Diamond Dynasty Content: Derek Jeter Storylines Welcome CC Sabathia, 98 OVR Ozzie Albies Joins Chase Pack 4

The latest release of new content in Diamond Dynasty in MLB The Show 24 brings a distinctly New York Yankees flavor, with an extension of the Derek Jeter Storylines mode bringing a new Jeter card, the advertised new Legend turning out to be CC Sabathia as a Yankee, and Anthony Rizzo headlining a Season Awards release. But there’s plenty for many to enjoy, including a new The Show Classics pack featuring a couple of well-liked flashbacks and that same Season Awards drop featuring some bigger names than usual.

And with those new pieces of content and some fun cards from the Mexico City Series released without warning earlier this week, we are rapidly approaching the endgame of Season 1 in DD.

Jeter Storylines Brings Captain of Captains Card

The new Jeter Storylines — a narrative experience that amounts to Moments with much better production values than most within Diamond Dynasty, which players must get to through The Show’s main menu — consist of an assortment of Moments from Jeter’s playing days from 2001 to 2014, covering his prime after the Yankees’ dynastic run in the 1990s all the way to his final flourish as a major leaguer, with a walk-off single punctuating his final game.

The rewards along the way are good for a beginner, but nothing most experienced DD users will want all that badly: Gold Yankees versions of Alfonso Soriano, Mike Mussina, Gary Sheffield, and Bernie Williams are the cards available en route to an 85 OVR Sabathia, who is making his Diamond Dynasty debut as a Legends player, and a Gold Rickey Henderson and a Jeter-jersey profile icon are the step-by-step rewards after the burly hurler.

But the end of the line is a 90 OVR Jeter Captain of Captains card, which plays off his nickname and status as “The Captain” to other Captain Series players boosts to Batting and Pitching Clutch, Contact vs. Righties, and BB/9. Those boosts being most significant situationally and the relative scarcity of Captain Series players at this point in the DD cycle leaves this card as one to return to later in the year — but it’s a Core card, so it will always be around.

The Sabathia itself is obviously not going to be unhittable at 85 OVR, but it portends well for higher-rated versions, with his Stamina already at a towering 96 and a well-rounded profile and pitch mix that has few holes. At 6’7” and 290 pounds, he’ll also be a massive presence on the mound — and if that helps mess with batters’ perception, all the better.

Season 1 Awards Drop 6

We are now at the halfway point of the Season Awards schedule for Season 1 in Diamond Dynasty, and that means it’s now permissible for big names to creep back into the player pool for the program that has combined Topps Now and Monthly Awards and mostly served as a way to honor obscure players with fine real-life performances.

This week’s drop, though, has Max Fried and Pete Alonso, maybe bigger names than any since the surprising Mike Trout/Shohei Ohtani twin-bill that kicked the program off, and also sees sweet-swinging Nick Senzel show up as a lefty-killer.

The 96 OVR Senzel is almost certainly the best card in this release, with a practically unimpeachable 125/115 Contact/Power split against lefties and 125 Batting Clutch to go with them. He also carries the Pinch Hitter quirk, meaning he will be at worst a fearsome bench bat to trot out against lefties. But he’s also got secondary positions everywhere but first base and catcher and a very good 88 Arm Strength, making him a flexible lineup piece.

Fried’s 96 OVR is also excellent, with his card well-matching the shutout he threw in late April. 107 Stamina, 101 H/9, and 102 Pitching Clutch are quite good, his repertoire has good-to-great pitches with a ton of break, and he’s a taller (6’4”) lefty. The 82 K/9 is lower than you would like, though, and Break Outlier as a quirk is not as juicy as some other options for pitchers, even if the combo of Road Warrior and Night Player allows for some situational betterment.

But it’s possible that players might ultimately prefer Rizzo to Fried, and not just because the former is free and the latter is a pack-only prospect, continuing the maddening trend of releasing one pool of Season Awards players that are grind-to-get (and generally lesser) and one pool that are pack-exclusive (and generally better). It’s not that Rizzo’s stats are overwhelming, just that he’s got 105/101 Contact/Power against righties as a lefty bat and that he could be a more consistent performer than a pitcher who may struggle to put away batters on strikes in a game that sees almost every pitcher who cannot overpower batters eventually give up crooked numbers.

It’s also interesting to note that those three cards are all 96 OVR, converging the OVR ratings of the top pack and reward path players for the first time.

The lower tiers of Season Awards, however, still diverge, with 93 OVR players like Pete Alonso in the pack and 92s in the path. Alonso is by some margin the biggest name of these cards, and packs 107/120 Power that will have to compensate for lower stats elsewhere if he is to be viable, but the 93 OVR Patrick Bailey is arguably the game’s best defensive catcher and a top-five option overall at the position, and the 92 OVR Pete Crow-Armstrong is a good contact bat and great defender and a welcome free card for Cubs theme teamers, who have been inundated with pricey players in recent weeks.

The other player in the Season Awards Pack is a 93 OVR Nolan Gorman ; the other players in the reward path are 92 OVR versions of Marlins starter Anthony Maldonado (who has a hilariously low 57 Stamina and just three pitches), Diamondbacks outfielder Pavin Smith, and Mets third baseman Mark Vientos.

And there is also a bit of a concession to players in this week’s reward path, with the spot before Rizzo containing a Season Awards Choice Pack containing players’ choice of one of the five previously released Season Awards packs. This isn’t quite the same as throwing the current week’s pack into the reward path, the change that has been clamored for from prominent parts of the MLB The Show community, but it does give players a chance to catch up on previous releases – and also to chase or buy the Elly De La Cruz from Drop 4, which was going for a healthy 60,000 Stubs or so on the market prior to Friday.

