When a new installment of MLB The Show is on the horizon, it’s tradition for fans to speculate about who this year’s cover athlete will be or should be. Perhaps more important than who the specific athlete will be though, is what type of athlete it should be. The tradition has primarily been to select a rising star who embodies everything exciting about today’s game. That makes perfect sense considering there’s a new game every year and the creators no doubt want each installment to feel fresh and current. Why linger on yesterday’s news when you can hop aboard the trending train?
That said, there is something especially alluring about the history of baseball and the icons who loom large in the sport’s lore. Perhaps an ideal cover athlete would not be a newcomer but rather a bonafide All-Star or Hall of Famer with name recognition and a truckload of cash in merch sales.
Putting Ken Griffey Jr. on the cover of The Show 17 seemed like a classy decision but also a bit of a strange one. Griffey had been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame the previous year but hadn’t played the game for at least seven years. Every subsequent release since then has seen the cover feature a star of today, someone expected to rock the league in the coming seasons. So while it’s obviously more likely that we see a younger player selected, the possibility of a veteran can’t be totally discounted, especially considering the historical circumstances surrounding the 2022 season of one vet in particular.
There is also the wild card of the special edition covers, which have only existed for the past two years. The first, The Show 21, featured Jackie Robinson, which seemed like a sensible decision given the sociopolitical climate at the time. The Show 22 went a different route, selecting Shohei Ohtani for both the regular and special edition covers. Perhaps we’ll see two different cover athletes this time around? If so, there may be one especially strong duo to consider, one that ties baseball past and present together.
As we take a look at the pros and cons of the top 3 choices for MLB The Show 23’s cover athlete, we’ll get a sense of what this choice means for the game of baseball and where the game might be headed in the near future.
MLB The Show 23 Cover Athlete Candidates
Julio Rodriguez
THE VOTES ARE IN ⚾️
MLB on FOX fans believe Julio Rodriguez should be on the cover of MLB The Show 23 🎮 pic.twitter.com/nZGxOLAH9w
— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) January 10, 2023
Seattle Mariners sensation Julio Rodriguez played his first season in the majors last year with stunning results. He was the American League Rookie of the Year and an All-Star. He finished the season with a 6.2 WAR and .853 OPS. Based on the strength of this performance, he signed a 14-year extension with the Mariners for around $400 million. Oh, and he’s only 22 years old. It’s hard to imagine a better rookie season than Rodriguez’s in 2022 and the combination of his talent and long-term commitment to Seattle bodes well for the franchise’s future. His remarkable freshman season drove up attendance and merchandise sales for the Mariners. In 2022, there were a whopping one million additional home game tickets sold than in 2021.
Rodriguez fits the mold of the last five cover athletes and is thus a heavily-favored frontrunner to grace the game’s cover this year. While most projections anticipate a 2023 performance that is slightly less impressive than last year’s, it’s only because Rodriguez has set the bar so incredibly high for himself. So it’s no surprise that informal online polls, such as one done by the MLB on Fox Twitter account, show Rodriguez as the clear cover star favorite.
Aaron Judge
New York has a new captain 🧑✈️#mlbtheshow22 #mlbtheshow pic.twitter.com/OsmvyREvr7
— MLB The Show 23 Card Art (@mlb22cardart) December 25, 2022
Judge breaks the trend of up-and-coming cover athletes, but then again Judge breaks a lot of records on the field as well. In 2022, he hit 62 home runs, shattering Roger Maris’ single-season AL home run record (also known unofficially as the non-steroid home run record). He had a WAR of 10.6, an OPS of 1.111, and .311 batting average. He was an All-Star and the 2022 MVP. After a few months of anxiety for Yankees fans, he signed a 9-year, $360 million contract that will likely keep him with the Bronx Bombers for the rest of his career. His loyalty was rewarded by the Yankees naming him their first team captain since Derek Jeter.
It doesn’t take much convincing to prove Judge’s worthiness as a cover athlete, but aside from not being a younger star, he was already on the 2018 cover. No player has made the cover twice, but again, if anyone is worthy of breaking this record, it’s Aaron Judge. One interesting possibility — if the The Show were to go all-in on Judge as the face of this year’s game — is to pair him with Derek Jeter. Judge could be the standard cover athlete while Jeter graces the special edition cover. This might be a little too much of a Yankees-centric idea for some but Jeter’s enduring popularity is undeniable. He was the subject of a recent ESPN docuseries and was second on the list of Lids’ bestselling 2022 jerseys. Matching him with Judge as the two most recent Yankee captains, the faces of baseball present and baseball past, could be a compelling idea.
Yordan Alvarez
Todays mock MLB The Show 23 cover. Yor-Dong! This is for my boy @ScoopskeeG pic.twitter.com/HfqGimXdID
— Steven Tang (@tango85_) January 20, 2023
Astros outfielder Yodan Alvarez had about as epic of a season last year as any player can have. He was an All-Star with a 6.8 WAR, 1.019 OPS, 37 dingers, and a batting average of .306. He hit a towering 450-foot home run in Game 6 of the World Series, helping to clinch the Astros’ second-ever title. He’s certainly in the conversation for one of the best hitters in all of baseball and he’s only 25, with many more great seasons likely ahead. A young World Series champion with a bright future who knocks the crap out of the ball? That’s a pretty easy choice for a cover athlete, except for the tiny detail that the Astros are the single most hated team in baseball.
Of course, the Yankees are also deeply despised by many but their popularity is enough to supersede the hatred. The Astros, unfortunately for them, do not have the advantage of being a storied franchise located in the media capital of the country. Although the sign-stealing scandal is now several years in the past, it hasn’t exactly slipped the mind of everyone forced to watch the Astros play their favorite team. Astros fans are probably tired of hearing about all this and are eager to move on from a story they no doubt consider overblown, but it is nonetheless a fact of life that hatred of the Astros unites even warring factions of baseball fans.
So while Alvarez as a player is an ideal fit for cover athlete, the fact that he wears an Astros jersey may be enough to take him out of the running.