So, as usual, the Operation Sports community is on the prowl, and this is a good catch as it relates to real MLB The Show 20 minor leaguers potentially being included in the game. I was trying to confirm this theory, and was looking in the wrong spot of the Portland Sea Dogs clips in the trailer, until forum user “bcruise” told me to look at the UI.
Voila. You can see this at :56 seconds into the trailer. The original note about this came from forum user “mcarr74” so holler at those two for this one. All of this speculation stems from the livestream schedule that was released that has a bullet point that says “full minor league rosters” as a highlight. We speculated this could just mean that you get more players for your Single-A rosters (you have previously been capped at having less than 25 players on those active rosters), but it could actually mean “full minors” with real player names.
Konner Wade is a 28-year-old pitcher who has made it as high as Triple-A, but he has never been on an MLB roster. This is important because we have had minor leaguers in the game before who have accrued MLB service time. We have not had MiLB players in the game who have not accrued that service time. Is this confirmation we have minor leaguers in the game? No, because maybe there’s some loophole I’m forgetting, but it’s certainly smoke.
Now, I say it’s only smoke as well because there is a fake player named “Kyle Blake” batting in the same video for the Sea Dogs. So we’re getting mixed signals, but perhaps Kyle Blake is there as a stand-in for your Road to the Show player because it also highlights goals for him during that section of the video. (Plus, we know there’s a Kyle Blake who works on The Show development team.)
Trevor Oaks is another player mentioned here, but he’s played in the MLB before, so he would normally be in the game anyway.
Whatever the case may be, good sleuthing from the OS crew as always, and we’ll just have to wait and see now what the full implementation of “full minors” really means with MLB The Show 20 minor leaguers.
UPDATE: We also have courtesy of OS user “Caulfield” a note about Giants prospect Dany Jimenez. He is another MiLB player with zero service time. He is featured in the video 48 seconds into it — note the scoreboard.
