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Beyond this, the game goes right off the rails. Worst among the issues are the fact that free agency is flat out broken. It looks like teams lack the budgetary savvy to sign big time players. That or big time players don't properly adjust their contract demands to league realities. Either way, upper tier free agents frequently and consistently go unsigned and if they don't get signed during FA it does not appear that they'll ever get signed after that. This has a cascading effect over multiple seasons. After one season you might see 3-5 premier players go unsigned. After two seasons that number will double. And double. And double. By the end of season 5 the list of absolutely lights-out free agents that languish on the golf course instead of suiting up to play is just ridiculous. This, alone, is enough to kill the franchise mode for any season beyond 2009.

Teams are also incapable of managing their 25-man roster. I looked through a quick roster report of most teams at various points. You'll routinely see teams maintain just a 10-man pitching staff, and a few will go with only four starters (at least officially; maybe they're using a MR for a fifth starter?). You'll see a lot of teams carrying a ridiculous number of catchers, three, four, in one case I saw the Yankees carrying *5* catchers. Seriously, what is that about? Did each starting pitcher need his own guy behind the plate? So, in addition to teams often not carrying enough pitchers, you'll see situations where a team may only have three or four outfielders or too few infielders, etc. It's crazy.

Finally, I'm pretty sure player development is also crudded up, but I'm not sure how much it really matters in the game. Let me a 'splain. No. There is too much. Let me sum up. (Like I'm capable of that. I just wanted to use that Princess Bride line.) In the 2009 season it appears (I didn't go over rosters with a fine tooth comb, so I reserve the right to be wrong) that the elite players in the game are in the 85 - 92 range. There are plenty of teams with no 90-rated players at all. Over time those ratings just keep going up (they can go down, but that is evidently not the overall trend). By the end of season 5, there were several 99-rated players and most teams had 90+ rated players for their entire top five.

What's odd is that this doesn't appear to affect stats. It's like the game has players perform on a curve so that the top whatever percent perform to a certain standard. I'm not sure this is how it should be, since you could argue this makes it so player development doesn't really matter. But it does at least keep the stat engine from breaking down, which I think is probably more important.

Hank

Feb 27 2009, 11:33 AM

It looks like the franchise options are all broken:

http://nutweasel.blogspot.com/2009/02/mlb-2k9-franchise-mode.html

Rudy

Feb 27 2009, 12:49 PM

I think there may be a patch for the release day to fix some of this.