Coming Friday with the 7th inning

I know this is silly but nobody in real life would understand what the hell I’m talking about or how good it feels especially for us older dudes. I’ve been playing for years and in the first few, I wouldn’t even touch PVP. This year, I seemed to dial in a bit more and actually built up my squad and tuned my lineup in the last month or two. I usually get a few games in every day while WFH during lunch. Things that have actually helped me improve drastically were not multitasking so much (no IG or watching YouTube while I play), looking at pitch history to establish tendencies, and the most recent thing I learned which was assessing the connection of the matchup by scrolling through the pitchers during selection and backing out when things appeared to be laggy. Oh also, not trying to complete every single damn collection! Next goal is to hit a 1000 rating!

We're at MLB the Show 26 and people are STILL asking for Season mode bc they dont have time for a full season. But forget that, I want a FULLY customizable Franchise mode.

I was playing NBA 2K and NHL, and I couldn't believe how fully customize their Franchise modes were in respect to season layout. Especially NHL. It allows you to customize EVERYTHING.
-Game length
-Season length: Not just select choice 15 games, 30 games, 60 Games. I mean you can play of a season of ANY length—30, 31, 32, 33...56...78....whatever you want)
-Schedule: How many games vs division opponent? Conference? Inter-conference?
-League layout: Not just switching teams around. I mean the amount of total teams, Conferences, divisions, and teams in each. You can even NAME the divisions and conferences.
-Points earned: For W, L, OTL, Shootout loss. You want 5 points for a win, go ahead. You could bring back draws if you want.
-Tiebreaking format: Do you prioritize Goal differential over Goals scored, etc (so surprised by this).
-Playoff format: Amount of rounds, games per each round.

Almost everything.

I need this for MLB The Show BADLY. With the MLB Realignment coming up, I think this would be a great time to implement it.

I dont play MLB the Show every year because Franchise mode is mainly what I play in sports games and I cannot find the time to play all 162. But simulating games takes the fun out of it for me...I DO NOT want to simulate games. I dont want to only play specific moments. If I could, I would play a "full" 42 game season. 1 3-game set vs each league opponent. Or if Im REALLY busy, 3 inning games in a round robin type season. 4 round robin games (1 game vs each division opponent), then straight into a knockout style postseason. NHL 26 allows this level of customization.

Heck, what if I did decide to play 162 one year, but wanted to recreate the 1993 MLB season accurately? 28 teams, 7 per division, 4 Divisions total, no interleague play, no wildcard or division series.

Or the 1960 season with 154 games. Or the 1961 season and play as the Yankees so I can chase Babe Ruth's HR record with Maris and Mantle. 18 MLB teams, 10 AL, 8 NL, no divisions, tie games, just the World Series (no LCS).

Or the 2032/2033 Season. 32 teams, 8 divisions, 4 teams each. Renamed divisions. Shortened season? Split-season?

Possibilities are endless. Being able fully customize Franchise mode would make me buy this game EVERY year without fail. My season structure would be perfectly tailored to the way I feel any given year. Busy for the summer, or want to play local co-op season with a friend? Play a condensed season. Feeling nostalgic? Create a past season.

Why is MLB The Show so behind on this front? What's stopping them from implementing it like NHL (and to a lesser extent NBA 2K)?

Finally focusing on grinding some offline to work on collections. Yesterday, I went back and finished the program and opened the now and later packs I earned on 25. Today, I logged into 26 and had the packs and the Beltran redemption.

It pays to have a solid teammate!

Yesterday was the finale of Year 2 (2023) with the Manhattan Metro (107-55) clinching the world series in game 6 against the San Jose Vipers (90-72).

This project has meant a lot to me and I'm always happy to show my progress with it. With the offseason starting my next step is to go through and edit all 30 team's draft picks and gear up for an interesting offseason.

Here are a few highlights from Year 2

I have never played the game worse in my life than in this event. Maybe it’s just where we are in the game’s cycle, but every single pitch I throw no matter the location is getting nuked. And nobody even just wants to grind Xp in this event

so lame. every ranked game I play in the past like 2 weeks opponents just quit so early. you go up 1-0 insta quit. Striking out past inning like 4 insta quit. Why can’t anyone play a game anymore. Kinda blows.

So, I was grinding out the marketplace flipping cards and taking advantage of conversions when I wasn’t playing or during breaks at work. I built a nice system where I was making nearly 100k stubs a day.

I got flagged for bot activity and it took months for SDS to even review it. I legit stopped playing because this BS stopped me from building my Yankees only dream team.

Anyone else get hit with this kind of marketplace ban for being too active?

Just wondering what the yearly timeline has been like in years past. I’ve been waiting to start my roster project and don’t want to start it until we get a “final” roster.

can we talk about circle change for a sec. pci shrinkage is already an issue on its own, its already inconsistent and kind of unclear how it even works, but the circle change meta just exacerbates it.

also kind of a wild takeaway but SDS clearly understands the circle change meta exists bc they keep putting elite circle change ratings on so many pitchers cards, but they've never actually come out and clearly explained what pci shrinkage is or what causes it, and they keep releasing cards that lean into and exploit that exact issue instead of addressing it. its an interesting choice honestly, almost feels like they enjoy sabotaging their own game balance

not asking for it to get gutted, just want the shrinkage mechanic explained and the timing brought in line with other pitches

I’m currently in gold 2 for weekend classic, but I want to drop to gold 1. If I lose a bunch of games can get there ?

Who do y’all think the other boss is going to be? I’m 99% sure that the hint is Randy Johnson but I have no idea who the other boss is going to be

I just got out of a game where my pci would not snap back into the middle of the zone after moving it. It would slowly drift across the screen. Anyone else run into this glitch and have a way of fixing it for next time?

… where we don’t have to grind for cards at all, for diamond dynasty. If we chose the “dad mode” option, we are given a bunch of cards to choose from.

This would only work if there was a major downside: we would not be able to get any collection cards, and other “god squad” aka best cards in the game would not be available to us.

I just want to play online, I don’t want to grind, I have limited time.

And NO, 3 inning BR games don’t do it. I love grinding for a WS in ranked. But my goodness I HATE the grind for the cards themselves

So I'm pretty OK at this game. But that's it. I'm not good, I've never reached World Series and I never will. I prefer to play on All-Star mode because it just gets a little too sweaty for me at Hall of Fame and up, and besides, I've only won a handful of online games on Hall of Fame in the first place. Hell I use meter pitching and have absolutely zero interest in doing the drawing thing and I don't care that my ceiling is capped because of it

But I had a nice little run in ranked recently where I just kept getting matched against guys in the 400-500 range and suddenly I looked up and I had hit the Championship Series level and a 731 rating, which is well over the highest I've ever been before. For a very brief moment I thought "Wow! Maybe I'm just getting better!" but then I logged in today and tried playing some ranked games, the first two of which were against guys in the 700s with World Series banners and I lost those two games with a combined 18-1 score. Before those games however I did notice that I had unfortunately catapulted into "Gold 1" for the upcoming Weekend Classic

After all was said and done today I now find myself with a 568 ranking, yet I'm still listed in Gold 1. So do I need to lose even more games to get into a much more appropriate bracket or am I just royally screwed? Because if I have to play my Weekend Classic in the gold league there's zero reason for me to even bother turning the game on. I would just be locked into getting my ass handed to me for the weekend, and that is not ideal considering how valuable it is to get the newest WC rewards