MLB The Show 25 Franchise Discussion

[spboden]

I tried to go back and look but what does everyone feel about the best roster to use for franchise? I was looking at truesim. Then when I compared it to live there was quite a difference in many players. So wasn’t sure how that would effect game play

[reyes the roof]

I dropped the hitting down to all star and finally snapped my 14 game losing streak thanks to two Pete Alonso HRs and one from Lindor. Now it's time to start working my way out of the 11 game hole I dug myself in the division race

[countryboy]

Cardinals drop home opening series to Dodgers

The Cardinals (4-8) dropped their 2026 home opening series to the Dodgers over the weekend in St.Louis.

The Cardinals lost on Friday night with Dustin May facing his old club. May went 5.1 innings giving up 4 runs on 8 hits with 4 strikeouts. The 4 runs all came in the 6th when Kyle Tucker led off with a solo homerun and then later Max Muncy would hit a 2-out bases clearing double to chase May from the game and put the Dodgers up 4-0. The Dodgers would go on to win 5-1. The Cardinals lone run was a solo homerun by Jordan Walker in the bottom of the 9th.

Saturday it was Sonny Gray on the mound and Gray would leave after just 3 innings with a nail issue. Kyle Leahy was extremely good going 3 innings allowing no runs on just 2 hits and striking out 4. Leahy wouldn't get a decision as that would belong to Luke Weaver who pitched the 8th, where the Cards finally broke a 1-1 tie on a RBI double by Masyn Winn. JoJo Romero would actually get the save as the Cards won 2-1.

Sunday it was Jordan Montgomery and he pitched batting practice. Montgomery got thru 2.1 before being lifted after surrendering 8 runs on 9 hits including 3 homeruns. The Dodgers would blow out the Cardinals 13-2 to win the series.

Next up is a 3 game homestand with the Mariners before the Cardinals head back out West.

[countryboy]

Cardinals drop series to Mariners

The Cardinals (5-10) dropped another series to begin the 2026 season as they lost 2 of 3 to the Mariners in St.Louis.

The Cardinals were shut out the first two games of the series as the offense is just in a horrendous place at the moment. Luckily the offense showed some life in a 5-3 win on Wednesday to avoid the sweep.

Griffin Channing pitched well in the series opener on Monday, but lost a 1-0 decision. Matthew Liberatore wasn't terrible but wasn't really good either on Tuesday as he was beaten 6-0. Dustin May earned the victory on Wednesday tossing 6 innings allowing 2 runs on 5 hits as the offense put up a single run in each of the first 5 innings which would be good enough for the 5-3 win.

The Cardinals offensively are getting no production from Nolan Gorman. Gorman who lead the majors in strikeouts last season is currently striking out at a near 40% rate. He has just one homerun and just 5 RBIs thru the season thus far.

Next up is a 3 game weekend road trip to Colorado to face the Rockies. The Cardinals will then travel to Los Angeles to face the Dodgers for 3 to begin the week. Very odd schedule for the Cardinals this year as they play west coast teams basically thru the first month of the season.

[dragster646]

2025 Minnesota Twins

For every positive, a negative. And for every negative, a positive.

Pardon the philosophical headline, but that seems to be how this Twins season is progressing. As of May 13, the Twins sit in first place in the AL Central with a record of 25-16. They continue to have the worst offense in baseball, but continue to rely on a strong rotation to keep their winning ways going. Starting with my next series against the Orioles, I will be moving pitching difficulty from Hall of Fame to Legend, just to see how things play out.

Speaking of pitching, Bailey Ober was drilled in the arm by a line drive in his start against the Red Sox on May 2nd. The game did not give him an injury, but it was a perfect-perfect line drive, and I decided to give him a bruised forearm. He missed his next start as a precaution, and unfortunately five days later the arm still did not feel right so he was placed on the 15-Day IL. Zebby Matthews was called up from AAA to fill his rotation spot. Mattews, in his first start against San Francisco, ended up going 5.2 innings, giving up three hits, no runs, no walks and striking out 8. That game was the first of back to back games that saw Minnesota walk it off in the 10th inning. It was also their third walk off of the week.

However, for all the positives, we need the negatives. Jose Miranda will now miss the remainder of the season with a dislocated ankle suffered during the final game of the series with San Francisco. Mikey Gaspar was removed from the 40 man to make room for Mike Ford, who was then called up from AAA to take Miranda's place. Other negatives include the continuing struggles of Byron Buxton, and a bullpen that is on fumes after back to back marathon extra inning victories.

I know this post is all over the place, and is covering three series without any details as to how each series went, but I'm just trying to wait until the forums are a little more stable and I've been rather busy.

