Glu Games is known across various gaming genres as one of the heavy hitters in the mobile gaming scene. And speaking of heavy hitters, the company’s latest baseball title, MLB Tap Sports Baseball 2020, recently dropped on both iOS and Android, once again offering baseball fans around the world a chance to control their favorite teams and manage rosters packed with real-life players from the current season.
We’re not even sure when the 2020 MLB season will start due to the coronavirus outbreak putting the world’s sporting leagues on hold, but this game could, at least, give you a chance to manage an MLB team and play some ball against other human-controlled or AI-controlled teams, depending on the mode.
One beginner’s guide simply wouldn’t cut it when it comes to a game such as this one. This is one of the longest-running, most in-depth MLB simulations available for mobile gamers, and there are far more ways of playing this title than simply competing against other human managers in nine-inning games and upgrading your roster as you acquire newer and better players and level up your existing ones.
You’ve also got Season Mode as the primary means of earning Pennants that you can use to further improve your roster, you’ve got special events, and you’ve also got features such as Franchise Players and Ice Packs/Energy Drinks that deserve some attention, given how they could benefit your club in certain occasions. So join us now as we bring you our next MLB Tap Sports Baseball 2020 strategy guide, which includes a bunch of tips and tricks for the aforementioned features and more.
1. About Season Mode – It’s As Close As You Can Get To A Standard MLB Season
Once you get promoted to Novice from Beginner, one very important play mode of MLB Tap Sports Baseball 2020 will become available to play, and that’s Season Mode. As we briefly explained in the beginner’s guide, Season Mode features games against AI managers, but there’s far more to that as far as this mode is concerned.
As explained in the mode’s Overview section, Season Mode consists of 116 games — that’s 46 fewer games than a standard MLB regular season, and while that may still seem like a bit too much for some players, this is as close as you could get to being able to play an MLB season like they do in real life. Eight teams per league will make the playoffs — that’s the top two teams in each league’s East, Central, and West Divisions, plus the next best teams in terms of win-loss record, regardless of division.
While the game promises huge rewards for those who make it to the playoffs or better yet, end up winning the World Series, it is also possible to win rewards simply by completing a game. Regardless whether you win or lose, though you can certainly expect much more if you win, you can pick up some rewards for each of the 116 regular-season games, and these will typically come in the form of Pennants. Contrary to what they mean in the real world of baseball, Pennants in MLB Tap Sports Baseball 2020 are another resource you’ll want to load up on as you improve your team, and we’ll be explaining them in greater detail in the very next tip.
As the game also clarifies, your progression in Season Mode is independent from your team progression in standard games against human opponents — that means player stats and team standings in your season will be considered separate. You will also have the option to reset your season if you’re not happy with the results thus far, but it’s also important that you make sure that your team’s overall strength is at 20,000 or better in order to stay competitive — improve your roster first before committing full-time to any season you start! Reseting your current season could cost you a pretty penny in terms of gold — when we attempted a reset after just one game, the reset price was set at 345 gold, and that’s something you definitely do not want to part with for the simple reason that your club isn’t up to speed with your AI competition.
2. How Do Pennants Work?
As promised, we’re going to be discussing pennants up next, and just like XP for leveling up your players, these could be very useful in improving your roster in general. But while XP is player-specific and team upgrades work for all your batters, all your pitchers, or everyone on the club, pennants work in such a way that you’re upgrading based on your team’s players and their real-life team in the MLB.
As you’ll see in the Pennants section under Team, your team will be subdivided into several categories based on actual MLB teams — for example, you may see that you have four real-life Phillies, followed by three real-life Braves, two members of the real-life Marlins, Yankees, and Nationals rosters, and so on in your team’s active lineup.
Upgrading one group of players will cost 5 pennants for the first one, then this will increase to 10 pennants, 15 pennants, 20 pennants, and so on, with the percentage of improvement progressively increasing with each upgrade. For example, this figure may be at 2 percent once you’re at level 2 for any given real-life team-based category, and that will increase to 3 percent once you pay 15 pennants to upgrade to level 3.
Obviously, you should prioritize certain pennant upgrades over others, especially if you’ve only played a few games in your current season thus far. Pick the real-life teams where you have the most players on your club, as well as those where your best players are playing. So if your best player is the only player suiting up in the actual MLB for the Minnesota Twins, for instance, you’ll want to prioritize the Twins category in your upgrades, even if you’ve got far more on other individual teams.
