What’s On The Shelf | Games, Music & Culture

Another year, another sports title rolling off the assembly line. Bleary-eyed gamers wander into their local game emporium only to be greeted by the smiling face of a man making a quarter of a billion dollars over the next five years. Despite the relative lack of innovation that tends to plague annual sports franchises, people keep showing up.

Unfortunately, I am one of those people.

I got MLB The Show 24 for free through PlayStation Plus and immediately became hooked. Since then, I’ve dumped an embarrassing number of hours into the series, which is strange because I engage with MLB The Show in almost the exact opposite way I play every other sports game.

When I boot up Madden, I’m headed straight for Franchise mode. NBA 2K? MyGM is calling my name before the opening menu finishes loading. I love the team-building aspect of sports games. Constructing a roster, managing contracts, balancing the books, and slowly turning a dumpster fire into a championship contender scratches a very specific itch in my brain.

And yet, despite putting hundreds of hours into MLB The Show over the last few years, I don’t think I’ve opened Franchise mode a single time.

The reason is Diamond Dynasty.

When some freakshow Pokémon investor is ripping packs trying to pull Fat Gay Pikachu, I’m ripping virtual packs hoping to get Last Ride Chipper Jones. That’s a significantly more respectable hobby. You earn packs through gameplay, collect players from different eras, build your dream roster, earn stubs, buy more packs, collect more players, earn more stubs, buy more packs, and continue this vicious cycle until the heat death of the universe.

It’s a remarkably effective gameplay loop.

Beyond players, you can collect uniforms, bats, socks, stadiums, announcer calls, home run celebrations, strikeout sounds, and enough miscellaneous cosmetics to make your head spin. Personally, I couldn’t care less about a bat shaped like a wedge of cheddar cheese. I want absurdly powerful baseball players launching moonshots into low Earth orbit.

The beauty of Diamond Dynasty is that there’s always something to chase.

That chase is wrapped around the game of baseball itself, which feels almost unnecessary to explain. Baseball is so deeply embedded into American culture that I assume most people at least understand the basics. However, for those unfortunate souls who weren’t raised on hot dogs and arguments about designated hitters, here’s the quick version.

One guy throws the ball.

One guy tries to hit the ball.

The pitcher wants to record an out. The hitter wants to reach base. Three strikes means you’re out. Four balls means you take first base. Once you’re on base, your goal is to make it all the way home and score a run.

There. That’s baseball. We don’t have time to explain balks, and frankly, nobody fully understands them anyway.

Diamond Dynasty simplifies things further by shortening games to three innings instead of the traditional nine. It’s one of the smartest decisions the mode makes. You can knock out a complete game during a lunch break rather than sacrificing an entire afternoon. The shorter format also forces you to use your bullpen regularly, meaning more roster variety and fewer situations where one pitcher completely dominates an entire game.

Every matchup feels fresh because you’re constantly rotating through different players.

For all of the things Diamond Dynasty gets right, however, MLB The Show 26 leaves me with a nagging feeling that something is off.

I can’t tell if it’s burnout after several years of playing these games or if San Diego Studio has genuinely changed its approach to progression, but the magic feels diminished this year.

The biggest issue is the handling of elite cards.

In MLB The Show 24, building a roster full of 99 overall monsters felt attainable through regular play. By the end of my time with the game, my lineup looked like a baseball-themed Avengers roster. Every hitter was a superstar. Every pitcher threw absolute gas. Every game felt like a fireworks show.

The dopamine was flowing freely.

MLB The Show 26 feels significantly stingier.

At the time of writing, there are only a handful of true 99 overall cards available. Even many of the so-called Boss rewards sitting at the end of various progression paths top out around 94 or 95 overall. The introduction of Red Diamond cards as a new upper tier creates a sense of artificial scarcity that I can’t quite shake.

Maybe I’m wrong.

Maybe the developers are simply trying to slow progression and create a healthier long-term content cycle.

Or maybe they’re creating a system that nudges players toward spending real money on stubs.

It’s difficult to say for certain, but the entire structure feels noticeably more restrictive than previous entries. When the best rewards feel perpetually out of reach, the grind becomes less exciting and more exhausting.

The frustrating thing is that the actual baseball remains good.

Pitching feels responsive. Hitting remains satisfying when you square up a fastball and send it into the cheap seats. Defensively, the game still captures the rhythm and flow of baseball better than any competitor on the market.

The problem isn’t that MLB The Show 26 is bad.

The problem is that it’s familiar.

Very familiar.

Annual sports games always struggle with this balancing act. Fans want improvements, but they also want the game they already enjoy. Developers walk a tightrope between innovation and stability, and MLB The Show 26 often feels content to simply maintain course.

That’s not necessarily a disaster.

It’s just disappointing.

MLB The Show 26 is certainly a new MLB The Show game. Some might even call it the most recent MLB The Show game. Of all the games I played in 2026, this is undeniably one of them.

It’s the gaming equivalent of 3.8 Roentgen.

Not great. Not terrible.

It’s the fourth Baldwin brother.

It’s a 2016 Honda Civic.

It’s perfectly functional, mostly reliable, and gets you where you’re going. But nobody is hanging a poster of a Honda Civic on their bedroom wall.

For newcomers, there’s still plenty to love. Diamond Dynasty remains addictive, the on-field gameplay remains excellent, and baseball fans can easily lose hundreds of hours chasing cards and building their dream roster.

For returning players, though, the cracks are beginning to show. The progression feels slower, the rewards feel less exciting, and the overall package lacks the spark that once made the series feel special.

Baseball is a game where not every swing results in a home run.

Unfortunately, MLB The Show 26 feels more like a routine fly ball to center field.