As we attempt to wait patiently for March 28 to finally get here so we can dive into MLB The Show 17 ourselves and see how this year’s game measures up, we’ve been treated to the usual series of developer streams in the meantime to whet our appetite ahead of its release. While it may be impossible to gauge the game’s components without actually holding a controller in our hands and feeling how things actually play, that’s not going to stop us from making some snap judgments based on everything that we’ve seen so far. Here are the three best and worst things we’ve noticed in our initial impressions of the highly anticipated release.

Ball Physics

From everything we’ve seen and heard so far, it looks as if we will have considerably more dynamic and unique balls flying off the bats in The Show this year. With claims that there are literally thousands of types of hits to be found and that we could even play the game for a full year and still be seeing new types of hits that we haven’t witnessed yet, it’s apparent that a lot of work has been done in this department.

That means we will get balls curving down the line instead of the straight path we’ve become accustomed to seeing, and Texas Leaguer bloops that are destined to be exciting when they happen for us and absolutely infuriating when they happen against us. It seems like there might actually even be balls hit down the line that carom awkwardly off the wall and go as the doubles they would realistically be rather than bouncing right to outfielders for long singles as they frustratingly have done in the past.



Humanity AI

There are few moments more maddening in The Show than when your shortstop fields a ball hit by a speedy player and proceeds to take his sweet time getting the ball over to first to throw him out, allowing the batter to reach base safely. Finally, it looks as if those days might be over with the introduction of humanity AI that will see fielders recognize who is running down the line and react with a corresponding amount of alacrity in getting the ball to first base.

On the other hand, the same feature hopes to rectify the perfect lines computer fielders would often take in getting to the ball, as if they were aware ahead of time of the exact spot the ball would end up. This should mean more realistic responses from sub-par fielders that result in fielders sometimes taking poor angles to balls that end up going over their heads or falling in front of them -- where in previous years they would routinely vacuum up every ball they had even just the slightest chance of reaching.

Reliever Fatigue And Playing Out Of Position

It often seems as if making a version of The Show that’s suitable for online play is a constant battle in staying one step ahead of the ploys some people will use in order to win games. One of the most popular moves from those trying to take advantage of the system is bringing in a dominant reliever like Aroldis Chapman or Andrew Miller as early as the 6th or 7th and pitching him for 2 or 3 innings because the consequences of doing so weren’t exactly dire. This year, however, promises to be different as pushing a pitcher beyond his stamina should result in either hitting the batter, throwing a pitch outside the strike zone or a meatball right down the heart of the plate.

Another tactic used by many that value winning over sportsmanship was playing someone outside of a position they typically play because the loss in fielding ability was not as severe as it should have been. But this will be something that can’t be exploited this year, as we have learned the penalty for playing someone out of position will be much worse than it has been in the past. So there should be no more plugging A-Rod in behind the plate as catcher and not suffering the consequences.

Retro Mode

I’m sure there’s an audience out there for Retro Mode, but I’m just not as certain that I am in that group. Likely designed to try and draw new fans to the game that played baseball video games in the past but find jumping into The Show to be a little bit intimidating, it’s hard not to see Retro Mode for exactly what it is -- a step into the past rather than a look ahead to the future. If stripping the game down to its barest essentials in an attempt to conjure some nostalgia hardly seems like a capital crime, you'd be safe in that assumption. Still, I would be more interested in seeing them invest their time in something more unique than this mode that's been tried in other sports games with limited success.

Now it’s entirely possible that I will be eating these words once I’ve given Retro Mode a chance and all those memories of Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball come flooding back, but I’m willing to bet those of us who buy The Show year after year hoping for progression rather than regression will be left scratching our heads wondering why this was even a thing in the first place.

Diamond Dynasty Pitcher Handedness Mystery

Yes, it’s obviously annoying to play against teams in Diamond Dynasty who immediately back out of a game once they find out they are facing a left-handed pitcher, but removing the ability to see whether you are facing a lefty or righty can’t help but come across as a counterproductive way to resolve this issue. Wouldn’t it make more sense to simply punish anyone who abandons a game when they find out they don’t match up well with the opposition with a loss rather than re-work the entire system in such a way that flies in the face of how one prepares for a baseball game?

What this does is remove any possibility of having platoons at any given position that can be deployed depending on who is pitching. Ask any baseball manager out there and they will tell you it’s imperative to know the pitcher you are facing before filling out the lineup card. This will naturally lead to teams stacking their roster with switch hitters and their rotation with lefties when they could just as easily allow us to build two separate lineups to remedy the problem instead. As you can see, there were a few different ways this legitimate issue could have been fixed, but the way they decided to do it just feels too much like they punished the people who were playing the game the right way.

Bunt Cheesing



While it would be nice to believe that The Show has solved its bunt cheesing problem once and for all and eliminated online players exploiting the game by being able to bunt their way on base with far more frequency than they realistically should, the streams simply haven’t done quite enough h to alleviate fears among the community. In one of the first streams that offered a sneak peek at the game, an attempt to show how the game has improved in this department sadly led to unskilled bunter Willson Contreras still being able to bunt for a hit more often than not. The Show team quickly went into damage control, insisting that this was largely because fastballs were being thrown right down the middle, but it did little to convince everyone that all of the problems have been solved.

It seems like it should be simple enough for The Show team to put to bed one of the biggest gripes the online community had about the game last year, but the fact that they haven’t done this yet is understandably making people feel a little uneasy. Hilariously, their last attempt to show off how bunting had been suitably nerfed led to the game completely freezing. Given the fact that so many people complained about this problem, and attention has clearly been paid to making sure the issue is no longer as glaring as it was last year, it’s more than likely we’ll find out it wasn’t worth really worrying about. However, until we can see hard evidence of the results of bunting being decidedly different than they were a year ago, we’ll unfortunately just have to reserve judgment for the time being.