Baseball sim · Built with AI · 2026

The Hot Seat

Every call is yours. So is the blame.

Put the 1927 Yankees against the 1986 Mets. Combs leads off against Gooden at Shea, with Ruth and Gehrig right behind him. You're managing the Mets. Skip, your bench coach, wants to know if you're pitching around them.

The Hot Seat is a baseball simulation that runs in a browser. I built all of it, with AI writing the code and me making the calls.

Every season since 1871

Every major-league season from 1871 through 2025 is in it, built from the Lahman database, Retrosheet and Seamheads ballpark factors. The Negro Leagues are in it as major leagues, with the 1935 Pittsburgh Crawfords and the Colored and Negro World Series. Shea in 1986 cuts doubles 9% and triples 14%, and the sim knows it.

The Hot Seat in-game screen: 1927 Yankees at the 1986 Mets, Earle Combs batting against Dwight Gooden — Top of the first. Combs at the plate, Gooden on the mound.

You make the decisions

Set the lineup and the rotation. Send the runner or hold him. Bunt, bring the infield in, shift, go to the pen. Pick a bench coach: Pops, who'll tell you to let your starter finish it, the Professor with the numbers before you ask, Skip somewhere in between, or nobody at all.

Play one game, a series, a 162-game season as the 1986 Mets, or simulate a thousand games and see who wins the argument.

The Hot Seat setup screen with mode, team and bench coach choices — Pick the mode, the team and who sits next to you.

Why I built it

I wanted to know how far one creative director could get building software with AI. Pretty far. It doesn't want an account, a subscription or your email.

The game will play itself if you let it. The decisions are the part it won't make for you.

Play ball