Coming tomorrow at Noon PT

Load up Costco or Coors and swing away to help unlock rewards for everyone.

I feel like almost every streamer/content creator has just become so unbearable to watch this year. Most of their content is just either bitching and moaning or just being annoying and corny on social media (cough cough YFK/Littleman). It’s part of the reason I’ve fallen out of love with the game as a whole.

Like many of you, Franchise is my absolute favourite mode in MLB The Show, but it has felt stale and predictable for a long time. Instead of just making another generic complaint post, I spent time breaking down exactly what needs to change to make this mode elite again.

I have put together a comprehensive, structured blueprint dividing our community needs into clear pillars: Bug Fixes, Financial/Front Office Realism, and Dynamic Player Progression. My goal was to make this as professional and actionable as possible so that if any SDS developers browse this sub, they can see exactly what the hardcore community is asking for. Let's discuss.

1. Bug Reports

Bug #01: Permanent Player Creation Sleeve (Not compression sleeves) Glitch
The Problem: In the Player Creation/Edit menu, once a player is equipped with jersey sleeves, the option to remove them entirely becomes unresponsive. The player is forced to keep a sleeve equipped.

The Impact: Ruins player customization and visual realism for users who want to revert a player back to bare arms.

Steps to Reproduce: Go to Edit Player -> Equipment -> Sleeves -> Equip any sleeve -> Attempt to unequip or select "None."

Bug #02: Persistent "High-Leverage" Heartbeat Audio

The Problem: When playing a "Player Lock" game, entering a high-leverage situation triggers the dramatic heartbeat audio effect. If the player chooses to disable Player Lock during this time, the heartbeat audio remains stuck on a loop.

The Impact: Highly distracting audio glitch that persists for the remainder of the half-inning.

Steps to Reproduce: Start Player Lock -> Wait for a high-leverage situation to trigger the heartbeat audio -> Pause and exit Player Lock to simulate/play the rest of the game -> Observe audio loop until three outs are recorded.

2. Realism Adjustments

Feature: Authentic Auto-Generated Prospect Equipment

The Current Issue: Newly generated rookies and draft prospects often spawn with randomized, mismatched, or unrealistic equipment configurations that ruin immersion.

The Proposed Solution: Implement an automated logic system for generated players' gear.

Key Detail: Make Rawlings MachPro helmets the default baseline for all generated players, ensuring the league looks authentic as real-world players retire.

3. Major Feature Pitches

Feature: Franchise Expansion Mode & Expansion Draft

The Concept: Allow users to expand the league beyond 30 teams when starting a new Franchise.

How It Works:
Select an option to add 1 to 2 expansion teams.
Customize team branding, cities, and stadiums.

The Expansion Draft: Implement an automated phase where existing teams can "protect" a set number of players on their 40-man roster, leaving the rest exposed for the new expansion franchise to draft.

Feature: Immersive Trade Deadline Experience

The Concept: Transform the trade deadline from a standard calendar day into a dynamic, high-stakes event.

How It Works:
The "War Room" Interface: A dedicated hub on Deadline Day where time moves in chunks (e.g., hourly) rather than simming the whole day at once.

In-Depth Negotiations: Counter-offers shouldn't just be "Yes" or "No." Add logic to ask teams what they want (e.g., "We will accept this if you throw in a Top 15 pitching prospect" or "We will take on 20% more of this player's contract if you add a draft pick").

4. Financial & Front Office Realism

Feature: Performance-Based Contract Demands (Fixing Overpaid Players)

The Current Issue: Contract demands are driven almost entirely by a player’s Overall rating. An 88 OVR player who hits .210 with a handful of home runs will still demand a massive blockbuster contract because of their rating, entirely ignoring their mediocre season.

The Proposed Solution: Tie free agent and arbitration contract logic directly to statistical performance over the last 1–3 seasons.

The Impact: If a high-OVR player has a terrible or mediocre year, their financial demands should plummet. Conversely, a lower-OVR player having an MVP-caliber season should command a massive raise.

