Friday Starter is a weekly column of news and tidbits from the world of baseball video games—past and present, domestic and foreign.
A San Diego Studio box art tier list
We’re a week away from several baseball game releases (The Show 25‘s early access, Bitball, and Out of the Park Baseball 26) but it’s been an oddly quiet week for news:
Acclaim’s rebirth (really just someone picking up the trademark rights) isn’t going to bring back All-Star Baseball. We knew everything in the Diamond Dynasty featurette this week already. And I don’t have much to say about The Show 25‘s soundtrack (very heavy and soul and neo soul, but that works for me).
So let’s go back through twenty years of The Show cover art and yap about each one. Starting at the top and moving downwards.
S tier
MLB The Show 20 – This is a fantastic studio action shot of Javier Báez. His chain is floating in mid-air, he’s about to huck the ball across an imaginary infield, and he’s got some dip/sunflower seeds/gum tucked in the bottom lip. This photo screams “baseball player.”
Speaking of screaming, the background read to me at first as a scream of anguish. But on closer look, it’s more a scream of triumph. Maybe it’s a little over-the-top, but I like it.
MLB The Show 18 – Well, it certainly helps now that Aaron Judge is an iconic all-time hitter. At the time of this cover, he was coming off of Rookie of the Year, but at a bit of an advanced age. At least I wasn’t seeing this level of performance coming.
It’s not a normal baseball pose. Judge has both arms at his side, with only the left hand gripping the bat. I think a normal-sized person would look silly recreating this pose. But the camera is looking up slightly at Judge, and you can see his insanely vascular left arm holding the bat at this sort of difficult angle like it’s just a twig. I didn’t know it was possible to make a baseball player look this tough and cool. The background with the stadium lights is barely lit, so it looks a bit like Judge is playing a baseball game inside a nightmare. Cool box art.
A tier
MLB The Show 14 – I think this one’s a heavily edited shot from a game rather than a studio photo like the two above. Miguel Cabrera is staring into the bright future mid-trot, just after a ball he hit soars into the stands.
I like that Cabrera’s still so recognizable basically in profile here. It’s an unusual angle for a cover, but it works.
B tier
MLB The Show 21 – This cover screams “asshole” but it still works. It’s the “play it loud” era, and Tatis is simply too good at baseball to care about your feelings. He would later turn out to be doing too cool and aloof to notice he was taking Clostebol too, but anyway…
I like the turquoise against the Padres yellow. I also like the ripped paper texture. The chalky circle around his name and yell lines leaving his mouth are a bit dorky, but it doesn’t ruin it.
MLB The Show 17 – It’s almost cheating to use Ken Griffey Jr., who looks iconic no matter what. The facsimile autograph reminds me of late ’90s baseball cards. It’s a little surprising to see Griffey in a White Sox cap in the background profile photo on the right, but it’s mostly obscured by the logo. Simple but classy cover.
MLB 07 The Show – Three in-game action photos of David Wright are composed together to make this cover. It works against them a little bit that David Wright cannot keep his tongue in his own mouth, but he always did that. The center pose looks powerful and iconic, and the design elements don’t get in the way. It’s damning with faint praise a bit, but the MLB 07 The Show logo is the best wordmark the series has ever had.
MLB The Show 15 – I don’t love the Schindler’s List effect: the grayscale sky and Dodger Stadium in the background, with only the blue on Puig’s jersey allowed some saturation. The overall effect of the color looks dull to me. Coming off of two straight years getting MVP votes at the start of his career, I can’t fault the choice of Puig as cover star, though he became a less exceptional player immediately afterwards (MLB The Show cover curse?!?!).
I kind of like the “emerging from the dugout for a curtain call” angle though. It stands out against other baseball game covers. It’s a little anonymizing to not see any of Puig’s face, but the pose is strong.
C tier
MLB 06 The Show – I don’t really understand the design with the diagonal slice of space that Ortiz’s upper body is emerging from. MLB 07 has a similar design element, but with David Wright fully in front of it, which looks more natural. In this one, Ortiz’s legs are in the sepia zone alongside a different David Ortiz. Still, it’s a great action shot of his swing’s follow-through, and Ortiz is still a legendary choice of cover athlete.
