Undefeated or Bust: My MLB The Show 162-0 Challenge

A Blog By Dean

Summer has started, and now I am free to spend my days going full-time for The Skippers View. When looking back at what has worked over the last year, one thing really stood out.

Yes, the time I went viral and MLB took my content and posted it all over their social media. I am not complaining about that, by the way, it was a big help.

But yeah, MLB The Show content seems to always do really well. Now, I am not going to start streaming and commenting on games, but I have a fun challenge that I want to try out. Going undefeated for a full season……..

If you follow me on Twitter, you probably saw the post below.

What I am doing is taking this team that I created and trying to manually win all 162 games. Let me break it down for you.

The Roster

Of course, I will be using the Boston Red Sox for this challenge. I am taking a team that won 130 games last season and won the World Series without losing a game in the playoffs.

Here is the current starting lineup (all are 99 overall)

C- Dean Ciriaco (Yes, I created myself, yes I am jacked.)

1B- Blaze Jordan

2B- Kristian Campbell

3B- Mikey Romero

SS- Marcelo Mayer

LF- Roman Anthony

CF- Chase Ciriaco (created by cousin)

RF- Hank Aaron (He deserves to be the Home Run King)

DH- Ted Williams

Bench

Triston Casas (75 overall)

Cedanne Rafaela (80 overall)

Connor Wong (70 overall)

Rafael Devers (89 overall)

Nazzan Zanetello (99 overall)

Here is what my pitchers look like

Yeah, so as great as having three 99 overall pitchers is, my bullpen is TERRIBLE. I have played two games so far and thrown complete games both times. If a starting pitcher goes down, I could be in big trouble.

The Rules

I have to set some ground rules.

Rule #1

I must win all 162 regular-season games, the All-Star Game, and all playoff games. If I lose any game, I have to sim the rest of the season and go to the next year.

Rule #2

All the hitters I have are the hitters I have to keep for as long as I am doing this challenge. I can trade for pitchers, but I cannot use any of my 99 overall hitters to acquire new pitchers.

I would have to go into the farm system to make trades or naturally develop new hitters.

Rule #3

No more editing players. Once the season starts, I cannot edit players. While that might not sound like a big deal, being that most are 99, if I lose the challenge and have to keep advancing the years, the players will regress.

Being that I am not allowed to trade for any hitters, I have a somewhat limited window here.

Rule #4

I have to play all games until at least the 6th inning, then I can manually simulate half innings if I like.

I only see myself doing this with massive leads. As you saw, my bullpen is terrible, so I won’t want to risk it.

Rule #5

At no point can I ever switch teams to try and win a game.

Rule #6

Once Williams makes up the 727 games he missed in real life, I have to drop both Aaron and him.

I put Ted Williams and Hank Aaron on this team to make sure they hit some milestones. For Aaron, I wanted him to be the true home run king (he is in this franchise because of the first season I simulated.) With Williams, I wanted to play with him for the amount of time that he missed serving the United States.

Rule #7

Whoever I face in the World Series, I make all their players 99 overall.

Rule #8

If I don’t complete the challenge before school starts, I cannot make fun of Brett for the rest of the year.

This one would be really tough for me to do. If you don’t know Brett, you probably don’t, he is the Co-Founder of The Skippers View. One of my favorite pastimes is making fun of him in blogs or in our group chats whenever he seemingly disappears from doing Skippers View work for weeks at a time. He will never admit it, but I calling him out in front of people does get him to do stuff… on occasion. The stakes are big for me here.

I told one of our subscribers about this, and they immediately asked me to stream the games onto X. I really don’t have the equipment to do that from my Xbox at the moment. However, I promise to try and figure out a way to do it where it looks good. I will, without a doubt, do it once the playoffs come.

Best place to follow along will be over on Twitter, but I will do blog updates as well.