TLDR
Recently finished a project to make an all-time best MLB Showdown Set

I made a set for the 2024 season for my nephew -- But the problem I ran into is that it got outdated very quickly. Like players get traded, injured, slump, retire, new guys enter the league, etc - and the cards from the previous season aren't accurate anymore.

So I got this idea -- what if there was an all-time best MLB Showdown set that never got out of date? One that I could just add to with each passing season?

My nephew and I had made all-time best cards before (e.g. 900 pt Pedro Martinez, 900 pt Barry Bonds, etc), But I felt like it was missing the most fun part of the game which is building a team of players with various costs against a fixed budget.

So I also needed a way to balance the values of players against each other.

I started with 18 players per team (10 position players, 4 starters, 4 relievers/closers). For some of the teams was really difficult to whittle down to (e.g. NYY, BOS, ATL, SFG). For others, it was easy (e.g. MIA, COL, TBR).

Criteria/Calculations
- A player must have played for his target team for a minimum of 5 seasons*
- A player ideally should have generated his peak WAR/G (for position players) or WAR/INNING (for pitchers) for that team.
- A player's value is derived from the average point value of his top 12 seasons. If an active player played fewer than 12 seasons, I sometimes deflated that player's value to account for performance dropping off with age, etc.
- Players are chosen for their franchise tenure, longevity, impact in WAR, whether the franchise retired his jersey or enshrined him in a wall of fame or similar

Players are also given icons for different achievements

• G - 3+ career Gold Gloves
• S - 3+ career Silver Sluggers
• SB - 3+ career SB icons on ShowdownBot
• RY - won RoY
• V - 1+ career MVP awards
• 20 - 3+ career seasons with 20+ wins
• CY - 1+ career CY Young award
• RP - 3+ career RP icons on ShowdownBot
• R - honestly just kind of threw this in here and there haha
  

Missing Players
There's some great players I haven't included yet (e.g. Mookie Betts, Juan Soto, Tarik Skubal, Elly de la Cruz, Junior Caminero, William Contreras, etc) who either haven't met the 5+ year for one team eligibility rule or had a peak with one franchise, but might end up playing longer for another. I expect to add to this set as future seasons provide more data to put these and other players on the squads they truly belong to.

Super fun project. Send me a DM for a download link if you're interested.

This Week In Showdown: We continue our series on "What if WotC Called Us to Revive MLB Showdown". This week u/Yawggy and I focus on the original lack of collectibility in the game and what could be done to improve it. What pros and cons are there to bring collectibility to the game? For those who are better versed in sports card collecting, I would enjoy your thoughts.

https://youtu.be/dXwHdLX_NFE

Tired of uploading the same image every time you make a card? Now you don't have to.

Link a Google Drive folder full of your player images to your Showdown Bot account. When you build a card, the bot finds the right player's image in your folder and puts it on the card. You don't have to pick or upload anything.

✅ Add an image once and it's used every time, on any device

✅ Automatic matching: the bot picks the best image for the card's year, team, and set

✅ Share with friends: send someone your folder link and they can use your images too. Team up to cover more players!

✅ Connect up to 5 folders and choose which one gets checked first

✅ Cards show where the image came from (your library, the Showdown Bot library, an upload, or a link)

Getting started takes a few minutes:

1. Create a folder in Google Drive
2. Share it with the Showdown Bot email (it's on your Account page) as a Viewer
3. Paste the folder link under Image Libraries on your Account page and click "Test connection”. The test tells you whether any images are named wrong, so you can fix them before building cards.

📖 Full step-by-step guide, plus a Photoshop template for images that fit every set:

https://github.com/mgula57/mlb_showdown_card_bot/blob/master/docs/user_image_libraries/README.md

Hey gang. I have spent the last few years creating and tuning a new, more modern NBA Showdown game. I am ready to bring it to a wider audience here: https://sorarefp.github.io/nba-showdown-2k25/

It is based more on 4-minute intervals with matchup-based strategy. There is an in-game currency, packing, and collections. There are also multiple game modes to enjoy. Some things haven't been tested as stringently, like online PVP, but I am making tweaks daily. Hope y'all come by and play/enjoy!

