MVP Baseball 2003 was released in 2003 as the successor to EA's Triple Play games, though it bore little more than a graphical similarity to its predecessors, which had been heavily maligned by critics in the series' final years.[1]
Introducing an innovative pitch meter and zone-based hitting system (see below), MVP 2003 was well received by critics, most of whom considered the game's overhaul to be a major improvement over Triple Play′s last entry.[2] At the review-aggregation site Metacritic, MVP 2003 was given a score of 81/100 for the PlayStation 2[3] and 82/100 for the Xbox.[4]
Randy Johnson and Miguel Tejada were the cover players.
The 2003 game is the last game that uses a points system for player's salary, starting with the 2004 game an actual dollar amount is used for salaries. The 2003 game does not penalize a user for releasing a player during the season in franchise mode, whereas the 2004 and 2005 games invoke a salary penalty for releasing a player under contract.