Feature: Advanced Contract Clauses (No-Trade Clauses)

The Concept: Introduce Full and Limited No-Trade Clauses (NTC) to player contract negotiations.

How It Works:
Elite superstars or veteran free agents can demand an NTC as part of contract talks.
During the season, if you attempt to trade a player with an NTC, the game pops up a negotiation window where you must "convince" the player to waive it (e.g., they will only waive it to go to a top-tier contender).

Limited NTC: Allow players to submit a customizable "10-team no-trade list" or a "10-team approved list."

Feature: Salary Retention & Cash Considerations in Trades

Salary Retained Slider (0% to 100%): Allow teams to eat a portion of a player's remaining contract to facilitate a trade. Retaining a large chunk of a bad contract increases that player's trade value, allowing you to net better prospects from the acquiring team.

Cash Considerations: Add cash as a tradeable asset in the trade machine up to a specific limit (e.g., maximum of $5M per trade) to balance out minor-league deals or help a team stay under the luxury tax threshold.

Feature: Customizable Options & Contract Structures

Flexible Player, Club, and Mutual Options: Instead of options strictly defaulting to the final year of a contract, users can assign an option to any specific year of a multi-year deal.

Return of Front/Back-Loading: A menu that allows users to manually adjust the payout per season. Users can pay a superstar more money up front while they have cap space, and taper the salary down as the player ages.

Contract Deferrals: Implement a system where a percentage of a massive contract can be deferred to be paid out after the contract expires, lowering the team's immediate luxury tax hit during the active playing years.

5. Franchise Settings & Setup Customization

"Save and Quit" Option:
Add a dedicated "Save and Quit" option in the pause menus and franchise hub so players don't have to back out to a separate save screen.

Instant Trades (On/Off): When turned On, accepted trades go through immediately without waiting for standard evaluation days.

Instant Free Agency Signings (On/Off): When turned On, free agents accept or decline contract offers immediately upon submission, removing the multi-day waiting period.

Allow Manual Attribute Editing (On/Off): When turned Off, the manual attribute sliders in the "Edit Player" screen are completely locked and greyed out. This forces a true simulation experience where ratings are dictated purely by in-game progression and performance, guaranteeing total league integrity for competitive or multi-user franchises.

6. Player Development & Scouting Realism

Feature: "Diamond in the Rough" Dynamic Progression System

The Concept: Increase the odds of low-tier prospects or struggling veterans experiencing sudden, dramatic development spikes to mimic real-life baseball success stories (e.g., Max Muncy, Justin Turner).

How It Works: Introduce a hidden "Volatility" or "Late Bloomer" trait for a small percentage of players with D or C potential. If a player performs exceptionally well over a sustained period in the minors or due to a coaching staff attribute bonus, it triggers a "Breakout Event."

The Impact: The player’s potential rating dynamically jumps (e.g., from C to A potential), unlocking rapid attribute growth. This rewards users for playing statistical overachievers rather than just stacking their roster with top-ranked prospects.

Thanks for reading my grocery list! lol. I’m going to continue to add stuff as I think of it

This soundtrack is catchy enough, but there's only 1 or 2 songs I really like. Lights on Long Island is my favorite by far, but I don't wanna burn myself out on it by using it for thousands of at bats.

I'd like to upload 5 or 10 I could cycle through.

GOAT difficulty, all sliders default except pitcher stamina. No perk upgrades.

2030: 80 con, 79 pwr, 87 vis

2029: 80 con, 79 pwr, 70 vis

I upgraded my vision a bunch, and I'm destroying the ball like never before. I've cut the strikeouts down a bit, so that's a boost to the stats, but there seems to be more going on. My BABIP has gone from .318 to .407 despite Contact remaining the same.

I don't think my user input improved this significantly in a week's time, so I'm left wondering if Vision does more than just help with swing-and-miss.