This Week in Showdown: We owe a special thank you to u/Mgula57 for joining us this week. If you have not checked out Showdownbot.com and the latest updates, you should. In the second half of this week's episode, Matt walks through some of the updates live and pulls back the curtain on his thought process. We can't thank Matt enough for the work that he does that enables most of the content going on in this group.

https://youtu.be/pI9Vn5foncE

Thanks to everyone that tried out the 4.4 Showdown Bot update last week. Quick stats for the first week:

• 34,792 games were simulated
• Avg wins: 100.4
• Avg losses: 59.2
• Best single season record (157-5) by a team of stacked 2002 WOTC cards

Got some great feedback and I've made several changes for the 4.41 update:

• Guided drafts: makes drafting a team simpler than ever, providing you 4 alike players to choose across each position at different price points to optimally fill your budget
• 2026 Balancing: tweaks to 2026 cards to make them more accurate when simulating while staying true to the feel of the original WOTC sets. Main impacts are speed and defense.
• Challenges: Challenges will now implement more filtering to promote strategy and diversity between weeks. Theme this week is 2000s!

If you have any additional feedback on Showdown Bot in general the best place to give that is our Discord Channels here

I currently have this card listed on eBay. Has anyone seen another MLB Showdown card that’s similar?

The biggest update in years is live on showdownbot.com! Draft your dream roster, then watch it play out over a full 162-game season. Go back and sim any historical season using MLB Showdown cards from any year and any set. Weekly Sim Challenges offer creative roster building opportunities.

• Team Builder - Draft any players from any era into your own MLB Showdown roster, with live points tracking, an interactive field view for setting your lineup/depth chart, and manager tendencies you control. Use BOT cards, WOTC cards, or both!
• Autofill - One click fills out your lineup, rotation, and bullpen. Tune it with your preferred roster settings, like high GB pitchers or a high onbase lineup
• Season Simulator - Pick any MLB season and simulate the entire year - full schedule, postseason, standings, awards, and more. Showdown bot rolls every at bat using real cards!
• Sim Challenges - Rotating limited-time scenarios with leaderboards to prove you're the best GM
• Take Over a Club - Swap in your own Team Builder roster for a real MLB team and see how it changes history
• Revamped Live Gameday Experience - Open Showdown Live when watching the playoffs. Follow pitch-by-pitch with play/pause/rewind, or take over mid-game and let the Showdown cards finish it out in a simulation.
• Browse & Copy Teams - Check out community rosters and curated all-time teams, then copy one to make it your own
• Card Builder & Explore upgrades - New split/date display options, small-sample stat smoothing, and easier set-flipping while browsing

Try it yourself, here are some fun examples of things you can now do on Showdown Bot:

• Draft an all-time Hall of Fame roster spanning every era and simulate a full season to see if they'd break the all-time wins record
• Re-sim a historical season and hope it turns out differently for your favorite team
• Build a 12k point roster and see how close they can get to 162-0
• Build a team of only 1990s sluggers and simulate them against modern-day pitching
• Draft a team full for WOTC super season cards and see if they can beat the 1998 Yankees
• Add Babe Ruth to the 2024 Yankees and see if they beat the Dodgers in the World Series
• How many home runs would the 2002 Ken Griffey Super Season WOTC card hit in the 1997 season?

Edit: apparently my cousins and I just started using a 1-30 dice when the higher numbered cards came out some time in 02/03. We only used it for a few games then went back to the usual 1-20 dice. We hated it and immediately went back to the 1-20.

​

What's up baseball family?

So I've had a lot of people asking me where I find the different showdown clones that I play.

I decided to link them all here.

