MLB The Show 25: State of Play One Week Later

I’m back on my knees begging y’all to take the new survey we posted last week. This one is more about sports cards, your reading habits, and fantasy sports. Again, it’s always in an effort to better serve you all in the long run and curate experiences you might care about.

Writing about my first impressions during the late-night hours last week was a good time, and I think a lot of what I wrote has mostly held up as I’ve put more hours into MLB The Show 25 this week. I still haven’t poked much at Road to the Show, but otherwise I’ve dabbled in most of what the game has to offer.

The idea this week is to highlight what’s going on within the community so far and point you towards things you might care about participating in with the rest of the community. I’ll also be highlighting positives and negatives that are permeating through the forums.

Sharing Is Caring

First off, I love seeing pictures, videos, and whatever other media the OS community is sharing from their time with the game. While our forums are not exactly modern, and it’s not always easy sharing that stuff, you can do it, and we do have places for your best work.

The Photographic Side of MLB The Show 25 is where you can share your best screenshots from any area of The Show. We have pictures from RttS, franchise mode, play now, and it’s just a good place to show off some of the presentation touches or cool gameplay moments.

My favorite picture so far in the thread comes from OS user Jv160:

We also have an MLB The Show 25 Home Run Videos thread. OS user franch1se hit an absolute TANK into the upper deck of PETCO with Machado that is worth scoping out. There are plenty more to watch at the link, and you should for sure share any worthwhile bombs with other OSers.

Another tried and true topic on the forums is the Little Things thread. We’ve already got 70 posts in there, and laguna_bob has added to the dirt discourse showing off the dust clouds that get kicked up now on slides.

As I’ve said before, I love dirt and grass discourse as it’s OS Unhinged central. There are already a lot more little tidbits in the thread, and I always find the “little things” threads are what help me more than any other to appreciate some of the finer details that are in our sports games.

As SDS likes to say, DEFENSE MATTERS, so we also have a Web Gems thread on OS. I hope this thread gets more action than usual because of how SDS has reworked fielding and also how scaling the wall works. We should have a lot of new animations in this game, and so I want to see them showcased in that thread. OSer Cyrus09 has a nice looking catch at the wall in San Fran, and there’s more at the link.

We’ve got triple-barreled action for franchise mode fans out there. The ‘25 version of Franchise Mode Discussion is already live for those who want to share their stories without creating their own thread in the dynasty forum. We also have the Trade Discussion thread up if you want to ask the committee about your trade proposals and gauge how realistic or absurd there are. And, finally, if you just don’t know who to be, ask the peanut gallery for advice in the Indecisive Franchise Choosers Club. I find myself to be part of that club right now after one week.

And for the Road to the Show fans, we also have a thread where you can talk about your experiences and how the mode feels overall this year. I’ve heard quite a bit of positive feedback about RttS so far, so I’ll definitely be in that thread eventually.

In terms of nuts and bolts stuff that gets at potential issues in the game. We have the Bugs & Glitches thread where you can report and see if an issue you’re having is being shared by others. There is the Uniform Errors thread that has been running for years, and it’s lead by some hardcore folks who try to stay on top of any omissions or problems every season. Finally, there is a Stadium Accuracy/Feedback thread for those hardcore enough to know what’s missing from their home park or favorite stadium.

There is also a general Q&A where you can ask questions about the game and the community will potentially have answers for you.

Community Projects To Watch

It’s early days so a lot of sliders, rosters, and so on won’t be cooking quite yet. However, OS user Baseballking888 is already back and has updated the MLB The Show 25 List of Generic Stances and Motions.

Most of the list is already filled out (a lot of the work gets duplicated year to year), but this is a great resource for those making rosters or looking for specific animations for their own players for RttS and beyond.

If you’re looking for sliders, I don’t think anyone is going to have an ideal set as of yet, but OS user Rmiok222 is out with a couple updates to a Hall of Fame set (with directional hitting). OS user bryanm1982 also goes deep in the weeds with his sliders, and he’s got a good breakdown in the S & B MLB 2025 Simulation Sliders thread.

For me, I think I’m going to go with Legend pitching since I want more walks for my own pitchers, but I’m still not settled on where I want to go with hitting for now.

With rosters, it’s asking way too much to expect something completely done as of yet (until we return to the magical days of rosters that carry over from year to year). However, Cycloniac has an official thread up for the TrueSim Roster Project. We’ll keep an eye on updates for that, and we’ll certainly get more rosters once the end of Spring Training hits and SDS puts out their official roster. At that point, we can better gauge how minor league teams should look, and that will be the road towards tip-top rosters. In the meantime, there are still threads like the one from Cyrus09 that are useful for figuring out who is missing from the rosters and possible comps for them.

Stock Up, Stock Down

Stock Down: No-Doubt Cam And Home Run Distance Marker

There are multiple different cuts for no-doubt homers, but as I showed off last week, this one has a low approval rating overall within the OS community:

I wonder if it’s too much work or just gets cut each cycle, but there was a time when The Show had the equivalent of “always staying on the field” as a broadcast package option. While I like a lot of the presentation work and the “liberties” the developers have made with some of the replays and ways they make the presentation pop, not cutting away on homers, or in between pitches, or between batters is something some folks do genuinely want.

That said, Sounds of the Show helped to fill in a lot of that dead air in the past, which obviously wouldn’t be there anymore and was part of the appeal of never cutting away from the field in older games. Still, I don’t think people would be against presentation moments like the one I posted if we simply had the option to change the “style” of presentation to fit what we’re looking for each game.

All that said, I really love both the ump and pitcher replay cams of them watching homers, and I think that’s a cool way to do something that is much harder to do in real life.

Stock Up: Flexibility Within Diamond Dynasty

I’m not going to talk too much about DD, but the consolidation they did in some parts of the mode have made things much more “chill” in terms of how you play. Being forced to play Events, or Battle Royale, or other online stuff to get certain cards meant some folks wandered into modes for FOMO reasons and were miserable. Now, you can just go into those modes if you want to play them. Some folks were basically used as target practice in BR because technically grinding out games — even if you got destroyed — still would get you closer to certain cards. Now, you can mostly give up that charade and just play any online mode to do the multiplayer program at your leisure.

This same general philosophy mostly carries over to single-player modes as well. There should be way less concerns about missing out on certain cards because you can now just play at your own pace (beyond the programs that rollover each month/season). You can chart your progress or just talk about DD with OSers in this thread.

Stock Up: Awareness About Pro Yakyu Spirits

There’s a fresh thread on OS now that people can compare the latest from both SDS and Konami. It’s not specifically Show-related, but it’s nice to see people sharing what they think SDS can learn from PYS. I wrote about PYS months back, but it’s still worth at least looking at videos from the game even if you never plan on importing it. There’s a lot of good stuff there, and the more attention it gets the better it will be for trying to get Konami to bring it over to a wider audience here on the other side of the world.

Stock Down: Created Stadiums In All Ways

Look, I mentioned this last week, but on top of there being little to no updates, the Stadium Share is also messed up right now. We’re hopeful for a patch, but basically you can’t reliably download stadiums from ‘24 right now. The servers and all that are still up from ‘24, so it’s not like the stadiums are gone for good, but the transfer process is incredibly messed up for now in ‘25. For realism’s sake, we do at least need these to work if we want to get timely access to some of the created stadiums, including one that will better mimic where the Rays will be playing this season. I’m sure some folks will re-create some of their work, but you can’t expect every top creator to re-create stuff they poured hours into in ‘24.

Until next time y’all. And, as always, thanks for reading.

-Chase