MLB The Show - General Discussion

[Toe]

In the off-season, I don't really care who I trade with. During the season, I make sure that if I'm dumping players that they are going to contenders, and if I'm getting a rental I'm getting it from a team out of contention. It wouldn't make sense for the D-Backs to give me Robbie Ray if they were winning. And I made sure to give them a solid, young MLB player and a prospect to make the trade work.

[Gabriel]

8 minutes ago, Toe said:

In the off-season, I don't really care who I trade with. During the season, I make sure that if I'm dumping players that they are going to contenders, and if I'm getting a rental I'm getting it from a team out of contention. It wouldn't make sense for the D-Backs to give me Robbie Ray if they were winning. And I made sure to give them a solid, young MLB player and a prospect to make the trade work.

That's usually how I do it too. If I'm acquiring a piece or two for the playoffs, I'll typically try to pull those players from the worst team in either league. If I'm not expecting to make the playoffs and am selling players, I'll usually look to the top of the wild card standings in each league.

[Meacon Keaton]

I avoid the AL East completely. Offseason, in season, it doesn’t matter. I don’t want to give any team I’m going to play almost 20 times a season some extra ammo.

[The Buscher]

Ended up getting this on the cheap.  Downloaded the most recent OSFM, spent five minutes converting every closer in the game to a reliever (the CPU has always been wonky with closers, crappy closers continue to stay employed just because there aren't many of them) and launched into a fantasy draft.  While I don't want to see it happen, I implemented league-wide DH because I figure if the league ever did something as drastic as a fantasy draft in real life, they'd go all out with changing everything.

My closer to reliever conversion though did have unintended consequences, they've never modified draft logic over the years and I forgot that no other team takes a RP until round 9 and then every CPU takes one in a run.  Remembering this I ended up spending my 7th and 8th round picks on Jose Alvarado and Josh Hader - obviously there were higher rated relievers but I wanted the best guys I could get that were making league minimum with a lot of team control left.

My team ends up being freaking incredible, got Yelich and Story with my top two picks.  A lot of really good young talent that can win now, solid pitching, and a handful of older veterans for backup roles.

Starting lineup looks something like:

2B - Dee Gordon
SS - Trevor Story
RF - Christian Yelich
LF - Khris Davis
DH - Max Muncy
CF - George Springer
C - Tucker Barnhart
1B - Jesus Aguilar
3B - Asdrubal Cabrera

Ridiculous that I got such a good young core, still haven't decided on the lineup order but I always like L/R balance.  I'm playing some spring games to decide on the bench but Brian McCann is probably going to be my backup C to give me some thump on Barnhart's off days.  David Freese had a HR off a lefty in the first game I played and has killer ratings against them so he might potentially be a 3B starter against lefties.  Yandy Diaz can play anywhere but at a B potential he may or may not be better suited playing in Syracuse every day until I get an injury.  Speaking of B potential, I got Stephen Piscotty in like the 30th round so he could be an upside guy on my bench or in Syracuse.

Rotation will be headed by Miles Mikolas, Mike Clevinger, Jimmy Nelson, and Chris Archer.  Gio Gonzalez is going to make the team as he can't be optioned, but he's in a race for the #5 spot with Matthew Boyd, Jerad Eickoff, and another guy whose name escapes me.

Bullpen has five locks - Alvarado, Hader, Liam Hendriks, Hector Neris, and Bryan Shaw.  Shaw's the only one I'm not happy with, I drafted like 35 rounds and simmed the rest and the game drafted Shaw for me even later than that.  I mean ratings wise he's a good fifth reliever, but he makes a ton of money.  Gio might be in here, might keep like a 60-something rated player as my #7 guy if I find someone in spring I feel good using.

Very Brewer heavy team, actually.  Not intentional but it worked out that way.  I have none of the Top 50 prospects in baseball so that's a mild concern but with my core players all being young and cost-controlled for a few seasons I think I can manage.

[Mx. Canadian Destroyer]

Really enjoying my second season with a fantasy draft Blue Jays. Trying to win back-to-back World Series. Didn't make a ton of off-season moves. My line-up is good but just a bit defensively lacking. I traded Nick Markakis for Ben Gamel and a relief prospect to provide some more defense depth. That's about all I did, other than trade away folks who would have been bench players making a bit more than I'd like.