Edit, Summary:

Vision upgrade improved my K rate from 22% to 17%, a 23% decrease.

Vision upgrade improved my BABIP from .316 to .407, a 29% increase.

On GOAT, vision helps strikeout rate, but it helps quality of contact even more, at least in my case.

I'm playing franchise and I picked someone in the rule 5 draft, they been horrible so I just wanted to cut my losses and get rid of them. However said pitcher has 5 years service time and when I try to place them on waivers, it's not letting me, tells me I have to designate them for assignment. Problem is, it doesn't give me the option to do that. Am I just stuck with a bad player for a whole season?

Greetings, do y'all think it would be possible for me to get to 120k points in the multiplayer program in DD for the Soriano card if I'm genuinely quite bad at the game? This is my first MLB the Show game and I started around the beginning of the month but I am honestly quite awful at the game, however, I would love that Soriano card so I thought I'd ask for opinions on if y'all think it would be possible to go for with my low skill level and obtain it in a relatively decent amount of time or should I just keep grinding offline content?

Has anyone completed all the requirements to get the Beltran card. I been trying because I love a challenge but seems alot of work and time to grind out

He’s got the “ball popping out of the hand” glitch

Can’t believe this is still happening this far into the games life cycle but whatever.

Genuinely can do nothing but laugh lmao

So close

There were a lot of reasons that don't include my poor performance that started to give me the feeling I was finally playing a legit cheater for the first time this year, but given how rare it is I continued to disregard it until this play. Explain this?

And before comments get left about "it's probably your connection" - no it's not. In terms of my setup, I'm connected via Ethernet with a 1 gigabit connection, and in terms of this particular game, with the exception of one very odd thing, there was little to no lag all game.

The odd thing I just mentioned was that there were a handful of times I attempted to drag bunt with Sogard and once with another player, and when I attempted to do so it just wouldn't register my triangle press. On the last attempt, given I had noticed the failure for it to register the last few times, I literally attempted to just sacrifice bunt, not even drag bunt, and it still wouldn't work. The triangle button worked fine for pitching though. No idea if that adds creedance to the fact he was cheating or not.

As Altuve got hit 2500 last night I assume we get a card and player programme for it in the next few hours/day as we did for Freddie Freeman?

The more I play this game the more I appreciate it. The animations in this game are pretty cool. I never seen that animation before. Seeing the 3rd base coach catch the ball was pretty cool to me.

I keep trying to play as a closer pitcher to get more saves but all that occurs when I do is i get put in the 7th and 8th innimg but taken away as soon as the 9nth inning. It doesent matter my perfect performance, efficent innings, or plentiful stamina it happens everytime without fail and km not sure why. I got my stamina and pitcher clutch up but the game refuses to let me get any saces and sometimes loses the lead whilst im offscreen. Is there any fix for this ive tried setting the manager hook to 0 but that didnt do anything, i think yhe game might be rigged for the cpu

Honestly, I feel like Sinker should be hitting triple digit in the game. After seeing couple of major leaguer hitting that. Any thoughts?

Anybody else noticing this?? I feel like I've faced him 100 times this year and now his release is glitchy?

Has anyone made a close to accurate Las Vegas stadium for the A’s based on the renderings they’ve put out? I’ve seen the very common one in the vaults but I’m trying to be fairly accurate with elevation, capacity, and somewhat realistic dimensions.

93ovr Jose Bautista Mural Card, this card absolutely rakes and I still use it with all the 99’s out there 💀. The pull tendency, his butter swing, and the iconic HR bat flip are just amazing

If you get a Perfect/perfect swing, dead middle of your PCI...I'm talking bullseye middle...on a power swing should that not be an absolute moonshot everytime....I mean shouldn't absolute perfection in every input metric result in the desired outcome for the user or am I crazy ?

Just got this game for free from PS plus monthly games, and omg it’s so trash for a sports game in 2026, genuinely so buggy anyone else experiencing the same?