MLB The Show snubs the Texas Rangers for the cover of MLB The Show 24

Tuesday was a big day for gamers as MLB The Show released their cover athlete for the 2024 edition of the game. The last three cover athletes were Jazz Chisholm, Shohei Ohtani, and Fernando Tatis Jr. The question was who would grace the cover for 2024? Some Texas Rangers fans had hopes that Texas winning their first World Series would put Corey Seager or Adolis Garcia on the cover. Mock covers had been made with that hope.

That would have been an amazing cover. Fans retweeted this throughout Monday with the hope that this would be the cover.

MLB The Show streamed a cover reveal show with David Ortiz in the Dominican Republic. It was then revealed that the cover athlete for 2024 would be Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

Guerrero is one of the more well known names and is the reigning HR derby champion. The question becomes why now? Guerrero is coming off a massively disappointing season. He has seen his HR totals drop from 48 in 2021, 32 in 2022, and down to 26 in 2023. He is receiving this honor at a relatively low point in his career.

Who should have been on the cover?

This being a Texas Rangers site I would have loved to have seen Adolis Garcia after what he did in the postseason. I think Corey Seager would have been a great cover athlete. Both led the way in October and had moments that will live forever.

There are also non-Texas Rangers that would have been better choices. Ronald Acuna Jr had an unreal season and is the reigning NL MVP and deserves the recognition. They could have put Ohtani on the cover with a Dodgers uniform and played into the history of the franchise. They could have done a historic cover and put Willie Mays on there. Aaron Judge is also an option and probably should have been the cover for 2023 after his 62-home run season. Mookie Betts is a superstar who needs to be marketed more and would have been a fun cover athlete.

The main point is that this is another weird choice for the flagship baseball video game. Much like baseball itself, this game should be marketing the biggest stars of the game. The football equivalent is Madden and every year the biggest names are on the cover of that game. Lamar Jackson, Patrick Mahomes, Tom Brady, and Rob Gronkowski are just some of the names that have appeared in the last few seasons. No offense to Vladimir Guerrero Jr, but he is not on the top tier of baseball superstars. He could rejoin that group with a good 2024, but he has been declining for two seasons now. Jazz Chisholm was a weird choice for 2023, but they wanted to emphasize the Negro Leagues and chose an African-American player to highlight that.

The game I am sure will be fun and I can't wait till it comes out on March 19th. I am hoping that the game has some sort of acknowledgment of Texas as the World Series champion. Maybe it is part of the intro video to the game. We will just have to wait and see.

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