I simmed most of the early season and we struggled. The pitching then was the one struggling (rotation is deGrom, Ryu, Kluber and Desclafani). Didn't make a move before the trade deadline but Ryu got injured just after. Traded for Eduardo Rodriguez who's been having a great season. Now basically playing each game and trying to claw back. I'm out of the division race (the Yankees are 13 games ahead) but I am 5 games out of the 2nd wild card. 

[Mx. Canadian Destroyer]

So after being like 10 games back of the division and 6 games back of the 2nd Wildcard, I ended up playing well enough to be a game behind the Yankees for the division and ran ahead of the Rays to become the 1st wild card on the last day of the season. 

I had to face Baltimore, 5th place in the AL East. The Yankees were losing to the Twins, so if I could win, I'd tie them and we'd have a 1 game playoff. We absolutely botched it. Lost 10-4 to the O's. Very excited to get home and play the 1 game playoff against the Rays. 

[The Buscher]

Just had a really weird thing happen where David Price kept throwing over to first to hold Dee Gordon.....except it was a 3-2 count with 2 outs.  Literally not even a situation where I could steal a base.

[Mx. Canadian Destroyer]

I lost the Wildcard game 6-1. 

deGrom gave up four runs in the 1st inning before leaving with an injury. 

[Your Mom]

Is there a thing where I can come into the league as an expansion team and build myself up? That feels like it would be fun

[Meacon Keaton]

Unfortunately they don’t have an expansion feature. That said, taking over Baltimore or Detroit and making them worth a damn is probably a tougher task than starting from scratch as an expansion.

[Mx. Canadian Destroyer]

After my team won the World Series, we sort of competed the next year and then were abysmal the following year, so I sold everybody worth anything. After 1 year of being bad again, we started to look decent again. Started playing a bunch of the games and ended up making the playoffs as the wild card team. Lost. 

The next year, our team looked great. The rookies had improved a bunch. I signed Walker Buehler and traded for Domingo German. I claimed an 'A' prospect of waivers from Washington to go along with my two pitching prospects. On offense, I still had Christian Yelich playing right and Salvador Perez behind the plate and signed Ramon Laureano to man centre, but for the most part, the rest of my team is pre-arb. We played super well all season, only for the Yankees to make a run at the end of the season. Ended up in the damn wild card again, only to get blown out by Cleveland. 

I finally see what Meacon was talking about. I am so sick of winning like 95 games, only to lose in the Wild Card game. 

[lanky316]

With this being free decided to to pick it up and giving it a go. Decided to play a career as a pitcher since that meant only having to focus on one area of the game. I far prefer playing with a meter to the box as I can see it a lot easier and it makes the screen less busy to me. Ready to up difficulty I think as playing on rookie mode I've now been able to go straight from AA league to the majors after being drafted by the Athletics (is that good?) and a couple of shut outs so far. Pretty enjoyable game though for something different from a football or NFL game which is pretty much the only sport titles I've played in recent years.

Edited October 6, 2019 by lanky316

[Your Mom]

EL MAGO BAY BAY!!!

[Gabriel]

I finally started a franchise in MLB 19 with the Pittsburgh Pirates. I'm finding pitching is a little harder this year to really hit your spots. Feels like the meter moves a bit quicker, which is nice, because I pretty much had it down to an art-form in 18.

I really like the in-season contract extensions. In the practice franchise I set up with the Rangers, it really helped me sort out who was moveable at the deadline, and what I might need for the next season. There were a couple of times that I found that an upcoming free agent I wanted to keep was going to require a heavy increase in their salary, which gave me the opportunity to move out money prior to the off-season by unloading guys who still had term, but weren't necessary to my future plans.

I also didn't run into any of the major issues that the game had at launch, which is great. I am happy that they addressed a lot of that over the year.

EDIT: One thing that I would like them to work on in the future though, is finding a way to help distinguish whether guys are ready or not for the majors. It's tough sometimes to want to leave a major leaguer on your roster when their overall is in the 60's or 70's, in comparison to a prospect who is sitting 10 or more points above them. I'm not sure how they can really do that, but something to help ensure that a year three Josh Donaldson at 68 overall is worth more to my major league roster than a 79 overall prospect would be nice. Sometimes you can see it in the stats, where maybe the prospect's fielding or reaction time are just not as good, or their contact isn't quite there... but I've run into a lot of situations where the only reason I keep someone on my roster is because they're not proving to be a liability, and their salary is significantly more than players I have in the minors whose stats are better across the board.

