MLB Front Office Manager

Sabermetricians, rejoice! You finally have your own game on 360. As the latest of 2K Sports’ MLB spin-off games, Front Office Manager focuses on the owner’s booth instead of the field, allowing you to construct a roster however you see fit, and manage the budget instead of the 25 guys in the dugout.

Almost the polar opposite of the MLB 2K series, the real fun of Front Office Manager happens during the winter months when the Rule 5 draft, arbitration negotiations, and free-agent signings take place. Unfortunately, it mostly feels like you’re being charged $40 for something that offers little beyond what you’ve seen in previous games’ GM and Owner modes.

Sure, it’s fun for us true baseball geeks to drill down into nitty-gritty areas like scouting and detailed contract negotiations, but this spreadsheet-sim-turned-full-game doesn’t stand well on its own. There’s an on-field manager mode where you can give basic orders (bunt/steal/hit-and-run/pitch around/ etc.) to your players, but you never feel like you’re really affecting the outcome of the action.

Furthermore, when playing as the Diamondbacks and trading Eric Byrnes (see ya, Flipper!), the game didn’t seem to mind that he has a no-trade clause in real-life, even though you can negotiate NTCs when signing free agents. And poor sorting options in the menus — like painful email management and categories that don’t remember how you’ve ordered them after you’ve clicked deeper into the interface — are really inexcusable in a team-management sim. A fantasy baseball mode is also included, but it offers no incentive to forego joining up with friends for free on any one of myriad websites, instead. Sadly, this game’s VORP is barely positive.