MLB Tap Sports Baseball 2021 may be targeted towards baseball fans but that does not mean that non-baseball fans can never play the game. In this guide, we’ll briefly explain the mechanics of baseball so that you can familiarize yourself with the sport and consequently allow you to understand how MLB Tap Sports Baseball 2021 works.

An Overview of Baseball

A game of baseball consists of two teams with nine players each. One game has nine innings(rounds) and each of those innings contains two halves. In each half, one team bats while the other one defends. For the sake of the explanation, we’ll refer the batting team as Team A and the defending team as Team B. The fundamental goal of each baseball team is to garner the most points – more specifically called as ‘runs’ – after the nine innings.

Runs can be garnered when a player from Team A manages to run from first base up to the home base in a counterclockwise fashion. The bases of a baseball field are arranged like a diamond with the home base at the bottom, first base at the right, second base at the top, and third base at the left. When a Team A player manages to successfully bat the baseball thrown by Team B’s pitcher, they must quickly run from home base, then to first base, then to second base, then to third base, then finally back to home to win a run for their team. Note that they must always physically touch one base first before proceeding to the next.

Team B’s goal is to prevent Team A’s players from attaining a run and that is why Team B’s players are dispersed over the baseball field. More specifically, three players are on the outfield, four on the infield, and the remaining two are the pitcher and catcher respectively. The nine defensive players and their roles are summarized in the table below: 

When Team B successfully stops Team A’s player from achieving a run, Team A is then given an ‘out’. When Team A receives three outs, the first half of the inning ends and Team A and Team B switch roles for the second half.

Team B has several ways of outing Team A. Firstly, they can hastily pass the baseball to the player guarding the base that Team A’s batter is running to before said batter reaches that base. For example, Team A’s batter bats the ball and attempts to run towards first base, but Team B’s 2B catches the ball and passes it to 1B. The 1B manages to catch the ball before Team A’s batter touches first base; therefore, Team A receives one out. Secondly, if Team B’s player has the ball in their glove, then they can tag Team A’s running batter by touching them with the glove containing the ball to out them. Thirdly, any of Team B’s outfield players can catch the ball before it lands on the ground to out Team A.

Team A themselves can also receive an out if they acquire three strikes. One strike is acquired when the batter attempts to bat the pitcher’s ball but fails to do so.

Creating Your Own MLB Team

The most distinct feature of MLB Tap Sports Baseball 2021 is the ability to create your own baseball team consisting of real professional players from the MLB such as Juan Soto, Mike Trout, Jacob deGrom, and much more. 

Personalize Your Team

The game also allows you to express your loyalty by letting you select your favorite MLB team. Your team’s logo will be the logo of whatever team you choose as your favorite. Moreover, you can also give a custom nickname to your own team.

Your selected favorite team determines the uniform of your team, and you can purchase an alternate design of the uniform for 500 gold (the game’s premium currency).

You can change teams for 150 gold.

Craft Strategies

Team customization in this game is not restricted to aesthetics as you can also tweak your team’s overall strategy during games. 

In the ‘Strategy’ menu, you can set the likelihoods of your team doing actions such as bunting, stealing, doing walks, and the like. As a beginner, it is recommended to keep the settings the way they are as these strategy settings are already advanced baseball jargon. However, what you could consider is the batting order.

You can manually set the order by which your players will bat and doing this becomes particularly important when you have a player in your roster that has strong batting capabilities, and you want them to bat first or save them for last.

Choose Your Ballpark

You can even choose which ballpark you want to play your games in. It does not matter what team you select as your favorite as you can select any ballpark from any MLB team. Additionally, you can even set the time of day of your ballpark. 

Play MLB Tap Sports Baseball 2021 on PC

Play MLB Tap Sports Baseball 2021 on PC

Playing a Full Game

In MLB Tap Sports 2021, you can play against the teams created by other players either casually or competitively.

You can quickly enter a game by going to the ‘Games’ tab. From there, you can choose between a quick match

Before starting each game, you are informed which team you are going up against and more importantly, the game also projects a bar that gauges your team’s power compared to the opponent’s. The bar is split into two halves with each half representing a team’s power and when one team’s half exceeds the middle of the whole bar, it means that that team is stronger.

If your team happens to be weaker than the opponent, you can use boosters which will boost your team’s power by a certain percentage. Gold needs to be spent for boost and better boosts require more gold. However, you can garner a free 5% boost by watching an advertisement. It is recommended to always watch an ad before game to garner that free 5% buff.

In MLB Tap Sports Baseball 2021, you will only control the batting part of the game. The half inning wherein your opponent bats and your team pitches and defends is automatically done by the game. 

 The controls are super simple – you just need to click anywhere on the screen to swing the bat. Your player successfully batting the baseball is not always guaranteed as it depends on many variables (i.e., player stats, pre-game boosts).

Only swing the bat when you are sure that the baseball will fly towards the strike zone, which is a small, rectangular space in front of the batter. If the opponent pitcher throws the baseball such that it goes outside the strike zone and the batter does not attempt to swing the bat, then that is considered one ‘ball’. If the pitcher receives four balls, your batter becomes privileged to travel to first base. 

However, if you attempt to bat a ball that’s outside the strike zone, then you will receive one ‘strike’. Similarly, failing to bat a baseball that properly travels through the strike zone also warrants one strike. If your player receives, three strikes, the entire team will receive one out.

In summary, you need to be very wary and must always watch where the baseball travels before making the split-second decision to swing the bat. In a game, you will do this for nine innings but you can also automatically play an inning by clicking on ‘Autoplay Inning’.

A sharp eye may not be enough as you also need to have strong players to guarantee successfully batting the baseball. To know more about making your players stronger, you can check out this team improvement guide here.