Alright, so I’ve been putting a lot of hours into MLB The Show 23 lately, mostly diving deep into Franchise mode again. It’s my usual time sink. And one thing that always kinda sits in the back of my mind is that ‘durability’ rating on players.
I started my latest franchise just playing it straight out of the box, didn’t touch any sliders or settings related to injuries or durability. Just wanted to see how the default game felt. You know, you draft your team, make some trades, and get the season going. For the first month or two, things seemed kinda random. My star hitter with like 90 durability? Pulled a hamstring running to first. Out for 3 weeks. Okay, stuff happens, I guess. But then my aging reliever with durability in the 40s pitched three days straight and was perfectly fine. Seemed a bit weird, honestly.
Digging into the Durability Thing
So, after seeing those inconsistencies, I decided I needed to mess with it myself. I went into the sliders, you know, the injury frequency ones. First, I cranked the main injury slider way up, just to see what would happen. Man, it was brutal. Suddenly, guys were dropping like flies. It wasn’t even realistic anymore, just felt like constant trips to the IL menu. My training staff must’ve been working overtime, probably hated me.
That wasn’t fun, so I reset that and thought, okay, maybe it’s more about the individual player ratings. I started specifically targeting players with super high durability in trades and free agency. Built a team that looked like it was made of iron, on paper at least. Most guys were 85+ durability.
- Did it stop injuries completely? Nope. Still had guys go down with fluke injuries, diving catches, HBPs.
- Did it seem to reduce the nagging, smaller injuries? Yeah, I think so. Fewer ‘day-to-day’ things, less ’10-day IL’ stints for minor strains.
- The guys with lower durability I kept around? They definitely seemed more prone to getting sidelined for longer periods if something did happen.
Then I tried the opposite. Got curious. Tanked a team and deliberately picked up guys with glass bones, basically. Durability ratings mostly under 60. Kept the injury sliders at default this time. It was noticeable. More fatigue issues, more random ‘soreness’, and yeah, when someone got hurt, it often felt like a longer-term thing. Managing the roster became a total headache, constantly shuffling players up and down from the minors.
My Takeaway on It
So after playing around with it, messing with sliders, focusing on player ratings, here’s what I kinda landed on. The durability rating does matter, but it’s not an absolute shield or a guarantee of injury. It feels more like a probability influencer. High durability seems to lower the chance of those smaller, nagging injuries and maybe helps guys recover faster or avoid injury from fatigue.
Low durability definitely makes players feel more fragile, more susceptible to getting knocked out for a few weeks or even months from plays that wouldn’t bother a high-durability guy. But the random, unavoidable injuries? They still happen regardless. You can have a 99 durability god get plunked by a fastball and break his wrist. That’s just baseball, I guess, and the game seems to reflect that part okay.
Honestly, fiddling with the injury sliders too much just broke the realism for me. Keeping them near default and just paying attention to the actual player durability ratings when building my roster felt like the best way to handle it. It adds a layer of team building you gotta consider, which is kinda cool, even if it’s frustrating when your best player goes down.