Granted, the improvements may not be evident right away. But if you use your pennants smartly, these can have quite an impact on your team’s overall strength, thus helping you become more competitive in other game modes, including those always-important standard games against human-controlled opponents and playoff games that could help you make it to the next tier!
3. Should You Get A Temporary Boost By Hiring A Franchise Player?
Early on while playing MLB Tap Sports Baseball 2020, you’ll have a chance to instantly improve your team by hiring a Franchise Player. These are real-life MLB superstars whose in-game base ratings are close to, if not more than 100, thus giving you an instant threat in the batting order — as far as we’ve seen so far, pitchers are not included among the available Franchise Players, though we would understand this, given how pitchers need to rest for several games before you can use them again.
Franchise Coins are your currency for purchasing — or should we say, renting — Franchise Players, and you can generally earn them as a reward for promotion or by performing well or winning limited-time special events. You can also buy them with gold at the in-game store, with one Franchise Coin costing 160 gold, three worth 400 gold, and ten costing 1,000 gold — buying in bulk would obviously make sense here, but as we’ll be explaining in a bit, you probably won’t need to have a Franchise Player on your club at all times, great as they are in boosting your team strength and giving you a huge advantage over opposing pitchers.
Typically, Franchise Players cost one Franchise Coin if you want to hire them for five games, or two if their ratings are north of 100. Extending their contracts by a couple games will cost you more Franchise Coins, and doing so beyond that extension will set you back by costing you a generous amount of gold. That’s quite the investment, so if you keep that in mind, your best best would be to hire a Franchise Player only if you’re preparing for a Playoff series against a stronger team. Otherwise, you should be okay sticking with the players you currently have on your roster, and improving them as you normally would. Great ratings won’t mean much, after all, if you don’t have your timing down.
In other words, Franchise Players are generally a luxury in the world of MLB Tap Sports Baseball 2020, so you can, in most cases, get by with or without them.
4. Create A Legend And Add Him To Your Batting Order
In the Team menu, you will see a button on top that says My Legend, and if you’ve played previous editions of MLB Tap Sports Baseball, you should know how this feature works. But in case you haven’t used it in the past, or if you’re a first-time player wondering whether you should bother with adding a “Legend” or not, we’ll discuss why you should give this a try and make sure you’re using the feature the right way.
Once you reach the Beginner tier, the option to create a Legend will become available for the first time. This will allow you to choose the player’s name and customize their appearance, batting stance, uniform number, and other cosmetic details that won’t have much of a bearing, if any at all, on their performance. You can change these pieces of information and your player’s appearance at any time without having to pay anything.
The main things to pay attention, however, are the player type and position, and you wouldn’t be able to change these unless you reset your Legend, which will cost you a whopping 500 gold! (You can change position from the Legend’s current position to Designated Hitter and back, though you would not, for instance, be able to convert your Catcher Legend into a Second Baseman or Outfielder.)
It’s very important to make sure you’re sure about the player type you want — we would suggest choosing a type that matches your playing style, such as opting to create a power hitter if you’re someone who likes to knock it out of the park and score tons of home runs, or opting for speed if you feel it’s more important to get on base and possibly get closer to home by gambling and stealing some bases. You can also take team weaknesses into account, such as going the power hitter route if your lineup’s substantially lacking in pop.
As for the position, this is just as essential when it comes to creating a Legend who will be worth adding to your lineup. It’s also recommended to hold off on creating your Legend until you’ve added a few good players to your roster, as this will give you a clearer idea of your biggest weakness in the batting order. In our case, we created a power-hitting Catcher because we didn’t have too many home run hitters and were noticeably weak at that position.
5. Claim Your Rewards Regularly Via The Moments Feature
Aside from the usual method of logging in every day, completing achievements, and getting promoted by winning playoff games/series, one great way to load up on those rewards is the Moments feature, which can be found under the Store option. As the game will tell you, these rewards can be claimed at least once per day, with free rewards available every six hours or so. After claiming these rewards, you can watch an ad video for another pull, after which it will cost you at least 100 gold to keep claiming rewards via Moments. What’s notable here, however, is the fact that the rewards — which are claimed simply by tapping on one of the three card-shaped icons with question marks on them — get better for each successive pull.
Most of the time, you will be getting a few thousands worth of cash when you claim rewards via Moments. However, there’s a smaller possibility that you may get bonus X, as well as #1 Draft Picks, First-Round Draft Picks, and Bonus Games. It’s always good to have a steady stream of freebies coming in on a daily basis, so make sure to visit Moments whenever you could in order to add to your resources!
