Squeeze Play: Baseball Manager

Squeeze Play is a baseball manager career sim that starts on a Single-A bus and ends at retirement. Fill in the lineup card, set the rotation, and keep the front office on your side. Your firing odds are on screen all season, and the odds you see are the odds the game rolls.

■ Ride the farm ladder

Single-A, Double-A, Triple-A, then the big leagues. Or take the career to the pro leagues of Japan, Korea, Taiwan or Latin America: 9 leagues, 90 clubs. Offers follow your reputation.

■ Write the lineup card

22 players. Set the batting order from leadoff to the nine spot, with a DH. Pick a pitching plan: five-man rotation, four-man rotation or an opener. Name a closer and a training focus. It comes filled in: spring training can take 30 seconds.

■ Play your kind of baseball

Small ball, long ball, analytics, run prevention or balanced. An identity that fits the roster's lean adds 5% to team strength; a clash takes 5% away.

■ April to October, then the postseason

144 games over seven months, one tap a month or on auto. A situation can come at the end of any month, and the July trade deadline brings its own calls. Finish top four for a best-of-five first round and a best-of-seven Championship Series; the big-league champions meet in the Grand Series. Every season ends on an awards night.

■ The hot stove

2 moves every offseason: sign a free agent or trade someone away. A signing shows its odds first: signed, beaten to it, or a signing bonus that goes up 25%.

■ The hot seat

Contenders are expected to win the pennant; others, the postseason, .500, or out of the cellar. Miss and front office trust drains. Your firing risk sits on the roster tab with its reasons. Fired, you take the severance and wait for the phone, then pitch a 3-year plan or promise results now at the interview. Nobody manages past 66.

■ Over 120 dugout situations

Bases loaded, nobody out in the seventh, and your ace won't hand over the ball. A no-hitter through eight at 118 pitches. Each choice shows its odds and what moved them: reputation, skills, trust, energy.

■ The shelf

Retirement scores the career on 6 axes of legacy and gives it one of 50 titles. Your 10 best stay on the shelf. Credits earned by playing pay for preparation, the coaching school and the clubhouse; they are never sold.

■ What you pay for

No account, no gacha, nothing for sale moves the odds, and it plays offline. Ads: a bottom banner, an ad every sixth season that the button names first, and one when a career ends; Remove ads clears all three. Optional: a background pack (two more starts, not stronger ones) and a supporter shelf (50 careers, with a badge). 11 languages.

Looking for a baseball GM game? SqueezePlay is one career, told from the manager's chair.

All leagues, clubs, players and managers are fictional.