Also of note: Completing the reward path for Drop 6 without locking in at least one player from the Season Awards pack will require throwing a complete game — to match Fried — with a minimum of eight innings pitched in any game mode. This will probably require a Play vs. CPU session.

Albies Steps Into Chase Pack 4

The previously released Chase Pack 4 was already a thrilling pull with its inclusion of a 97 OVR Yordan Alvarez, the best version of one of the best hitters in Diamond Dynasty. Now that pack has two such players, with a 98 OVR Ozzie Albies — the first 98 OVR card in DD this cycle — joining Alvarez in the pack.

And the Braves second baseman is predictably a problem, with his much better bat against lefties registering as a 125/103 Contact/Power split and 114 Clutch likely replacing his 83 Contact against righties fairly often. With great Quirks — Dead Red and Breaking Ball Hitter combined is lethal as ever — this is certainly a Chase-worthy card.

Winker, Moncada Lead The Show Classics Pack 3

The latest addition to the The Show Classics series on this Friday is a pair of powerful bats from years past – Reds outfielder Jesse Winker and one-time White Sox super prospect Yoan Moncada – that headline The Show Classics Pack 3.

Of the two, Winker’s surely the better card, with every Contact and Power stat at 109 or better. Even with 62 Vision that leaves him tantalizingly close to but not eligible for the Byron Buxton, Winker is going to barrel and batter balls, and his swing is routinely one of the better ones in the game.

That doesn’t mean Moncada is bad, just not quite as great as his pack partner. Combining Diamond hitting and defense at second base is valuable on its own, but Moncada is also a switch hitter who pairs beautifully with the Switch Hitters Captain Carlos Santana and has better numbers against righties, which is probably the preferred split for most players given right-handed pitchers’ prevalence.

The Mid tier of the pack has two players who have taken different paths since their 96 OVR cards originally showed up in Diamond Dynasty, with Dodgers hurler Bobby Miller looking like a possible mainstay in L.A.’s rotation after a strong rookie campaign in 2023 and former Padres center fielder Trent Grisham now serving as a reserve for the Yankees after failing to hit .200 in either of the past two years and being a throw-in in the Juan Soto trade.

But Grisham’s 42 Series card is strong if clearly the lesser of the of the two, as it’s a top-tier outfield defender and balanced lefty bat, while Miller is a fireballer with just acceptable control and Outlier on his four-seamer to go with a slider/splitter/sinker/curve complement.

The Base round is more like Grisham than not, with 93 OVR versions of Sixto Sanchez and Tyler Stephenson calling back to better moments in their careers. The Hoby Milner that rounds out the trio, meanwhile, is stretching the definition of both classic and flashback — it was originally a part of the Monthly Awards series WAY back in September 2023.

As always, this The Show Classics Pack is 40,000 Stubs, limited to three purchases, and carries listed 1:10 odds of the Rare round and 1:4 odds of the Mid round.

Flash for Cash

The latest Flash Sale in Diamond Dynasty is also part of Friday’s content, and it began with the same pick-one Season Awards Pack option from the new Season Awards reward path available three times for a discounted price of 20,000 Stubs (available for an hour) and a new Classy Bundle putting together a Classics Choice Pack 1, Season Awards Choice Pack, and Season 1 Vault Choice Pack for a healthy price of 65,000 Stubs (available for three hours). The second item available for an hour’s window was a The Show Classics Pack 1 — with Nick Castellanos and Edward Cabrera in the Rare round — for 25,000 Stubs.

As always, Flash Sales can be accessed both through the console and the MLB The Show companion app, in case players are away from  their setups and still want to splash some Stubs.

Mexico City Series Brings Free Altuve; Lee Highlights Headliners Pack 15; Rays City Connect Uniforms Arrive in Conquest

This week also brought the unannounced arrival of a set of Mexico City Series players in a paid pack and a 94 OVR Jose Altuve in a free one. Guess which is better for most players!

Yes, the Altuve is just what all good Altuve cards have been since his arrival as a MLB standout, with excellent contact and better-than-you-think pop coming along with his tiny strike zone, compact swing, and iffy defense. But that’s better than paying 30K Stubs in hopes of getting either of the 96 OVR Rare round cards — lefty-thumping lefty bat Kyle Tucker or righty-ripping righty bat Yainer Diaz, an amusing combo of reverse-split hitters — and ending up with a very good but kind of illogical Nolan Jones (a 93 OVR card for a player hitting .170 and well on his way to plummeting as a Live Series player?) or the speedy but light-hitting Brenton Doyle, unless you are a self-hating Rockies fan.

But are there other kinds of Rockies fans at this point?

More optimistic, probably, are Twins fans, who get a 97 OVR Brooks Lee to hunt in the Headliners Pack 15. The Pipeline Series shortstop has Diamond hitting and defense, and his switch-hitting and positional flexibility — second and third — means he’ll compliment the versions of Carlos Correa and Jorge Polanco that are already strong infield options for Twins theme teams.

And then there’s the most stylish new addition to Diamond Dynasty, the awesome Rays City Connect jerseys that were released to widespread approval earlier this week and will be worn this weekend. As usual, these City Connect uniforms and items are available through a new Conquest map that also contains some packs, Stubs, and XP.