Product Description

MLB Front Office Manager lets you do everything a real-life baseball GM can do to develop a team from Spring Training through a full MLB season, into the playoffs and the World Series. Using Major League teams and players, you will be able to create your own fictional baseball universe and build a reputation into elite status. You can replace aging veterans with rookies, scout the Minor Leagues, make blockbuster trades, and even participate in bidding wars for posted players from Japan as they make their way to the Hall of Fame.

MLB Front Office Manager offers two distinct game modes. Become the GM in Career Mode, and manage a team through a 30-year career that will hopefully lead to the Hall of Fame. As your knowledge and skill progresses over time, you will gain points to improve various areas and help the team win games as a result. With Online Fantasy Mode, create an online head-to-head management experience. With up to 30 Managers in the league, you can compete against friends to see who has what it takes to be the best.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3354 in Video Games
• Brand: 2K Sports
• Model: 710425395215
• Released on: 2009-01-26
• ESRB Rating: Everyone
• Platform: Xbox 360
• Dimensions: .25 pounds

Features

• Develop a team from Spring Training to full MLB season
• Major League teams & players
• Create your own fictional baseball universe
• Career Mode
• Online Fantasy Mode

Amazon.com Product Description
MLB Front Office Manager gives fans the chance to experience their dream job as a Big League General Manager. Make trades, sign free agents, draft prospects and manage games all the way from Spring Training through the Playoffs. Featuring deep gameplay modes and a unique presentation style, MLB Front Office Manager is the only MLB licensed game to give fans total control of an MLB franchise.

Using Major League teams and players, you will be able to create your own fictional baseball universe and build a reputation into elite status. You can replace aging veterans with rookies, scout the Minor Leagues, make blockbuster trades, and even participate in bidding wars for posted players from Japan as they make their way to the Hall of Fame.

MLB Front Office Manager offers two distinct game modes. Become the GM in Career Mode, and manage a team through a 30-year career that will hopefully lead to the Hall of Fame. As your knowledge and skill progresses over time, you will gain points to improve various areas and help the team win games as a result. With Online Fantasy Mode, create an online head-to-head management experience. With up to 30 Managers in the league, you can compete against friends to see who has what it takes to be the best.

Special features include:

• Build Your Roster - An extremely deep Career Mode takes fans beyond simple trades and free signings, and allows them to fully experience the life of an MLB general manager. Manage Minor League rosters, set scouting budgets, bid for Japanese free agents, select new players in the Amateur and Rule 5 Drafts, and more.
  
• Take The Field - Manage your team’s games on the field all season long and enjoy a never-before-seen presentation style designed to resemble a real life TV broadcast.
  
• Learn From a Pro - Renowned GM Billy Beane becomes a mentor to users, providing helpful tips and insightful baseball information that even the biggest fan doesn’t know.
  
• Online Fantasy Leagues - Customize your league with fantasy drafts, modified rules and traditional Rotisserie and Head-to-Head fantasy baseball scoring systems. Also available offline against the CPU.
  
• Innovative Baseball Statistics - Evaluate talent using in-depth and authentic player statistics, as used by Billy Beane.

Customer Reviews

Decent Managing Baseball Game But It Does Have Its Flaws
Updated 2/26/09 -

I'm updating this review I think I have given it a bit too high of a score the more I play it the more I am thinking it should be 3 stars. I still think it could be 4 star quality if 2K were to come out with patches to fix the problems it has. If I had a choice between Out Of The Park Baseball or Baseball Mogul on the PC with this game on the console I would much rather play the pc version of OOTP Baseball or Baseball Mogul but this is what we have to work with for the console version I can only hope that 2K will make another one next year that is much better then this years version.

