Let’s PLLay: Welcome to the Cal Zone

Catcher in the Field

It was a close run race, but the votes are in and the people chose:

The all Beef Boy team! By a margin of two votes! So here’s what we’re going to do.

Starting on Saturday at 7pm PT, we’re going to start simulating the 2022 season using MLB The Show with all of the Mariners replaced by Cal Raleigh. We’ll watch one or two games all the way through to get our baseball fix, and then we’ll use the quick simulate function so that we can make some progress in the season. After that, we’ll keep streaming on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday at 7pm PT.

But we have to ask, which Cal do we use? The franchise mode has Cal with stats in the low 60s, while the online mode has his stats all over the place, with a 105 power. But they also boosted them temporarily when he hit the playoff-clinching homer back in September.

MLB The Show isn’t a hard simulator like OOTP is, and this “experiment” is really for fun, so we’re going to use a slightly massaged version of Online Cal. We’re going to boost his contact, vision, and plate discipline by 3-5 points, just to make the games watchable.

But what about pitching? If all players are Cal, we must have some pitching Cals. Well, when he throws out a baserunner, he throws at 84 mph. We can say that while pitching, the windup gives him some help, so we’ll give Cal an 86 mph 4 seamer. He was also instrumental in implementing Robbie Ray’s sinker, so we’ll give Cal one as well. As for offspeed, I think we’ll give him a screwball, because it’s a weird but cool pitch and Cal is a weird but cool guy.

Photo by Jason Miller/Getty Images

But I can’t overlook that 2 vote margin to see the 1995 team in 2022. So next month, once the Cal sim is over, we’ll run that one! I’m really looking forward to it (even if I suck at making faces in MLB The Show)

So we will see you this weekend over at twitch.tv/DJ_Baseball for the first stream and the 2022a season opener!