MLB The Show 20 arrived on March 17, 2020, as the fifteenth entry in a series that had spent its whole life on one platform. San Diego Studio developed it. Sony Interactive Entertainment published it. It came out only on PlayStation 4, and it turned out to be the last game in the franchise that could say that — MLB The Show 21 went to Xbox consoles, and MLB The Show 22 landed on the Nintendo Switch. That fact hangs over this review in a way it could not have at launch. What Sony shipped in March 2020 was the final version of an exclusive, and it is a good one to go out on.
Trailer, via PlayStation.
Javier Báez on the Cover
The Chicago Cubs infielder is the face of MLB The Show 20, and the choice says something about what the game wants to be. Báez plays with visible joy and visible risk. He is not the safest pick for a cover, and that is the point. This is a baseball game that leans into the flashy play.
The cover star is not the story here, though. The story is what San Diego Studio did underneath him.
Minor League Players Get Real Names
For the first time in the history of the franchise, Minor League Baseball players are fully licensed. Their names and likenesses are in the game. In every previous version, Minor League players were not licensed, and the game replaced them with generic players. That meant the lower levels of a franchise save were populated by men with no faces and no futures — placeholders you were supposed to develop into something.
Now they are real. This matters more than it sounds. A franchise mode lives or dies on whether the minor leagues feel like a place where something is happening. Generic players made the minors feel like a waiting room. Licensed players make it feel like a pipeline. If you have ever spent a season in a farm system in this series, you know the difference immediately.
The team and logo editor also came over from Diamond Dynasty to Franchise mode. That is a smaller change, but it is the kind of change that tells you where the developers were looking: at the mode that had the tools, and the mode that needed them.
Matt Vasgersian Stays in the Booth
The broadcast team returns intact, and continuity is worth something in a sport with a long season.
- Matt Vasgersian returns as play-by-play commentator.
- Mark DeRosa returns alongside him.
- Dan Plesac returns to the booth.
- Heidi Watney returns as sideline reporter.
- Alex Miniak returns as public address commentator.
You can argue about any individual voice in that group. What you cannot argue with is the value of a booth that has been together long enough to sound like a booth. Baseball on television is a rhythm, and a game that changes its announcers every year never finds one.
Fielding and Hitting Get the Attention
The new fielding and hitting mechanics drew praise at release, and the Diamond Dynasty mode picked up new features. That is where the game earned its reputation.
The fielding changes are the ones that stick with you. Defense in baseball games has always been the hardest thing to make feel like a skill rather than a dice roll, and MLB The Show 20 makes the glove feel like it belongs to a person. The hitting side of the ball got similar treatment. These are not cosmetic adjustments. They change how a game flows from pitch to pitch.
Diamond Dynasty, the mode that has become the commercial center of the series, got new features that reviewers responded to. The mode has grown into the reason a lot of people buy this game every year, and this version gave them more to do.
Technical Issues at Launch
Technical issues at launch drew criticism. That is a real mark against the game, and it is worth naming plainly rather than waving away. A sports game is a service as much as it is a product, and a rough launch costs players time they do not get back.
The pre-order situation is worth noting too. Customers who digitally pre-ordered MLB The Show 20 received the game early, on March 13. That is a small thing, but it is the kind of small thing that becomes a large thing if the servers are not ready.
What This Game Actually Is
MLB The Show 20 is a sports game that knows exactly what it is and does it well. It is a single-player and multiplayer game, played from a third-person perspective, built on Major League Baseball. It is non-fiction in the sense that the teams, the players and the stadiums are real. It is not trying to be anything else, and that is a virtue.
The licensed minor leagues are the headline change, and they are the right one. A baseball franchise is a long chain from rookie ball to the majors, and for fifteen years this series only bothered to render the top of that chain. Fixing that is not a gimmick. It is the difference between a game about a roster and a game about an organization.
The fielding and hitting work is the second pillar, and it is the one that will keep people playing into the summer. Mechanics are what you touch every inning. Rosters are what you think about between games. Both got better here.
The launch problems are the third thing, and they are the thing that will be forgotten first. That is not an excuse for them. It is just what happens to technical issues in a game that gets patched. What does not get patched is a design decision, and the design decisions in MLB The Show 20 are sound.
The Last Exclusive
The most interesting thing about MLB The Show 20 is something the developers could not have known when they shipped it. This is the last PlayStation-exclusive entry in the series. The next game went to Xbox consoles. The one after that went to the Nintendo Switch. A franchise that had been a reason to own one specific console became a game you could buy almost anywhere.
That shift is bigger than any single feature in this release. It changes who plays the game and how many people get to play it. MLB The Show 20 sits right at the edge of that change, the final game built for one audience before the door opened.
So what should you make of it now? The licensed minor leagues are the detail that matters most, because they fixed the part of the game that had been hollow the longest. The fielding and hitting mechanics are the part you will feel every time you pick up the controller. The launch issues are noise. The booth is comfort.
MLB The Show 20 is not a reinvention. It is a refinement, and a confident one. It takes the formula the series had been building for years, fixes the weakest link in it, and sharpens the parts players touch most. That is a good way to close out an era, even if nobody knew at the time that an era was closing.
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