Chicago Cubs News: In the latest OOTP simulation, Dansby Swanson goes down

Do you think you can run the Chicago Cubs in a more productive way than Tom Ricketts, Jed Hoyer, and David Ross? Do you remember when Twitch played Pokemon? If the answer to either of those questions was yes (or even if it wasn’t) this is going to be a fun new weekly edition to Cubbies Crib.

Out of the Park Baseball 24 is a PC game that offers the most realistic simulation baseball experience on the market. That is going to be the medium through which we will control our alternate-universe Chicago Cubs team and lead them to the playoffs and hopefully beyond.

Chicago Cubs (Real World)

Real Team Week Record: 5-1

Real Team Overall Record: 33-38

Real Team Out of First Place: 3.5

Real Team Out of Last Place: 4.5

Chicago Cubs (OOTP World)

OOTP Team Week Record: 5-1

OOTP Team Overall Record: 33-38

OOTP Team Out of First Place: 3.5

OOTP Team Out of Last Place: 4.5

For the second week in a row, the real-life team and the OOTP team had matching records. The difference is that the OOTP did it with Yoan Moncada at third base and Sean Manea in the bullpen because the fans have spoken and we traded Edwin Rios, Tucker Barnhart, and Michael Fulmer last week.

The top of the order got back in line when we made a couple of changes with Seiya Suzuki moving up to second in the lineup and protecting Happ by bringing Cody Bellinger back up and another switch hitter in the five-hole with Yoan Moncada.

Here are all of our game recaps and batting/pitching numbers for the week. You can see that the bats mashed, especially the new addition of Moncada. Beyond that, we seemed to make the right call by starting Amaya for four games and Gomes for two, at least offensively, because Amaya raked as well.

Unfortunately, we did experience our first frustrating injury as Dansby Swanson broke a finger and will be out 6-7 weeks, but we’ve got plenty of options for how to handle that in terms of internal and extremely interesting external options.

The trade offers we received this week for the players we wanted to put on the block were a little less flashy in some instances, but there are two offers on the table to bring back players that brought a World Series to Wrigley. Do we want to live in the past, take advantage of a weak division in the present, or prepare for the future?

This week the questions center primarily around:

Matt Mervis is frustrated with his lack of play time, do we send him down like the real club did or get creative in roster management?
We received some very interesting trade offers, what moves should we consider?
We’re now only three and a half games out of first place. How can we prep for the future while also trying to win the division?
Dansby Swanson is going to be out for a while, what do we do now?
Justin Steele is eligible to return, how do we handle the rotation?

Goals for the season provided by Ricketts:

Don’t suck completely this season (win 73 or more games)
Build a top 6 minor league system (currently: 20th)
Improve Team Chemistry this season (currently: content)
Improve your record in close games this season
Improve your international amateur finds
Reach the playoffs in one of the next three seasons

Here's the link to this week's batch of questions.