MLB The Show 23 Franchise Mode Guide: How to dominate the league

MLB The Show 23 Franchise Mode is one of the game's most enjoyable but complex modes. You need to master plenty of skills in Franchise Mode, such as making trades, scouting, training, drafting, and setting your lineups, among many others.

Only by having a good understanding of everything in Franchise Mode, will you be able to lead your team to success, and create a dynasty. To make it easier, we made this detailed guide to teach you everything you need to know about MLB The Show 23 Franchise Mode.

So, without further ado, let's check out the MLB The Show 23 Franchise Mode Guide.

MLB The Show 23 Franchise Mode Guide

Franchise Mode is the primary team strategy mode in MLB The Show 23. The game mode allows players to take full control of one or more MLB Franchises. It lets players micromanage everything, from the front office to training or scouting. Players can feel what's it like to be a general manager and have the fate of their organization in their hands.

When starting a Franchise save, the first thing players need to do is choose the roster they are going to be playing with. They can use the current MLB roster, load saved rosters or use the base game roster. Then, players need to pick which team, or teams, they want to control. They can pick existing MLB teams, or create a custom squad.

After picking the team, players can also select the gameplay settings. These change depending on your preference. It's also here you chose the very important Designated Hitter rules.

You can choose to leave it as "Auto", and it will follow the half-and-half style of recent years. "Off" removes it entirely, and "On" makes the Designated Hitter a constant like it already is in MLB.

The remaining tasks such as Manager tasks, Development tasks, and Coaching Tasks, can be handled by you, or you can let the game automatically deal with them. You will be able to change these settings later, so don't worry about it.

Then, you just need to choose at which point in the season you want to start. In the Regular Season, or at Spring Training.

Setting your Lineups

The first thing you should do once you start your Franchise mode save, it's checking your team roster. You need to see what are the strengths and weaknesses of your team. It's also very important to analyze if you can be a title contender right away, or if you are rebuilding.

After you do that, you need to set up your lineups. Go to the manage option, and click on lineups. There, you will be able to choose your team lineups. You can select your best lineup against right-handed pitchers, or against left-handed pitchers. In lineups, you can also change the player's defensive position.

Training

Training is one of the most important things to master in MLB The Show 23 Franchise. It helps you improve the attributes of your young players, or slow down the regress of an older player. You can train a specific ability, meaning you can use this tool to work on your players' big weaknesses and transform them into strengths.

Once you select a specific training exercise for a player, you can see what attributes the training will affect. The attributes that have highlighted green lettering under them, are the ones the training exercise will influence.

You can select different training exercises for all your players, independent of their position. This will allow you to improve your players throughout the season, increasing their attribute stats, and working on their weaknesses.

It's very important to always be on top of the training your players are doing, especially when it comes to young and talented players. When used correctly, this tool can help you massively improve the attributes of your team, transforming a good player into a superstar.

Coaching Staff

Having a good coaching staff can be the difference between failure and success. To check your coaching staff, you need to go to acquisitions, contracts, and select coaches. There, you will be able to see your coaches, their attributes, and their salary.

You can fire a coach by selecting him and clicking A on Xbox and X on PlayStation. Be aware that, firing a coach will come at a cost since you will need to pay the remaining of his contract.

When you do fire a coach, you will be able to see all the available coaches for hire. You can also see if any other teams have offered him a deal. As you make an offer to a coach, you will see his managerial history, and how your budget looks before and after you hire him.

Spending more on coaches' contracts will have a substantial impact on your team's budget. However, better coaches will improve your chances of winning drastically. So, this is something you need to take into consideration when hiring a coach.

Scouting & Drafting

The Scouting tool suffered plenty of changes in MLB The Show 23 and is now much more useful and realistic. These changes improved the feature substantially, and scouting is now much more effective and realistic.

Scouting happens every Sunday. When you click on Scouting, you will be able to set your number one, two, and three scouting priorities. You can also look at your positional needs, and see which areas of your team need to be improved.