This game does have its flaws but I found it very enjoyable. Really is fun having the arbitration rules and the rule 5 draft implemented into the game. This game starts right after the 2008 World Series. First thing you will do is resign your current players and when you go into the payroll screen it will show you what players you have that are type A & B make sure to offer them arbitration so you will get compensation picks if they sign with another team. January 18th is when you put your amount offer for arbitration eligible players and you will find out if you won or lost your case threw email. After all of these processes are done you can pretty much sim it til spring training and then on to start your career. I really do recommend this game if you love stats and are into the arbitration rules & rule 5 this is definitely the game for you especially for the price of it.

The Good -

-Finally a baseball managing game for the console

-Arbitration Rules & Rule 5 Draft

-A long managing career

The Bad -

-Game menus could of been made better.

-It's hard really to know if you are in the lead in the bidding for a free agent you will get an email saying he got better offers most times he will already sign with another team when you get this email.

-AI can make some very very stupid trades ex: TB David Price for Carl Pavano..... but when a team wants to make a trade with you they look to rip you off as best they can.

-Pitchers ERA's seem very unrealistic I have played a few seasons and notice alot of pitcher's era's 6+ even only starting pitcher I had under 6 was Sabathia. My bullpen is a mess Rivera having a 7+ ERA very very unrealistic. A patch is certainly needed to fix this problem. I also noticed the problem with other teams national league seems to be a bit better but still have alot of pitchers with very high unrealistic era's.

Mixed Bag Good/Bad -

-Online franchise/fantasy league I found to be pretty enjoyable but you really need to have patience for it cause it takes about 2 minutes 30 seconds to 3 minutes for each person to load after you want to move on to the next day.

Too flawed and disappointing to recommend
Clearly MLB Front Office Manager is 2KSports' answer to rival Electronic Arts' NFL Head Coach game (which really is misnamed, as that game is more like NFL General Manager or NFL General Manager + Head Coach combined). Unfortunately, 2KSports' effort is no where near as good or enjoyable as their rivals is.

I love MLB in general, my own favorite team in particular, and playing video games that give me a chance to control my team in more ways is something that I'd really like. Sadly, MLB Front Office Manager delivers such a frustrating and disappointing experience that I can't recommend it for purchase for anyone that doesn't have a ton of patience and isn't a glutton for punishment.

Negotiating with free agents is one of the more frustrating areas as there is no negotiating at all. You make an offer, but then have no feedback as to whether or not the offer is reasonable or not until you get an e-mail saying that the player got better offers and took one of them. Uh, gee, nice to have the experience of really negotiating with the player/agent there, NOT!

There's simply not enough communication going on to tell you what you need to do and/or need to be paying attention to so you'll get a more realistic experience, and that is just what someone would be buying this game for.

Realistically, I'd recommend something like Baseball Mogul instead. For less money you'll get a better experience, though admittedly that game is for PC only and not console systems. On console systems, the current 'best' experience for baseball games is the MLB: The Show series for the Playstation consoles.

Poor effort almost not worth your time
Is there anything that IS realistic about this game, other than some of the players names? Free Agent negotiations is a joke, there are none. You make an offer, and then the player either signs with you or someone else. Heck, if I'm offering Teixeira 170 million, and boston offers him 175, I expect Boras to call me back looking for more money. Instead, if you don't pony up enough, you've got no shot at signing them, and you've no idea how much is enough.
I've got a fairly solid pitching staff, all highly rated by the games skill evaluation, and all real-world top performers, but they hardly ever win a game, and almost none of them have ERA's under 7. What's the point of evaluating talent and signing players if they don't play like they're supposed to? This is annoying enough to make the game not worth playing at all.
Then there's the player management issues. If you put a player on the DL, and bring up someone to take his place, when he comes back from the DL, you've got to get rid of someone to make room for him. OK, that's understandable, but there's no room on the AAA roster, because they've filled the vacancy you've created by promoting their player. You shouldn't have to juggle rosters all the way to A ball just to make routine player movements. If I want to send a player back down, it's the AAA team's responsibility to figure out how to make room. I doubt Brian Cashman sits around juggling AAA rosters every time the Yankees call a player up or send one back down.
The game had a lot of potential, sadly it didn't live up to any of it.