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“It’s the coolest thing,” said Sanchez. “I remember sitting and playing little leagues games, then going to the arcade and not being able to wait for Ken Griffith Jr. Now that they brought it back, it was a surprising and really cool mode.”

Sanchez typically plays Road to the Show and Season modes though. In the latter, he said he likes to create a time he wants to create, not to create an all-star team but to try to get together the players he likes to play with in real life. Meanwhile, in Road to the Show mode, Sanchez said he likes the game’s new ability to pave your own path from the minors to the majors.

“You get to answer questions and do things that an actual player would do coming through the minor leagues, such as the GMs will say something on the side and you answer it a certain way you want,” he said, while virtually catching a flyball of mine after I somehow made contact with the ball after one of his pitches.

“You can answer it in a cocky way, or in a cool and respectable way. How you answer it will determine how they move you in the system.”

At this point, I try to act casual as I put down the controller on the chair’s arm while hoping others in the room don’t realize the score on the TV screen is painfully one-sided. We shift the discussion to the Toronto Blue Jays’ finally being in town to play their first group of home games of the year and the season that lies ahead.

“We have a really good team and don’t really see any weak spots,” he said. “I know we’ve had a rough start to the year, but I’m excited. For me, it’s just building off what I did last year. I feel like there is nothing else I need to do or show than what I did last year. So it’s just going out there and taking the ball every five days, having fun and going after it.”