First Row Baseball
First Row Baseball is a franchise baseball sim. You buy a Major club. The farm system under it — AAA, AA, A+, A — comes with the purchase and wears your name. You set lineups, write approaches, spend XP on your cards, and the engine plays the games on a Chicago clock while you are away.
It is a standalone product from Tainted Highbrow. You register and log in on First Row Baseball. Short sessions. No gambling. Tokens never buy a strike call.
The product is in BETA. Numbers will move. If something looks wrong, say so in Discord → #bug-report.
That is a working franchise. Come back after the next sim slot and see how the club did.
You are the GM of one Major club and the farms that sit under it. Lineups, depth charts, and call-ups all live on those club pages. Franchise is the overview if you want the whole tree on one screen.
Money comes in from the gate — tickets, concessions, merch — and goes out as payroll and stadium. Most of the gate profit and most of the salary sit at the Major so the org can carry the system. Each farm keeps a slice for its own park and stock. You do not need the split memorized to play. Watch the treasury on the club page; if it is shrinking, something on that club is costing more than it is taking in.
Empty clubs in the vertical still play. You only need to set the clubs you care about tonight.
You can own as many cards as you want. A card can only be on one roster at a time.
A new card is a start, not a finished big-leaguer. Generated roster players sit in a modest band on purpose. Your card grows by playing and by spending the XP pool on the sheet.
When a player performs, XP lands on the rating that earned it. Days they sit go into one pool on the card. You spend that pool when you want — it can wait. Baseball IQ changes how large those deposits are; it does not raise itself.
Raising a rating costs more as it gets higher. A bad stretch can drain a bar. Younger cards hold up better than older ones.
If you want a faster bump, the shop can add a capped pile of XP to the pool for the season. That flags the card as boosted. Leagues that ban boosts will not take that card. Player cash from a contract is different — that buys gear. Club cash is a third wallet. Three piles, three jobs.
A pitcher is the card you write for a count and a situation — 0–0 against a right-handed hitter is not the same card as 0–2 with a runner on third. Weights on a preset add up to 100. Black is where you are trying to put the pitch. Miss in / miss out is the miss you prefer if you miss. The umpire still calls the edge.
A hitter hunts a quadrant: in-up, in-down, away-up, away-down, and an optional dead-red box if you want one look that is simply “middle.” You can look for at most two pitch types. Leave those unchecked if you just want the bat in play.
On 3–0, the default is take, unless the pitch is a fastball down the middle.
The franchise vertical shares one Chicago clock. Slots are staggered by level so Major, AAA, AA, A+, and A do not all fire at the same minute. You do not have to click Sim. If you miss a day, the day still plays.
Playoffs run two games a calendar day so you can change a lineup between them.
Once a year the amateur draft is a ten-round board. Each pick has a 25-minute window, 7am–11pm Chicago. Before the board opens you can priority-sign unsigned user cards.
You will not see a prospect’s true ratings. You see a scout’s band, a high-school or college line, and the age on the report. An old report is still on the sheet on purpose — a look from when he was 17 is not a look from when he is 21.
Scouts cost money and write reports. A trip starts a watch that tightens over time. College is the parking lot for kids who do not sign: first time through they come back at 21, second time at 22, then free agency.
If you want to see a pitch-by-pitch and the box score the way this engine writes them, open a finished game from Last Game → Watch. The Reel is a replay, not live. The pitch map is catcher’s view.
A save is a closer in a save spot with a lead of three or fewer. A five-run ninth is not a save.
Three midnights, Chicago.
Renew is only live once the offseason has started. Leave it alone during the playoffs.
Separate from the franchise vertical. A private league is a friends table: password or invite, your group, your DH and extra-inning rules, your sim hours. It does not share the public farm tree and it is not how you play First Row on night one. Build or join one later if you want a closed season with people you already know. Create a league
Discord is the help desk. Bug reports go in #bug-report with the game id, the inning, and what you expected. If you think a fly ball should have been a homer, grab spray, exit velo, launch angle, and park from the Reel — those lines are printed there.
First Row Baseball · Tainted Highbrow · firstrowbaseball.com