YMMV / MLB: The Show

• Broken Base: The character growth mechanics in Road to the Show have always been contentious, but especially so after The Show 19 changed things into to a Stat Grinding method. Fans of the old system were angry about the lack of flexibility and Fake Longevity that resulted from characters only being able to improve in a few stats (usually ones they're already good at) while fans of the new system were glad that they were actually forced to specialize their character, rather than make a godlike Master of All who excelled at anything they wanted. Fans also disagreed on which system was more "fun" to break and exploit. For the old system, the most efficient way to improve your character was to pick First Baseman as a position because most plays involve one and the points gained from plays could be distributed anywhere. For the new system, the best way to exploit the system is to focus on One Stat to Rule Them All (BB/9 for pitchers and either Speed or Power for position players). Needless to say, both systems have their fans.
• Funny Moments:
  • An Easter Egg that can randomly occur is that the game will display a cutscene as a player picks up a beach ball that happened to go onto the field.
  • This commercial for The Show 12 showing the Chicago Cubs, long the Butt-Monkey of MLB, finally winning the World Series and the entire city of Chicago celebrating... only to cut and reveal it to be an Imagine Spot by a Cubs fan playing the game. That said...
  • Heartwarming in Hindsight: The Cubs actually did finally win the Series in 2016, just four years after that ad was made.
• Growing the Beard: Due to some poor early entries, the MLB series was a commercial and critical also-ran during the first half of the PS2 lifespan. With a switch in developers to Sony San Diego in 2005, the series improved year after year under the new Show moniker, helped by the end of EA Sports's popular MVP Baseball series and sending new fans their way. The true beard-growing game started with MLB 09: The Show, which saw a significant jump in visuals (including an impressive time-of-day progression in each game) and refined gameplay, not to mention a memetic ad campaign (see below), which totaled an end result of an astonishing 90 on Metacritic and virtually snuffing out all possible competition from the likes of 2K Sports after that.
• Memetic Mutation: One of the commercials in the wildly popular Kevin Butler ad campaign for the PS3 involved cover boy Joe Mauer of the Minnesota Twins, in which Butler conceded defeat in an argument with "Well played, Mauer." The phrase caught on among baseball fans as an appreciation for his high-level play, to the point where when Mauer played his final game for the Twins in 2018 after 15 seasons in Minnesota, the ESPN lede for the story was "Well Played, Mauer".
• Misaimed "Realism": The Road to the Show format from 2018 onward is often criticized for adding so much "realism" that it actually made the game less realistic.
  • The Player Archetypes were created to prevent one character from being good at literally everything. Instead, the player only receives the bulk of their training in whatever attributes they choose to focus on; if the character is bad at any stat, they will usually remain bad at it due to lack of training opportunities as well as being unable to simply get better at it by using it in-game. This makes it completely ridiculous that, say, an outfielder gets a slight speed increase for successfully scoring from 2nd Base to Home but gets no increase for running halfway across the outfield to make a catch.
  • Every player is drafted into 15th round, regardless of how well they do in the opening Scout Day and Showcase. This is to align with the fact that the character usually starts about equal or slightly worse in overall stats to other Minor League players and must train hard and perform well in games to reach Major League superstardom. But this also means that NO player, no matter how naturally talented, will be able to hit the ball with the strength of Mike Trout, throw gas like Ichiro or Aroldis Chapman, or run as fast as Byron Buxton. Players slowly getting better at intricate skills like Fielding or Bunting makes sense, but natural gifts like Speed and Power should only require moderate refinement at best.
  • The "Clubhouse" and "Rivalry" system is designed to emulate the camaraderie/rivalry between players on and off the field. However, the benefit to this system is providing "Perks" to your character that, in some cases, gives him literal superpowers (for example, making it impossible for things like popups or groundouts to occur in specific conditions). Furthermore, the system goes out of its way to paint MLB ballplayer behavior in the best possible light; teammates do not argue or even dislike one-another, and rivals always keep their animosity professional. Which, needless to say, is very unlike real baseball.
• Misblamed: Starting on 21, players accused Sony Interactive Entertainment and San Diego Studio of making the game available on Xbox Game Pass, forcing the declining sales and increasing Game Pass subscriptions to the previous installments. Executive Meddling aside by MLB to make it multi-platform since MLB 2K13 as the last multi-platform simulation baseball game (or otherwise Sony's license would be revoked and move to EA Sports or 2K Sports as either of exclusive simulation license), the co-publisher MLB Advanced Media decided to make it available for Xbox players.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Baserunning is almost universally decried as terrible by the player base. The controls are confusing and clunky, especially when it comes to reversing direction. The manual and in-game tutorials do not do a good job of explaining how it works at all, and even if it did, the timing and exact execution is so overly-precise that it's extremely likely for a player to get caught in a rundown while trying to steal a base or return to their original one. Road to the Show is the worst offender, since the controls are limited to only the one character and even more complex.
  • Bunting is either way too strong or way too weak, and the devs have had a difficult time trying to find the right balance. This is because the game tries to base the ball's behavior entirely on physics and the ball-players' behaviors on set animations and prompts. These two mechanics often conflict, resulting in bunted balls traveling way out of range for the defense to make a play or bouncing foul or right into a defender's path. Even worse, players have very little control over the act of bunting itself, often resulting in a ball dead center of the strike zone whiffing on a bunt attempt no matter how the player tries to do it.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: They inexplicably eliminated the Home Run Derby and King of the Diamond minigames beginning with the PS3 version of 07. Hell, the KOTD minigame could easily be another whole game in itself, given the unusual, arcade-style approach to baseball (only a pitcher and catcher, hitting targets gets you points, a timer). It even had totally different menus, making it feel as though it was another game stitched into The Show at the last minute.