[overheadthree]

2025 White Sox Franchise

It's been an interesting start to the season so far as the White Sox finished up the month of May with a 21-37 record 10 games back of the division leading Tigers. This year so far has been pretty much about the injuries to this team and two guys in the lineup that have been playing way above themselves. In the first couple weeks we lost Luis Robert Jr, Mike Tauchman, Sean Burke, and Edgar Quero to monthly stays on the injured list. This lineup has no power whatsoever but Andrew Vaughn and Josh Rojas have both been incredible. Rojas is hitting.351 with 4 homers and 15 RBI's while Andrew Vaughn is at .365 and leading the league in average. The rest of the lineup has been average at best. While the rotation and bullpen has been okay. Definitely will be looking to flip all the one year rentals at the deadline and possibly Vaughn whose having a career year.

Transactions:
Released Brandon Drury
Signed Marco Gonzalez to a 1yr deal
Recalled Dominic Fletcher
Recalled Bobby Dalbec
Claimed Bailey Falter from the Pirates
Released Mike Clevinger

Sent from my Pixel 6 using Tapatalk

[3pointerdude]

How many custom rosters can be put in franchise mode ? The reason I ask, is because I have a team already with fully created players but I want to mix it up with a few more, but I found out you can only have "ONE" loaded roster at a time before going into Franchise mode, therefore it's making it difficult to add the handfull of others I want to put on a specific team... Though in Franchise, I think there is a way to do this or not ???

[countryboy]

Cardinals sweep Rockies for first series win of 2026

The Cardinals (8-10) swept the Rockies in Colorado over the weekend for their first series win in 2026.

Apparently, a trip to Colorado was all that was needed for the Cardinals to find their offense. The Cardinals scored 26 runs over the 3 game series and had double digit hits in all 3 games. Even better, despite playing at Coors Field, the pitching staff allowed just 11 runs in the series, with 7 of those coming in Saturday's homerun derby game as the teams combined for 9 homeruns.

The only downside offensively was that Nolan Gorman, despite all the success the team had offensively, failed to record a hit in any of the 3 games and struck out 8 times. The Cardinals are seriously considering sending Gorman to Memphis to see if he can find his swing and contact with the baseball.

Next up is a 3 game series in Los Angeles versus the Dodgers who hold the best record in baseball at 16-2.

[countryboy]

Cardinals lose series to Dodgers in hard fought series

The Cardinals (9-`12) followed up their series sweep of the Rockies by dropping a 3 game series to the Dodgers in Los Angeles.

While they lost the series, the Cardinals can take some comfort in that they played the best team in baseball close with all 3 games decided by 2 runs or fewer. Actually only one game was decided by 2 runs and that was the series finale on Wednesday that the Cardinals won 3-1. The other two games the Cardinals lost by a single run (2-1 and 4-3).

Alec Burleson found his swing in the series with 6 hits and 2 homeruns and drove in 4 of the 7 runs the Cards scored in the series.

Next up is a 3 game weekend homestand with the Giants.

[countryboy]

Cardinals take series from Giants in St.Louis over the weekend

The Cardinals (11-13) took 2 games of their 3 game series with the Giants in St.Louis over the weekend. This is the second series win for the Cardinals who are playing really good baseball at the moment.

The Cardinals won on Friday and Saturday, but missed the sweep losing Sunday despite Matthew Liberatore tossing 6 scoreless innings.

The offense was good on Friday and Saturday, but was shutout Sunday against Zach Eflin and the bullpen. Jordan Walker and Nolan Arenado each had 2 homeruns in the series and Willson Contreras had 5 hits in 2 games played.

The Cardinals are off on Monday as they await a mini 2 game series with the Rockies on Tuesday and Wednesday.

[Itsma806]

2025 Houston Astros 07/01-07/03

Overall Record: 44-43 (2ND AL WEST/7,0 BEHIND TEXAS)

GAME RESULTS:

GAME 1
Astros-6
Rockies-2

Game 2
Rockies-8
Astros-4

Game 3
Rockies-6
Astros-5

Well of course they would. Astros drop series to lowly Rockies

Well, thats been the theme as of late lose series to the teams they should beat (Athletics, Angels, Rockies, Whitesox) and win or even sweep teams that should provide more of a challenge (Phillies, Cubs).

The series started off with the Astros looking like they were ready to get out ahead of one of those lesser talented teams. They got a strong start from Cristian Javier (7.0/4 H/1 R/7 SO) which lead the way to the Astros 6-2 victory. The Rockies did strike first when Ezequiel Tovar took Javier deep for his 12th of the year in the second inning. From there however, the Astros went on a 6-0 run with homeruns from Christian Walker and Isaac Paredes while Ben Gamel also added in an rbi single.

