MLB The Show 26 Missing Players: Which legends are gone?

Thanks to licensing deals and other circumstances (i.e., retirements), some MLB players who were in the past MLB The Show do not automatically come back. This only affects players who are not members of the MLB Players Association. Now that MLB The Show 26 is live, we have a good idea of who came back and who’s out.

Foreign players

Thanks to the World Baseball Classic, many notable ex-Major Leaguers like Didi Gregorius, Hyun-Jin Ryu, and Ruben Tejada were a part of the game within Diamond Dynasty. However, it’s also worth noting that many of the imports to MLB were also included in the title at launch.

Kazuma Okamoto, Munetaka Murakami, and Tatsuya Imai were all included in the game when it was released in mid-March.

This is a departure from past norms, as players like Jung Hoo Lee, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tomoyuki Sugano, and Shinnosuke Ogasawara were all added after the release of MLB The Show in the years those individuals came over from overseas foreign leagues.

Sung Mun Song, who signed with the Padres from the KBO, is not in the game as of launch.

Legends

As far as notable legends removed from the game, there are several of them. Tim Raines, Todd Helton, Frank Thomas, and Rickey Henderson are not in MLB The Show 26, even though the four are Hall of Famers and prominently featured in Diamond Dynasty over the years.

MLB The Show 25 Henderson roster — From MLB The Show 25

Jim Palmer, another Hall of Famer, is also gone.

Aside from those four, Joe Nathan, Jordan Zimmermann, Prince Fielder, Mike Lowell, Matt Holliday, Jason Kipnis, Preston Wilson, Jerry Hairston Jr., Reggie Sanders, Robb Nen, Jason Bay, Brandon Webb, Tony Clark, and Ryan Ludwick are among some of the modern-day players (dating back from the mid-1990s to the 2010s) not included this year but were in ’25.

Fernando Valenzuela and Eric Davis are gone. Don Mattingly, who was a Legend in ’25 despite not receiving a Diamond Dynasty card, is not included in ’26.

MLB The Show 25 Mattingly roster — From MLB The Show 25

Those names can be added to the list of former MLB The Show legends, one that includes the likes of Ernie Banks and Mike Schmidt.

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