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While some teams are content with being competitive and possibly making the playoffs, winning the World Series is the ultimate goal. Trying to build a championship-caliber team can be stressful, but inMLB The Show 23, the Franchise mode caters to your desire to operate a major league team.
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Baseball fans love to gush about their knowledge and how they would better build a team than current general managers. Well, Franchise mode gives you several options to successfully run a team. Here are some important tips and tricks you should know before starting a new MLB franchise.
Updated August 02, 2025, by Sean Murray:If you’re looking to take your team to the playoffs, then we’ve got the tips for playing Franchise mode to the fullest. We’ve also tweaked this guide with refreshed formatting to make it easier to read and with more relevant links to other subjects in MLB The Show 23.
Choose Your Team For Franchise
The first major decision in Franchise mode isselecting a team. By default, contracts for general managers arethree years long,and whether or not you’re re-signed will bebased on your team’s performance.
MLB The Show 23 allows you toturn off the GM contracts and control a team permanently.
If you’re new to Franchise mode or MLB The Show, we recommendchoosing a team with low expectationsor turning off the GM contracts.
You can access anin-depth view of the team’s expectationsin theGM Goalsmenu.
Each team will have different seasonal and contract goals; some might have goals to win the World Series, like the Los Angeles Dodgers, while others might have goals to simply finish over .500, like the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Choose The Best Settings For Franchise Mode
After selecting the team, you’ll have tochoose the proper settingsfor your Franchise experience.
Extra Inning Runner:
Once you’ve finalized the general settings for your franchise, you canselect which tasks you’ll be responsible for.
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Tasks In Franchise Mode
There arethree major task areasto achieve success in Franchise mode:Coaching Tasks, Development Tasks, and Manager Tasks.
Each area has its own level of complexity, butyou can adjust these tasks later on if you feel overwhelmed.
Coaching, Development, And Manager Tasks
Manager Tasks:
While you can allow the CPU to handle all of these tasks, you should, at the very least, manually completeCoaching and Development tasks.
These are the main areas thatimpact the current and future roster.
Players will experience slumps, hot streaks, or injuries throughout the season. Having complete control over batting lineups and pitching rotations willhelp avoid a catastrophe during these situations.
Not only is it important to take your franchise’s future into consideration, butscouting prospects will increase their interest in signing with your team.
This task could be thedifference between you having a young, dynamic player or them potentially joining a rival team.
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Scouting In Franchise Mode
Scouting can be a bit more difficult, but MLB The Show 23 tries to make it as accessible as possible. Teams will havethree scouts, which means you can scout up tothree prospects.
There are a total of14 weeks to scout players before the Amateur Draft.
Scouts can analyze players byspecific prospect or position or discover new prospects.
you’re able to utilize thePlayer Searchto quicklylook for a specific type of playerto acquire through trade or just to scout. This is a helpful tool forimproving specific positions on your team.
Each scout hasfour attributesdetermining their scouting abilities, allowing you to prioritize scouts to specific positions.
To help determine which positions you should prioritize, you canview thepositional needsmenuthat showshow each position on your team compares to the rest of the league.
Budgeting In Franchise Mode
Manager tasks might seem a bit overwhelming, but they offereven more team control.
Dependingif you have Budgets turned on or offwill dictatehow complex these tasks will be. Hiring coaches, signing players in free agency, or acquiring players via trade will all take finances into account.
If you plan on having the Budgets on, take that into consideration when selecting a team. Teams withmore money to spend will make acquiring better talent easier.
Play Ball
Finally, it’s time to play ball. After finalizing your team’s settings and duties, you’ll choose tostart the franchise in Spring Training or the Regular Season.
The main benefit of starting inSpring Trainingisperfecting the game mechanics like hitting, fielding, and pitching while also analyzing the team’s depth.
Once Spring Training is over, theRegular Season begins,and the games count for real.
There arefive different methodsto play a Franchise game. Do your best with the following methods in leading your team toward a championship.
Retro Mode:
Throughout the season, you canassign different training assignments to improve players. If you have a pitcher struggling with control on the mound, assign them to atraining session with the pitching coach.
Or if a hitter seems like they’re routinely coming up short of hitting home runs, they mayneed to hit the weight room.
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