6. Take Part In The Limited-Time Events
Just as usual, MLB Tap Sports Baseball 2020 has several limited-time events that could give you a chance to earn amazing rewards if you’re among the higher-ranked players by the time the event is all over and done. We’re talking high draft picks, Franchise Coins, gold, and in some cases, highly-rated players who could dramatically improve your roster, so if you’ve got enough free time on your hands, we suggest joining these events, taking part as often as you could, and moving up the ranks instead of settling for the basic, lowest-tier rewards, which would usually include little more than a few thousands in cash. These events will pop up in the Games menu, so keep a close eye on them when they pop up, and leave your notifications on, as the game can give you a buzz when a new event is launching, or has just launched!
The types of events you can take part in may vary — these may include task-based challenges that may require you to spend as much gold as possible, but usually require you to take part in some sort of mini game. For instance, the Extra Bases event would pit your club against a specific pitcher (we got the Phillies’ Zack Wheeler during the last time we played it), with the goal being to get on base on consecutive occasions.
In here, the points multiplier increases for each time you rack up a successful hit, and decreases if you aren’t able to get the hit in one way or another, may it be by grounding/flying/popping/lining out, striking out, or what have you. The challenge ends after you fail to get a hit three times in a row, and your points will be added up to your total and accumulating for each time you play it until the event expires.
7. Do You Need Ice Wraps And Energy Drinks?
As a first-time MLB Tap Sports Baseball 2020 player, you will start out, as usual, with a handful of Ice Packs and Energy Drinks. The former boost is used to instantly rest a tired pitcher, while the latter boost can help fading, or tiring pitchers remain strong even as they pitch more innings than what they’re used to. There’s no such thing in the real world that could instantly help pitchers get back to 100 percent, and you may be tempted to stock up on them as you earn more of each via ranking up/getting promoted, completing events, and more. You can also buy them at the Boosts section of the in-game store, with one Energy Drink costing 30 gold and one Ice Wrap costing 80 gold. But are they really necessary?
Between these two boosts, Ice Wraps may be used more frequently than Energy Drinks, especially ahead of important playoff games or series. At the end of the day, your batters can only do so much to help your team win, as a weak pitching rotation/bullpen could cost you a ton of runs and cost you an otherwise winnable game if you aren’t careful! That’s why you may want to use an Ice Wrap on your ace pitcher before heading to the playoffs. As for Energy Drinks, they’re best used on a gassed pitcher — particularly a reliever — if your game has gone into extra innings and you’re out of workable options in your bullpen. Fortunately, games only seldom go into extra innings, much less into the 12th inning and beyond — that’s why there’s really no need to break the bank on Energy Drinks.
8. Increasing Your All-Star Level – What’s In It For You?
One of the features that don’t get discussed too often in the MLB Tap Sports Baseball series is the All-Star level. This is the game’s equivalent of VIP rewards in other games, and in order to increase your All-Star level, you’re going to need enough All-Star Tickets to level up — as the game explains, you can earn them by playing the game, buying new bundles with real-life currency, ranking up from one tier to the next, and “more.” That’s right — this is one feature that may require paying to win if you want to level up quickly, but this isn’t absolutely necessary if you consider that there are ways to get more All-Star Tickets without parting with any real-life currency.
There is, however, a lot to gain by increasing your All-Star level, and you can view this by tapping on the All-Stars button on the upper right side of the Games menu. Each time you level up, you will get a wide range of one-time-only and permanent rewards, with the former including #1 Draft Picks, Ice Wraps, Bonus Games, gold, XP, pennants, and a lot more, and the latter coming in the form of additional roster space (you would be able to keep five more players on your roster once you reach level 2, for instance), and once you reach level 6, you’ll be able to skip one round in the Walk Off Hero mode, which we may be discussing in a subsequent guide.
For an idea of what you can expect once you reach level 8, which is the maximum All-Star level, you will get 2,000 gold, 8,500 XP, 3 percent extra cash from all events, boxes, and bundles, 100 Evo Tokens, three NL West, NL East, AL West, and AL East Draft Picks each, and 20 additional roster spots, among other rewards!
And this is where we end our second guide for MLB Tap Sports Baseball 2020. Don’t forget to check back, as we may come back with more tips and tricks for the game in the near future!
Bob Mills
Sunday 26th of June 2022
What is all star progression and how are points earned?