MLB The Show 24 – Vlad Jr. fills up this cover with a cocky “silence the haters” pose in front of a texture meant to look like a wall mural. The standard wordmark gets a slight upgrade to match, with a bold “24” in a paintbrush style. The icons scattered along the wall behind him are dorky if you pay attention to them: music notes, a Canada maple leaf, a Home Run Derby trophy, a Vladito foam finger… These are pretty skin-deep references to Vlad Jr., and in sort of a clip art style. Everybody likes music.
But from a little further away, it’s a colorful and nicely composed cover with good attitude and style.
MLB 13 The Show – There are lots of seemingly Sony-enforced icons to scatter around the box here: A carve-out to say this game is “Only On PlayStation,” and a big bubble to say it works with PlayStation Move, and logos to say it’s on PlayStation Network and 3D-compatible. Too much crap to find places for. So I can understand why the resulting box art feels a little squeezed.
Andrew McCutchen himself looks great. It’s a bit of a graphic design sin to have him centered on the right side, and also looking out of frame to the right. The balance feels wrong.
This box art looks a little better in-hand than in the scan, because there are several shiny foil elements like the wordmark and the baseball laces.
MLB 08 The Show – It’s about as basic as it gets: baseball player action shot pasted over a photo of his home stadium. But there’s something good about the look in his face admiring the homer he just sent flying. And while I might make fun of “giant Godzilla-sized Ryan Howard stomps around Citizens Bank Park,” Howard is a giant power hitter, so it’s not totally inappropriate. Very basic but reasonably effective.
MLB 09 The Show – The same as above, but with Dustin Pedroia towering over Fenway. It’s a little more discordant when the gigantic star standing astride his home park is 5’9″ 170 lbs in real life. There’s also a little more of a feeling that Pedroia just hit a lazy infield fly here, based on the angle he’s looking up in the air. But he’s dirtied up his uniform, and there’s something appealing about putting the iconic short guy superstar of the moment on your video game cover. NBA 2K should put Muggsy Bogues on the box someday.
MLB 11 The Show – The same problem as MLB 13 with too many feature-specific icons, but I’m sure the designers had no choice. Otherwise I can’t complain too much about this cover. The pose is a bit awkward showing Mauer’s back, but we can see his face too. Looks like a follow-through after he hit a foul ball down the left field line. The background is a combination of dirt, baseball seams, and a shade that evokes blue jeans. It’s American-made, alright. Our cover star is a catcher, so this game isn’t afraid to get dirty. The dirt combined with the outline around his hands makes me think of Borderlands.
MLB 12 The Show – This one’s got the same icon sickness, but it’s composed the other elements a little more naturally to fill in the space. Adrián González is on the left-hand side but looking right, and the bat fills the space beneath the logo. A-Gon’s look falls into the uncanny valley for me here. I wish I had a slightly better eye to know what percentage of this is pure illustration and how much is an edited photo. I think it may not be physically possible to unleash a power swing while holding a bored, open-mouthed stare.
D tier
MLB 10 The Show – Similar to Cutch above, this cover feels a little out of balance. Mauer’s whole body is on the left side as he looks out of frame to the left, and the other Mauer photo is too backgrounded by the blue shade to give any balance. The choice of photos is also odd: Are we again looking at Mauer’s back just so we can see his name? Were they concerned we wouldn’t recognize their cover star? The catching photo also looks pained and awkward. It looks like Mauer is struggling with back pain in an infomercial. “There has to be a better way.”
MLB The Show 25 – The game isn’t out yet, so no high-res scan available for another week or two, and it’s possible something could change, maybe. The key art got criticism when it was announced, partly for the hedge-y choice of cover stars (and no Bobby Witt Jr.), partly for what some called lazy design.
It’s true that more than any other cover on this list, the photos of the cover stars are nearly unedited standard action shots from games. MLB 07 is a little similar, though the central photo at least looks like a low angle, so maybe not something ripped straight from a Topps card. The Skenes and Elly poses look decent, though Gunnar looks a bit dorky (he often does, but not always).
