Our “sim the games ahead of time” series for the 2015 Major League Baseball playoffs continues with the second Wild Card game. See our post about the Yankees-Astros game to learn how we set it up, including the new “game importance” feature that will be added to the Simulation Module in OOTP 17. (We’re using a special build of OOTP 16 for this purpose.)

The National League Wild Card play-in game features the Pittsburgh Pirates, who have been no stranger to the playoffs in recent years, hosting the Chicago Cubs, who this year reaped the benefits of one of the strongest minor league systems in Major League Baseball. While Pittsburgh lost in the Wild Card round last year, Chicago last saw the postseason in 2008.

Even though Pittsburgh finished one game ahead of Chicago in the standings and won home field advantage for the play-in game, OOTP is predicting Chicago will win this game, thanks to a solid pitching performance by starter Jake Arrieta and a bullpen that has shown it can close the door, especially when closer Hector Rondon needs to nail down the save.

Chicago won four of the five sims, with an average score of 4.2 – 3.4, so expect this to be a low-scoring contest. Click a sim number to see more information about the game.