baseball, odds are you find enjoyment in putting together a handpicked team of MLB’s finest in an effort to prove to complete strangers online that you would make one savvy general manager. The only problem with fantasy baseball is that it only lasts as long as the real MLB season. So what are you to do from November to April? How about trying your hand at a full-on baseball management simulator like Baseball Mogul 2009?


When starting up a game of Baseball Mogul, you have the option of taking on a current team, any number of classic teams (pending you don’t mind playing in that era), or jumping in to run an expansion team the year they were created. Think you’ve got what it takes to turn the first-year 1993 Rockies into a winner? Here’s your chance to prove it. There is an option to run a fantasy league, but for the life of me, I could not figure out how to get real players into the draft. It’s not really that big a deal considering there are plenty of other gameplay options, but it would have been nice to try. Once you start your season up, you’ll be taken to the season calendar, which starts you off right before the first game of the 2008 season. From here, it’s up to you how the future of your team plays out.

Thankfully, Baseball Mogul has real Major League players, so you don’t have to worry about not having your favorite player in the game. The game even tracks a healthy amount of minor leaguers. From your line-up screen, you’re able to track the premiere prospects at each level. Showing you your top players from Single-A all the way up to AAA on the same screen makes tracking their progress a lot easier. Though, there are some strange roster limitations the game places on you. Whenever I play a baseball simulation, be it a game like this or MLB:The Show, I prefer to carry more pitchers than bench players. Baseball Mogul has a set amount of bullpen and bench players you have to carry. If there was a way to adjust that preference, I couldn’t find it. Again, this isn’t something that ruins the game, but does detract a bit from making me feel like I’m in control of the roster decisions. Setting your line-up and pitching rotation, as well as calling up and sending down players to and from the minors, is super easy, thanks largely to the simple interface in the game.

Playing a game in Baseball Mogul 2009 consists of pressing one button over and over again. If you’ve ever played a baseball management sim, this method of play is nothing new. Those looking forward to playing the game with their handcrafted team may be a bit disappointed. With a game like this, I’m more concerned with putting together a great team than I am with watching them play, so I tend to just simulate all the games on a week-to-week basis. Should you choose to simulate instead of play games, Baseball Mogul does notify you that your team is in a close game, and will ask if you want to manage the game to its conclusion. Once in a game, the typical management options you would expect in any baseball game are present. You can adjust defensive positioning, tell batters what to do at the plate, send signals in to your pitcher, and make substitutions. The in-game screen looks more like an ESPN Gamecast than it does a video game, and those looking for some kind of well thought out visual presentation may be let down. While modern day teams simulate realistic results, I did run into some strange statistical anomalies when I played as a classic team. The gameplay engine is clearly made to give the most realistic results with current conditions, and when asked to track teams during the 50s and 60s, notoriously defensive eras in baseball, the game is unable to cope. Scoring 10 or more runs in the Dead Ball Era was much more rare than this game would have you believe.

Free agency, contract negotiations, and trading are fairly simple and intuitive. Speaking with faux agents trying to come together on a deal adds some flavor to what could have been a horribly boring process. The same can be said about trying to trade with another team. You can actually talk to the other GM in order to work out the specifics of a deal. Obviously you aren’t actually talking to the computer personality (you’re just pushing buttons), but having the game interact with you even on this base level is nice. Conversely, some of the deals the computer tries to swindle you with are absurd. It can get frustrating when the AI GM keeps asking for five or more players for just one player from their team. When trading for a marquee player, that’s fine, but when I’m going after Joe Blanton, I don’t expect to have to give up an unbalanced amount of players to get him. Teams would occasionally let a franchise player (like Ryan Howard) hit free agency instead of resigning him. Some people may balk at the AI allowing something like that to happen, but too often in today’s MLB something like that can happen. That’s fine with me since it gives me a chance to add another piece to the puzzle.

Even though it’s not without its flaws, Baseball Mogul 2009 serves as a pretty decent introductory management sim. Fans of the game looking to try a game in this genre out would be pleasantly surprised at the ease and accessibility Baseball Mogul provides. Those of you turned off by MLB Front Office Manager should try this game out to see what a proper management sim is like. I still find a game like Out of the Park provides a bit more depth than this game, but for the price ($20), you sure do get every penny out of Baseball Mogul.

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