VirtuaLL BasebaLL: an announcement

Hello and happy offseason!

Now that the 2022 season is over and done with, we’re all forced to sit around and wait for spring training yet again. No more game threads, no more charts, no more recaps. What are we to do with ourselves?

Well, bask in the sight of virtual baseball, of course. In the world of fake baseball, there are no offseasons, no breaks. And, most inviting, the potential for absurdity that cannot be matched in the real world. Which is why I’m excited to announce a new series!

For the duration of the offseason, Lookout Landing is going to be running and rerunning the 2022 season. Can we get the Mariners to the World Series? Can we get them to win?

Unlikely, because we won’t be running the season normally. We’re going to do some absurd things with the Mariners.

Do you want to see a team made entirely of Big Dumpers? How about the 1995 team in 2022? Or the Jerry Dipoto special (a team of entirely utility infielders).

Probably not! At least in real life. But in the video game world anything is possible.

So here’s how it’s gonna work. We’re going to run one of these fake seasons every month until the regular season starts. The game we’ll use is MLB The Show. Three nights a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday, I’m going to livestream the fake seasons over at twitch.tv/DJBaseball. These streams will be your game threads and charts. We’ll hang out, watch some silly fake baseball, and root for the Mariners like we always do.

And every Sunday I’ll write up a recap here for the site, going over the best and worst moments of the week’s games.

And the best part, is that you lovely readers will get to choose how we’ll torture the virtual Mariners every season. Choose carefully, or choose maliciously, it’s up to you.

Here’s the options for the first sim, and don’t hesitate to offer more for next month.

Whichever topic wins will be the first one we play, and we’ll be starting this Saturday at 7 pm PT!

Also, in addition to offering your input for ways to monster mash the fake Mariners, please suggest titles for this series!

Best of luck, and I can’t wait to see you at the games.