Then the three photos are layered on top of each other with a slight shadow (and some color outline elements for a little more layering). They feel really disconnected. It makes me imagine a baseball game where Skenes is about to pitch to Gunnar, only for Elly to plow into Skenes mid-delivery.
There are little chevron arrows scattered through the foreground and background. I think the idea is road signs and tire tracks, for “Road to the Show,” but there’s not a ton of space for it in the box art. It’s at least colorful
MLB The Show 22 – Hard to screw up a slam dunk cover athlete pick like Shohei Ohtani, but I think they blew it on this one. The main photo shows Ohtani pursing his lips during a home run trot. It’s a really strange choice of photo. The face says “mild boredom” or maybe “quiet confidence” at best. Something about the angle makes him look oddly chubby for the most athletic man on the planet.
Then there are hitting and pitching poses in the background. The concept makes sense, but neither photo looks too impressive, and there’s a motion effect on both that doesn’t work for me.
The big sea of red matches the Angels color of course, but also communicates “Japan” to me, which feels unnecessary. Then the background texture is a combination of comic book-like pointillism dots (all in shades of red) and the word “Sho-Time” written randomly around the background. I don’t care for this one at all, and it should have been an easy winner.
MLB The Show 23 – It’s colorful, it’s fun, it’s eye-catching… It’s just not very baseball. I link this cover in my head with the box art for NHL 23, which similarly communicates youth, fun, and… palm trees on a hockey game?
Jazz Chisholm Jr. was a confusing choice at the time, and his subsequent play and clubhouse battles haven’t made his choice as cover athlete look better. But more than that, it’s a very basic studio photo from straight on, with blah lighting. It’s not really a “baseball” look, with a fashionable but pretty normal pair of glasses. I don’t really remember seeing Jazz wear this type of glasses on or off the field, so it’s not an iconic look. The background evokes maybe a ’50s or ’60s graphic design to me, vaguely, that doesn’t really match anything else.
F tier
MLB The Show 19 – To be fair, this was a rush job. Bryce Harper was announced as the cover athlete while entering free agency. So it was introduced with a bit of intrigue… Not only are we waiting to find out what team gets to employ Harper, that team will also get on the cover of The Show! The game was announced with this temp art of Harper in a logo-less hoodie:
The outfit looks nothing like baseball of course, but this temp box art has better composition and a better photo…
Well, Harper took much longer than expected to find a home, finally signing with the Phillies on March 2nd, 2019. This is after Spring Training stars, and only a few weeks before the game’s release. So I have no idea what the scramble was like behind the scenes to get any cover made and printed at all.
But nevertheless, it’s a terrible box art. Harper’s just in a studio, staring straight at the camera, looking out of place and odd in a Phillies uniform and helmet. And the art has gotten worse over the years, as Harper quickly built a visual persona with the Phillies (long hair, Phanatic bandana, etc.) that looks nothing like this photo. The final result looks like a temp placeholder. And despite being a certain Hall of Famer with a distinct look, Harper manages to look like a generic Road to the Show player here.
Final thoughts
A few thoughts came to me going through the full list:
- There are a weird number of covers where the player’s back is to the camera (06, 09, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17).
I wonder if they’re frequently afraid the cover star isn’t recognizable enough (an MLB problem as much as an MLB The Show problem), so they want to make sure their name is visible. Recently, they’ve pivoted to just putting the star’s name on the cover, which seems more reasonable to me. - It remains odd that Mike Trout hasn’t sniffed a console game cover, with his full career coming in the time period here. The Show‘s been criticized recently for some second-tier cover star choices, but they’ve sprung for Judge, Ohtani, Harper, and Ortiz at or near the peaks of their careers in the past. There’s the rumor that mobile game endorsements like with MLB 9 Innings have kept him tied up, which is a shame.
- I think I actually prefer The Show‘s cover art to Madden‘s work over the same time period. The recent NBA 2K covers blow both out of the water though:
Rivers of VC money will let you afford some top-tier artists and graphic designers I guess.