You can select up to three positions you need to improve, and players that match your positional needs will be more interested in signing with you. With your scouts, you can either scout a prospect, scout a specific position, or discover new prospects.

If you decide to scout a specific prospect, your knowledge of that player will increase by 60% per week, if he is your number one priority. His interest in signing with your team will also increase by 6% per week.

The interest percentage is very important since when you draft a player, he needs to have at least 50% interest to sign with you. Depending on the scouting priority you attributed to the player, the percentage of knowledge and interest you will gain per week will vary.

One very important thing you need to take into account is your position in the draft. If you are picking at number 30, you should scout for players that will be available in that position. It's useless to scout players that are projected to be picked in the first, second, or third position if you are the pick number 30. The chances you will be able to draft those players are slim to none, so take that into account.

What you should do is, scout players in your draft raking, and you might even find some diamonds in the rough. You can find players that have a very low draft ranking. However, when you end up scouting them, some might have a high ranking according to your team scouts.

Your scouts also have stats, which indicate what type of players he is better at finding. If you want to scout a pitcher, then send a scout with a high pitcher attribute. The same rule applies to Position players, or to discover new prospects.

Scouting will have a huge impact on what players you draft. Before you start the draft, you can add your best prospects to the Draft queue. This will help you keep track of the players you want to draft. If you choose the auto pic option, it will choose from the players listed in the Draft queue.

When it's your turn to pick, you will have four minutes to see the available players and select one of them. Then, after the draft is complete, you still need to sign your players. Some players might not want to sign with you, while others will be thrilled to join your team.

To start contract negotiations with your drafted players, go to sign Draft picks, and click on the players. Remember that, the more interested they are in joining your team, the easier it will be to get a better deal.

Trades

Trades are a very important part of Franchise mode. They are one of the ways you can improve your team, and are a great way to add that missing piece to your squad.

To make a trade you need to go to the manage option, click on trades, and then on make a trade. You can only trade three players at once, and you can't trade draft picks.

You can select a player you want to trade, and then click the Suggest trade option. This will allow you to see what other teams are willing to offer you. It makes it easier to find trades for specific players and saves you some time.

However, you can still do it the old way. Picking a player from your team, and selecting the desired player from an opposing team. The bar at the top will indicate if the opposing Franchise is interested in making that trade. So, be sure to always check it out before you submit your trade offer. When making a trade, you can also see what impact the trade will have on your budget.

Simulating games

Simulating games, or even the whole season, is something very easy to do, and that will come in handy plenty of times. Access the calendar, and click on a date you which to simulate through.

Then, click on the "Sim Through Date" option. When you reach a game, you will be able to simulate it by clicking on the "Simulate to End of Game" option. You can press Triangle or Y to simulate the day. In the main menu, you can choose to simulate until the draft day.

Budget

Keeping track of your budget is fundamental. You don't want to be spending astronomically more than what you are making since that will hurt your ability to make trades or hire new coaches.

In the Budget menu, you can see the contract of your players and their length. You can see how much revenue your team is generating, and how much they spend on player salaries, staff salaries, and their tax balance.

The most effective way of generating more revenue is by adding new sponsorships. You'll find the Review Sponsorships option on the main Franchise menu, and from there you can choose to put different ones in place.

Sponsorships are one of the many unlockables in MLB The Show 23, and you can earn more by either opening packs from Diamond Dynasty or purchasing them.

Learning the controls

To have success in MLB The Show 23 Franchise mode, you also need to master all the game controls. If you become great at pitching, batting, and fielding, it will be very hard for opposing Franchises to stop you.

Having great players in the pitchers, batters, First Basemen, and outfielders positions, among others, will also play a crucial role. However, if you simulate the majority of the season, even with great players, sometimes you might have to jump in and take matters into your own hands.

So, be sure to check our controls guide. The guide will help you master all the MLB The Show 23 controls in no time.