Also, I really... REALLY... want them to include a positional comparison chart or rankings or something. I want to know what the Catchers are hitting in my division as an average without having to do the math myself. I feel like something like that would do wonders in helping players better understand where their roster sits in comparison to their division, league or the whole of MLB. Sometimes I see a player hitting .210 and forget about the other parts of the game, and just assume that they're under-performing... but their WAR stat could be great because of their defensive play or whatever else, or they could still be hitting above the league average for that position, despite their particular average not looking great at first glance.

Edited October 21, 2019 by Gabriel

[Your Mom]

Oh yeah I forgot I switched my franchise from 18 to 19 and haven't had any issues yet. So that's good news  

[The Buscher]

I keep having this damn glitch happen where the CPU will promote/demote players, even at the big league level.  I have all roster management set to manual so it’s quite infuriating.

[Gabriel]

42 minutes ago, Trent Buschetta said:

I keep having this damn glitch happen where the CPU will promote/demote players, even at the big league level.  I have all roster management set to manual so it’s quite infuriating.

I haven't had that in this year's game... but once in MLB 18, I finished the year and was headed into the post-season, and for whatever reason, the CPU kept five or six guys from my expanded roster and sent a bunch of guys down to the minors who had been on my major league team all year. I ended up getting knocked out in the ALDS. Two of the guys they kept were depth options at starting pitcher who were over the hill and had been absolute shit in the minors all year for me.

It's the only time I've come across that happening. Every other year in game, it always just keeps the guys that were on my 25 man roster prior to the expanded rosters in September.

[Meacon Keaton]

1 hour ago, Trent Buschetta said:

I keep having this damn glitch happen where the CPU will promote/demote players, even at the big league level.  I have all roster management set to manual so it’s quite infuriating.

I had that happen a couple years ago. It’s not a glitch. Your setting may have been changed accidentally. Go to where you’d change Mode Options or whatever that screen is called and hit R1 to beginner and then back to whatever setting you play on and confirm the settings are how you want and you should be resolved.

[The Buscher]

6 hours ago, Meacon said:

I had that happen a couple years ago. It’s not a glitch. Your setting may have been changed accidentally. Go to where you’d change Mode Options or whatever that screen is called and hit R1 to beginner and then back to whatever setting you play on and confirm the settings are how you want and you should be resolved.

Oh wow, turns out this was it.  Didn’t realize I had multiple settings.  One of them had damn near everything set to auto, must’ve created it and forgot to remove it.  I’m lucky the CPU didn’t do serious damage to my team.

[JasonM]

So I started a side RTTS with a starting pitcher, Fastball/Slider/Vulcan flamethrower... Using analog pitching, so due to the poor control his aim can either be amazing or literally all over the place and a danger to the local wildlife.

Decided to go four years of college, purely for a roleplaying standpoint of having a decent fallback career if that pitching doesn't end up working out for him... Got drafted by the Orioles every time, so to the Baysox I go (again, because my fielder also got drafted by the O's).

AA is enough enough, throwing lots of heat, lacking a bit stamina but still going 6-deep in most games. Of course the coach decides he wants me relieving, so I throw a hissyfit about it, and they bench me... for one whole game, before they realized they need me and starting me again

They still try to throw me in as a reliever, because Coach is going to coach... And they decided the ultimate punishment for me throwing the hissyfit the other day was to send me up the foodchain...

Straight to the Orioles, where I had to start my first ever big league game pitching against the goddamn Yankees! Somehow managed to do it really well too, possibly because the Yankees got unlucky with a few dingers falling short into the hands of the outfielder.

That was my only start, the rest all as a reliever, and since i'm on the O's that put me into a lot of 'Just chew some innings' situations where there was nothing to play for... Yay. Still didn't stop all the opposing teams from having a wee bit of fun at the expense of a 63 overall full-rookie.

Is it too late to apologize and go back to AA for another season?