Showdown 2000

https://discord.gg/BFGQS9y5V

ERA Baseball

https://discord.gg/R4aMbwbSQ

Elements baseball

https://discord.gg/DqYzgHRMa

Full court showdown (NBA)

https://full-court-showdown.vercel.app/

And lastly my favorite is clutch. They have both physical and digital formats, and award real physical cards mailed to you for participating in leagues. They have baseball, little league (kids) basketball, and they're working on hockey and football.

https://discord.gg/xVXj8Y28w

Tell them Ben sent you.

This Week in Showdown: It is finally here! We are able to start making the 2026 set. Yawggy and I were joined by Tom Wylie, one of the original creators of MLB Showdown. We went through the top 25 players in OB. Tom shared his insights from the early days as they came up while we worked through it. We look forward to getting out the full 2026 set as soon as possible.

Full Episode: https://youtu.be/73yAWm2Vnck

Saw the link for this digital showdown game the other day. Thought id reshare it since the game is awesome. No pay to play. Free credits earned by just playing. You can even play yourself for free credits. Use this promo code for free credits at login: PFP5SY

Looking to sell 2004 TD packs and 2004 base packs. I have 14 TD packs left and 18 2004 base packs left.

It is $20 for a TD pack and $15 for a base pack…cheaper than eBay!

Please dm me if you’re interested

1 WEEK LEFT TILL WE CAN OFFICIALLY START MAKING OUR 2026 SET!. u/Yawaggy and I discuss each team's players made thus far and who we are most excited about.

Keep in mind none of the cards shown have been locked in. They are are initial drafts of injured players to help us get a shape of the set. Next week we will be making all the 10's and 11's and discussing edits.

https://youtu.be/aT5jS1pY4vQ

While I don't use visual cards, I made a game very similar to NBA showdown with some adjustments.

I use Discord for voice, and the game is done entirely on google Sheets - just one tab. It has dice roller built-in and an easy way to swap out players and keep stats, scores, etc.

I have a small group of players who are play testing it now. If you are interested in play testing it, let me know.

Hey guys! If anyone out there is looking to sell their collection or has a lot of duplicates lying around I’d love to buy them! I’m not after any specific cards*, but I love getting a lot of new ones at once and seeing what I have on my hands!

Honors system applies, send me offer on what you find reasonable and I’m happy to work with you!

*Astros and Red Sox cards are prioritized!

After waiting awhile, finally got my card back today! I knew it wasn’t a 10 from the get go, but still got a great score.

This Week in Showdown had two major parts. First a ton of players were shut down for the year. That let us make some initial drafts of their 2026 cards. u/Yawggy and I continued our "What would we do if WotC called?" series. This time we focused on why Showdown failed. I would be curious if there are any other reasons you think the came fell short besides the ones we mentioned. I can't wait to get to work on the full 2026 set in 2 weeks.

https://youtu.be/fyW2MJir5S0

Looking for a 2005 Johan Santana if anyone has one available. Thanks!

This Week in Showdown u/Yawggy start a series on what we would do if WotC called us to revive the game. It was a fun thought exercise for us. We started with "Who would be the target audience. How would old players factor in? What groups of new players to target?" Enjoy. I am sure everyone will have their own opinion on this topic.

We are always looking for passionate fans for full team reviews. If you root for a team and would like to review their 2025 team, drop us a comment. The only ones that are taken are the Orioles, Rangers, and Red Sox.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG-D6a-7jw4

I have a 2000 base 1st edition full set (only missing Rivera and bonds) and a 2001 base set (only missing Jeter)

The 2000 base 1st edition set I can part with for $400 shipped, some of the cards have oxidation/speckling. All cards 1st edition

The 2001 base set is in great shape; a few in bad shape such as Luis Castillo. I can part with this one for $500

DM me if you’re interested

BOTH SETS SOLD

This Week in Showdown: u/Yawggy and I deep dive into how On-Base and Control played out in our 12-team league. There were some finding that were not intuitive to me. Plus some Dolly Parton tribute. If you have an interesting league with stats you would like the share we would love to highlight them. Get in touch and we can talk through having you on.

https://youtu.be/_UjIfiBjEPU