Friday Starter is a weekly column of news and tidbits from the world of baseball video games—past and present, domestic and foreign.
Comparing likenesses in the The Show 25 update
The patch notes for MLB The Show 25‘s Game Update 10 last week said that player models were updated for 14 pros. I got curious what these mid-year player model updates look like. Are they upgrading players to use real face scans? Are they changing to match new hair, beards, or maybe even player gear the player’s really using in 2025?
Below I’ve collected screenshots from the player models before and after this patch. The before model is on the left, the after model is on the right, and I have a real photo of the player from Getty Images taken sometime this season in the middle. In a couple of cases, the player was not available in-game before this patch, so in those cases there’s no player model on the left.
Francisco Lindor is the biggest star on this list, and his updates are in both hair and equipment. His pants are now worn long and he wears light blue shoes, which both match this 2025 Getty Images photo. His sports glasses also turned into shades, which I’m not able to verify as easily if that’s a real change this year. 
Ke’Bryan Hayes got some minor equipment changes that also seem to fit his real-life style this year. His pants went from baggy over his feet to 
Paul Molitor is the lone non-current player of the group. Not sure exactly which year they were targeting with this likeness. It’s definitely an upgrade over the previous one, which looked a bit busted, frankly. Not sure the new one is a spitting image, but it’s good enough. 
Dylan Cease got his beard removed and hair lengthened a bit to match the real-life 2025 look. No other noticeable changes. 
Oscar Gonzalez wasn’t available in the pre-patch version. The new likeness looks pretty decent. I remember seeing Oscar a lot in my March to October playthrough a couple years ago, where his likeness was noticeably terrible: https://youtu.be/A6gcuSuhDqo?si=XRuzYI6sfnzYYz53&t=273 
Adley gets slightly longer hair to come a little closer to his 2025 flow. 
Nick Gonzales added a mustache in real life and in the game. It’s not a perfect match for his sheriff ‘stache, but not terrible. 
Nathan Lukes grew out his beard, and it’s replicated decently in-game. No real sign of the arm tattoo, it looks like. I wonder how often they try to get tattoos close to right? 
Far as I can tell, the sleeve color change is all that got updated. Unfortunately, he’s wearing the orange sleeves from the pre-patch version in the best photo I saw on Getty from this year. Curious how they make the decision to push an update on equipment color like this, that could change day to day. 
Braves org depth infielder Cade Bunnell is one of only two face model updates in this batch. Not sure why him, but I agree this is an upgrade. 
Bender got some more face fuzz, which looks pretty accurate. 
I can’t see anything that changes in the before and after here. And why this player, who is currently in indy ball? Mysterious! 
Another mysterious one. Spot the difference on Jorge Lopez. I can’t see anything that changed. 
Jason Alexander wasn’t even available pre-patch. Yet he’s surprisingly the most accurate likeness of everyone listed here.
(apologies to Patrick Murphy, who I forgot to get screenshots of and include here…)
In summary, we’ve got:
- 2 actual face geometry updates (1 for an active player)
- 3 with equipment changes
- 5 with hair or facial hair changes
- 2 with no previous likeness in 25
- 2 with no changes I can recognize
It’s not the same level of changes I expected (I thought they’d all be face model changes), but I’m still a little impressed with the level of detail they’re aiming for. If a player changes the fit of pants leg for a new season, it turns out The Show will attempt to replicate that.
Elly stole the cover
MLB The Show 25 also updated its art this past week, under the pretense that Elly de la Cruz, famous stealer of bases, stole the cover.
It kind of feels like a mobile game gimmick to update the key art for your game to catch attention. But I think this is, while still not exactly high-effort, a better key art than what the game actually got:
No awkward layering, good action shot of a cool player, and works better at smaller resolutions than cramming all three in.
I assume they’ll do similar things with Skenes and Henderson later as well. Skenes still looks like the actual superstar of the three cover athletes, so he’ll fit well. Gunnar… is playing just okay for a Baltimore Orioles team that’s having a hellish season. Hopefully he and his team will pick up the pace a bit to make that less awkward later this year.
Super Famista encyclopedia article and scans
The slowly growing encyclopedia section of this website now includes an in-depth page on Super Famista, the first Super Famicom Namco baseball game. This includes full scans of the box art and instruction manual. The manual’s got a lot of great illustrations in it, so I’m pretty proud to have it accessible online like this now.
Song of the Week
The Famista Evolution music video by MCU, made for the game’s release on Switch in 2018. A chiptune rap with a lot of a Famista-kun mascot messing around.