MLB Manager Online Beta-Test Review

Hello, my name is Eno Sarris, and I’m addicted to Sega’s new MLB Manager Online game.

As a fantasy addict, I’m familiar with the sort of addiction that Sega’s MLB Manager Online has spawned in me. Constant screen-refreshing, lineup-parsing, and strategy-pondering may not look like the two-feet-from-the-television glazed-over stare of the average gamer, but it fits right into the regular day of a fantasy addict. This isn’t to say that the game doesn’t have flaws, but it is to say that it has considerable upside.

Basic game play follows more of the approach a general manager might have. Compared to fantasy baseball, MMO asks you to think about your team as a whole. Defense, ‘clutch,’ and lineup order matter. Take a look at the roster home page and you’ll see that you’ve got players with certain costs, a budget for your lineup, and the ability to move players around the diamond to take advantage of their defense. You can play Pat Burrell in center field, if you want, but you’ll get some defensive penalties considering that he’s a “D”-rated outfielder with a ’44’ run tool out of 80.

You recruit new players by scouting, although paying for scouting can be dicey. You get plenty of Gregg Zauns – I’ve gotten Kelly Shoppach three times while scouting, for instance – so you have to be careful with how much you spend on scouting. It’s something best done after you rise up in class and are awarded more money to spend on your roster.

In the meantime, you can spend money on training cards. Given in a pack that you virtually rip open, the training cards allow you to improve your players. You scratch a window and receive a bonus in one of the six categories that define a player. Position players are judged by Contact, Power, Run, Throw, Field and Clutch tools, while pitchers have Stamina, Speed, Power, Break, Control and Clutch. As a fan of open-ness, one complaint I have is that there’s no obvious link between these training upgrades and your performance – you know your team is performing better, but knowing whether or not to improve “Power” over “Stamina” in your pitchers is largely a matter of trial and error.

And that feeling, of not knowing what the link is between these numbers and your team performance, pervades the game to an extent. Take a look at this lineup analyzer. It’s perplexing. You move people around, and the colors change, but it’s not clear what the colors mean and what the rubric is. Take my lineup, for example. Is it telling me that I should move the inferior Kurt Suzuki ahead of Luke Scott for some reason? I don’t know. Also, each player has an arrow next to their name that moves according to the graces of some celestial wind perhaps. I’m not sure what I’m looking for – the game wouldn’t be a game if it told you exactly how it worked from the get-go – but there’s something a little confusing about how the game all fits together.

So, once you train your players, scout new guys to improve your team, and place ‘support cards’ (like ‘Mom’s Home Cooking,’ which improves the conditioning of all your low-cost players), your team is ready to sim some games. You can watch the long version – I did only once – or rack up the games as soon as they are available. Winning games – versus people in your class, or against major league teams in exhibition matches – gets you points, points buy you cards, and so on.

Currently, the AngelPaganRituals are fourth in my A-class division at 17-7. My players are fully trained for the moment (you start with three levels of available training), my support cards are stacked, and I can beat people in my class pretty easily. Unfortunately, my pitching staff – Chris Volstad, Zach Duke, Jay Happ, Rodrigo Lopez and Brian Bannister – is underwhelming at best, and I can’t beat major league teams like the Texas Rangers. So I have a slight feeling of frustration as I wait for more games to become available to me so that I can upgrade that staff and beat the Rangers. Trading is very difficult, too – the interface is not intuitive.

There’s also a strange Sim-City-like component to the game – you build up your hometown as your team improves – that seems like a non-sequitir. I wonder if it would be better served by focusing on the stadium and team workout complexes. Perhaps they should get better as your team improves – that would keep the focus on the team like it should be.

One last thing to think about are some of the irreversible decisions you are forced make while setting up your team. You have no knowledge of the team, and you are forced to decide if your team will skew offensively or if you will emphasize pitching. Do you want your scouts to pick position players or look for arms? Even setting your favorite team will feature greatly – my team has Luis Castillo, Josh Thole, Jason Bay, Ike Davis and Jesus Feliciano on it. If you are more cut-throat, you might be best served by picking a … cough … better team as your favorite.

But, overall, this has been a pleasant experience for me and I look forward to seeing the final product this season. Addiction doesn’t have to be all bad.