Then, the Astros rotation flipped over with them looking for at least the series victory. It was not to be had however as Framber Valdez wasnt good (6.0 IP/8 H/ 6 R/1 BB/4 SO) while his relief, Luis Garcia also gave up 2 runs in his two innings of work. Offensively, the Astros were able to get a decent amount of hit (8) but were unable to match the scores of Colorado as they dropped the second game, 8-4.


Hunter Brown was good for the most part in game three but aggressiveness by the Rockies on the bases tied the game at 2-2 in the 5th inning. The came when the Rockies had a runner on third with one out. Brenton Doyle struck out on a ball in the dirt and as routine, Yainer Diaz gathered the ball and threw to first to complete the strikeout. Unfortunately, he didnt see Thairo Estrada who was sprinting toward home as Yainer threw the ball to first. The return throw was far to late and the game was tied.

The Astros did retake the lead in the top half of the sixth but the bottom half was Brown's demise. In inning, he gave up three homeruns to the likes of Michael Toglia (9), Ryan Mcmahon (10) and Thairo Estrada (3).

Not to be deterred, Yordan Alvarez tied the game in the 7th inning with his second of the game and 39th on the year. But then, once again the Rockies were able to answer back in the bottom half of the inning to retake the lead with the eventual winning score of 6-5. Tyler Kinley and Scott Alexander (S, 15) shut down the Houston offense in the 8th and 9th innings.

Well the Astros should probably be nervous with the Dodgers (57-31/1st NL West) coming up. The Dodgers record makes them the best in baseball to this point but with the Astros recent track record, they may just get the series victory.

Houston star get players of the month honors.

Yordan Alvarez was named the June player of the month in the American League. With his performance so far this season, its a bit odd he hadnt won it before than. Either way, his 97 At-Bats, .351 AVG, 12 HR and 25 RBI's got him the award in what was the Astros worst month of the season so far. Coby Mayo (Orioles) (91 AB/.330 AVG/6 HR/10 RBI) won the Rookie of the month and Pen Murphee (White Sox) (10 SV, 12 G, 0.00 ERA, 12 SO) won the pitcher of the month.

On the NL side of things it was Fernando Tatis JR (Padres) (94 AB/.394 AVG/8 HR/20 RBI) who won the Player of the month, Hyeseong Kim (Dodgers) (89 AB/.348 AVG/4 HR/13 RBI) won the Rookie of the month and Hunter Greene (Reds) (5-0/6 G/2.15 ERA/29 SO) won the pitcher of the month.

[countryboy]

Cardinals sweep Rockies to get to .500

RECORD: 13-13
DIVISION: 1/2 GB
WILDCARD: 1/2 GB

The Cardinals swept the Rockies in a mini two game series that was played at Rickwood Field to get back to .500 on the season and are just a half game behind the Cubs in the NL Central Division.

The Cardinals offense showed up once again as they scored 15 runs this series with 5 homeruns and 8 doubles as a team. Nolan Gorman finally broke out of his season long slump recording 5 hits in the series with 2 doubles and 2 homeruns and driving in 7 runs, all while striking out just once. The oddity about that is that manager AJ Hinch moved Gorman up in the lineup before the game into the number 3 slot, moving Arenado to cleanup, and Burleson from 4th to 6th, and the offense just clicked. Lars Nootbaar had a terrific showing as well with 4 hits in the series.

Pitching was solid although Dusty May labored thru his start on Tuesday. He would get thru 5 innings but was pulled one batter into the 6th after a Ryan McMahon solo homerun made the score 5-3 at the time. Thankfully the bullpen was strong, despite the one run allowed by Kyle Leahy, as the Cards would win 7-4 with Ryan Helsley earning his 5th save of the season. On Wednesday it was Sonny Gray going 7 innings allowing 3 runs on 5 hits and striking out 11. JoJo Romero would give up two runs in the 9th, thus calling Helsley back into action to save his 6th game of the season as the Cards held on 8-5.

The Cardinals are off on Thursday as they head home for a 3 game weekend series with the Mets.

[FBeaule04]

Thomas and Walker cooled off a bit, but confidence still running high!!!

Frank Thomas - 6’5 - 240 - 1B
Team: Louisville Bats (Cincinnati Reds)
21 years old - AAA - 65 overall
Top 100 Prospects: 1^st / MLB ETA: 2025

Last Series: 6G / 4 for 21 / 1 HR / 4 RBI
2025 Stats: 10G / .194 BA / .275 OBP / .278 SLG / .553 OPS / 13 SO / 4 RBI

Performance: The learning continued for the 1B, and it was tough, just like the first 4 games went. “He’s a bit lost at the plate, and he’s struggling a lot against offspeed pitches. We’re there to work with him, and we’ll do.” said Bats manager. On the positive side, Thomas hit his first homerun in AAA. Opposite blast that got out of the bat at 106.3 MPH.

