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While some teams are content with being competitive and possibly making the playoffs, winning the World Series is the ultimate goal. Trying to build a championship-caliber team can be stressful, but in MLB The Show 23, the Franchise mode caters to your desire to operate a major league team.
Baseball fans love to gush about their knowledge and how they would better build a team than current general managers. Well, Franchise mode gives you several options to successfully run a team. Here are some important tips and tricks you should know before starting a new MLB franchise.
Choose Your Team For Franchise
The first major decision in Franchise mode is selecting a team. By default, contracts for general managers are three years long, and whether or not you’re re-signed will be based on your team’s performance.
MLB The Show 23 allows you to turn off the GM contracts and control a team permanently.
If you're new to Franchise mode or MLB The Show, we recommend choosing a team with low expectations or turning off the GM contracts.
You can access an in-depth view of the team's expectations in the GM Goals menu.
Each team will have different seasonal and contract goals; some might have goals to win the World Series, like the Los Angeles Dodgers, while others might have goals to simply finish over .500, like the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Choose The Best Settings For Franchise Mode
After selecting the team, you’ll have to choose the proper settings for your Franchise experience.
Franchise Mode Settings | |
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Fantasy Draft: |
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Allow Non-Active Free Agents: |
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CPU Roster Control: |
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CPU Trading: |
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Ignore Budgets: |
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Force Trades: |
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Designated Hitter: |
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Extra Inning Runner: |
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Once you’ve finalized the general settings for your franchise, you can select which tasks you’ll be responsible for.
Tasks In Franchise Mode
There are three major task areas to achieve success in Franchise mode: Coaching Tasks, Development Tasks, and Manager Tasks.
Each area has its own level of complexity, but you can adjust these tasks later on if you feel overwhelmed.
Coaching, Development, And Manager Tasks | |
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Coaching Tasks: |
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Development Tasks: |
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Manager Tasks: |
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While you can allow the CPU to handle all of these tasks, you should, at the very least, manually complete Coaching and Development tasks.
These are the main areas that impact the current and future roster.
Players will experience slumps, hot streaks, or injuries throughout the season. Having complete control over batting lineups and pitching rotations will help avoid a catastrophe during these situations.
Not only is it important to take your franchise's future into consideration, but scouting prospects will increase their interest in signing with your team.
This task could be the difference between you having a young, dynamic player or them potentially joining a rival team.
Scouting In Franchise Mode
Scouting can be a bit more difficult, but MLB The Show 23 tries to make it as accessible as possible. Teams will have three scouts, which means you can scout up to three prospects.
There are a total of 14 weeks to scout players before the Amateur Draft.
Scouts can analyze players by specific prospect or position or discover new prospects.
You can utilize the Player Search to quickly look for a specific type of player to acquire through trade or just to scout. This is a helpful tool for improving specific positions on your team.
Each scout has four attributes determining their scouting abilities, allowing you to prioritize scouts to specific positions.
To help determine which positions you should prioritize, you can view the positional needs menu that shows how each position on your team compares to the rest of the league.
Budgeting In Franchise Mode
Manager tasks might seem a bit overwhelming, but they offer even more team control.
Depending if you have Budgets turned on or off will dictate how complex these tasks will be. Hiring coaches, signing players in free agency, or acquiring players via trade will all take finances into account.
If you plan on having the Budgets on, take that into consideration when selecting a team. Teams with more money to spend will make acquiring better talent easier.
Play Ball
Finally, it’s time to play ball. After finalizing your team's settings and duties, you’ll choose to start the franchise in Spring Training or the Regular Season.
The main benefit of starting in Spring Training is perfecting the game mechanics like hitting, fielding, and pitching while also analyzing the team’s depth.
If the Budget is turned on, you can acquire and equip Sponsorships to increase revenue.
These Sponsorships will help increase the amount of money you can use to sign better players to improve your team.
Once Spring Training is over, the Regular Season begins, and the games count for real.
There are five different methods to play a Franchise game. Do your best with the following methods in leading your team toward a championship.
How To Play Franchise Games | |
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Play Full Game: |
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Player Lock: |
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Quick Manage: |
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Manage Full Game: |
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Retro Mode: |
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Throughout the season, you can assign different training assignments to improve players. If you have a pitcher struggling with control on the mound, assign them to a training session with the pitching coach.
Or if a hitter seems like they're routinely coming up short of hitting home runs, they may need to hit the weight room.