Team: The Bats had their hands full against the Storm Chasers. In the two wins they picked up, the Bats scored 6 runs in each game. In the losses, Omaha’s pitchers we’re simply dominant and silenced the Bats offense. “You can’t win in any league scoring 5 runs in 4 games. Kudos to them for that effectiveness, but we must be better, that’s for sure.” said RF Will Benson

Bats: 23W – 16L – 4.0 GB – 3^rd in International League West
Next: at Iowa Cubs (17W – 22L, 10.0 GB – 7^th in IL West)

**********
Larry Walker - 6’3 - 235 - RF
Team: Hartford Yard Goats (Colorado Rockies)
18 years old - AA - 62 overall
Top 100 Prospects: 2^nd / MLB ETA: 2025

Last Series: 6G / 6 for 24 / 3 HR / 6 RBI
2025 Stats: 33G / .336 BA / .385 OBP / .580 SLG / .965 OPS / 8 HR / 25 RBI

Performance: In front of Phil Evans, the farm director, Walker showed power versus the Fisher Cats, but that was all he showed. “It was either the ball was crushed, or it was a weak contact. I’m not happy with the overall performance, even thought we had a great series on the road.” said the young RF.

Team: Looks like the sweep against the Patriots, few weeks ago, worked like a charm in waking up the Yard Goats. They ended up winning five of six in New Hampshire, and they did it with getting the best out of everyone. “This was a nice series, and all the guys contributed, which is encouraging before facing the Rumble Ponies at home.” said team manager.

Yard Goats: 17W – 16L – 5.0 GB – 3^rd in Eastern League Northeast
Next: vs Binghamton Rumble Ponies (19W – 14L - 3.0 GB – 2^nd in EL Northeast)

**********
Due up:
Ozzie Smith (SS) – AA (MIL)
Kirby Puckett (CF) - AA (STL)

[Arkansas Ranger]

Texas Rangers Season 2 MOM update

The Texas Rangers have reached the All Star Break and are 51-45 a game and a half out of first place from the Seattle Mariners. Seagar enters the All Star Break with 27 hrs and a League leading 345 avg. He is 2nd in MVP voting to Brent Rooker of the As. Burger enters with 20 hrs and is 4th in rbis. The rest of the offense is doing OK. Kyle Tucker continues to underproduce. Pitching wise it's about average. My All Stars are Seagar, Burger, and Zack Jackson who has 24 saves. I would like to get another starter or middle relief guy. We did make 1 small move as Max Stassi was traded for Nick Purdi.

[Itsma806]

2025 Houston Astros 07/04-07/06

Overall Record: 47-43 (2nd AL West/7.0 behind Texas Rangers)

Game Results:

Game 1
Astros-7
Dodgers-3

Game 2
Astros-8
Dodgers-3

Game 3
Astros-5
Dodgers-3

The (good) streak continues with sweep of Dodgers

Well thats just how the last month + has gone for Houston. They have lost games against inferior opponents and have won vs. first place teams.

As mentioned, that streak continued with their 3-0 sweep of the NL West leading Los Angeles Dodgers.

And really, it wasnt that close. Houston won the first two games, 7-3 and 8-3. Game three was the biggest challenge which saw the Astros face Blake Snell.

Snell was absolutely dominate early on and took a no hitter into the 5th. At that point, LA led 2-0 behind two solo homeruns. The first came when Hunter Renfroe took Cristian Javier deep in the 2nd inning for his 8th of the season and of course, a milestone #200 for his career. The second came off the bat of Tommy Edman in the 4th (3).

Then, the Astros used mistakes by Snell and small ball to tie it up. To begin the 5th, Snell walked Jake Meyers. That was followed up by a hit by pitch by Yainer Diaz.

Ben Gamel then contributed with his small ball bunt to move Meyers and Diaz. From there, the Astros scored three in the inning to take the 3-2 lead. The scoring for Houston started with their first hit, a two rbi double by Jeremy Pena who was batting first with Altuve taking the day off.

The game was later tied in the 7th when Will Smith added another solo HR (16) to the Dodgers tally.

That scored held until extras when the Astros scored two in their half of the inning. In the bottom half, Josh Hader got his 22nd save as he allowed no hits and struck out one.

Houston will now head home to face another first place team, the Cleveland Guardians (55-34/1st AL Central).