Legendary Storylines and Season 1 Awards: What's New in MLB The Show 24

MLB The Show 24’s content drop for this Friday, April 6 was teased in-game as “Three Legendary Storylines” — and with it arriving in the form of new Storylines chapters featuring Negro Leagues greats Larry Doby, Leon Day, and José Méndez, that means that Diamond Dynasty players will have to step outside the card-collecting mode to get a few new Diamonds to add to their squads.

But those storied stars aren’t the only new additions to Diamond Dynasty today, as the Season 1 Awards Drop 2 features highly-touted Brewers prospect Jackson Chourio, a mashing Michael Conforto — and the continuation of a content choice that has frustrated the Diamond Dynasty community.

A Second Set of Storylines

Each of the three new Storylines — accessible through The Show’s main menu — consists of eight “episodes” from those three players’ careers, which amount to Moments given special production treatment. For the Cuban great Mendez, that means pitching and hitting moments from his time with the Kansas City Monarchs. Doby’s arc will take players through hitting Moments from his post-World War II return to the Newark Eagles and to the majors, where he became the first African-American player to integrate the American League with the Cleveland Indians, a year after Jackie Robinson did so for Major League Baseball and the National League. And the lesser-known Day, who never played in the majors, gets a series of moments showcasing his two-way efforts with the same Newark Eagles, including crossing paths with Satchel Paige and Buck O’Neil.

All of these Storylines award players 85 OVR cards of their given Legend for completion, along with Stubs, XP, and a handful of unlockables, including uniforms and logos for the Newark Eagles and Kansas City Monarchs and Ruppert Stadium, the Eagles’ home field.

While Doby is a returning Legend for Diamond Dynasty, Day and Mendez are new to MLB The Show 24. Unfortunately, none of the three are top-of-the-metagame options, owing to their lower OVRs.

José Méndez, whose Moments include a comparison to Pedro Martinez, comes in with a 96 Velocity and an enviable 88 Stamina, and his five-pitch mix includes a four-seam fastball that hits 97 MPH to go with a blistering 95 MPH sinker, a 12-6 curve, and a changeup and slurve. There’s a significant speed differential between the pitches, but a lack of quirks means he might not be dominant on the mound in Diamond Dynasty. Mendez was also a versatile two-way player and has secondary position eligibility everywhere but catcher, but his unimpressive hitting stats are led by a 72 Contact Against Lefties, so he is unlikely to see much time at the dish for players with other options.

Leon Day, on the other hand, has a bit more to his bat, with 80 Contact Against Righties and 85 Contact Against Lefties. Combine those with power ratings around 50, a 74 for Vision, and an 80 in Clutch, and Day’s card is likely to acquit itself nicely as a solid contact hitter. His positional eligibility is less broad than Mendez’s — just second base and all of the outfield slots — but he’s also likely to go longer into pitching outings, with 95 Stamina. With 90 Velocity and 87 Break, his five-pitch mix (four-seamer, curveball, sinker, changeup, slurve) should be a lively arsenal, but K/9 and BB/9 ratings in the 60s are going to hurt.

Larry Doby is the only of the three Storylines Legends without any notable history as a pitcher, but versatility was one of his calling cards, and he’s got eligibility everywhere but the pitcher-catcher battery and Gold defense on the basis of 70s in all four defensive stats. That should make his card’s good lefty bat (90 Contact and 72 Power Against Righties) valuable as an option wherever players need to plug in a free card that can be earned purely through gameplay, if not quite a high-tier choice. (Of note with Doby: He is a Free Agent card, not a Cleveland Indians or Guardians player, so using him will not progress the Team Affinity objectives for Guardians players.)

None of the moments in any of these three Storylines appears especially difficult, with none of Doby’s requiring a home run or triple and none of Day’s or Méndez’s asking for anything more difficult than three strikeouts in two innings. Estimate an hour’s work for each of them and three 85 OVR Diamonds seems a fair reward; consider those rewards a bonus for immersion in Storylines, and the trade seems even better.

Season 1 Awards Drop 2

The other portion of Friday’s content release is the second drop of cards from the Season 1 Awards program, Sony San Diego Studios’ new combination of the Topps Now and Monthly Awards programs players may be familiar with from past years of Diamond Dynasty into one program running in parallel with the actual MLB season. And while the first drop yielded free-to-earn Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout cards, this second drop is perhaps understandably not as star-studded.

The biggest name of all of Drop 2 might, in fact, be Chourio, whose massive deal signed last fall before his first MLB at-bat brought a ton of hype for his 2024 debut. Chourio’s Topps Now card pays tribute to him collecting a hit and a stolen base in his first MLB game, checks in at 88 OVR, and is available at 10 Stars on the Drop 2 reward path. With numbers over 70 in both Contact and Power stats, a 90 Clutch, and fantastic basepath skills — 92 Speed to go with maxed-out 99 Stealing and Baserunning Aggression — this Chourio is a good card that should be a menace on the bases, and presages even better ones should he be included in other programs.

The next three 88 OVRs from Season 1 Awards Drop 2 aren’t nearly so well-known, but are all good situational cards.

Padres third baseman Graham Pauley gets the first for making his first MLB hit a three-run homer, and his 94/88 Contact/Power against righties and 92 Clutch make him a potent lefty bat, especially as a pinch hitter whose Silver defense can be ignored.

Pirates starting pitcher Jared Jones, whose card reflects him fanning 10 to get the win in his first MLB start, gets a very good card for racking up Ks. With 94 K/9, 95 HR/9x and a 94/86 Velocity/Break combo to go with a four-seamer, slider, 12-6 curve, and circle change, with the slider and circle change each sitting at 88 MPH, he has the goods to induce whiffs, though the lack of a sinker or fifth pitch hurts a bit. His precision is more iffy, with 61 BB/9 and 72 Control, but comparing him to a card like the Live Series Spencer Strider — who, despite being one of MLB’s premier strikeout artists at the moment, is only at 95 K/9 this Friday because of a significant Inside Edge boost, and has a much lower 79 HR/9 — reveals just how good this Jones is on paper, even without any quirks or parallel boosts.

Fourth in the program reward path and probably fifth-best of the five cards is Tigers center fielder Jung Hoo Lee, a Korean star making his MLB transition in 2024 and helping to fuel Detroit’s surprising start. Lee’s card is more solid than spectacular, with contact numbers that reflect reverse platoon potential at the plate — 92/81 Contact/Power against Lefties and 85/72 against righties for a lefty bat is as helpful as it is unorthodox — and Diamond defense with 81 Fielding and an 88 Arm Strength paired with 78 Reactions and 65 Speed that aren’t exactly elite. 94 Clutch is a nice addition, but remembering a lefty bat is better against lefties certainly might be enough reason to leave Lee on the pine.

And the final reward path player of Drop 2 veers away from the MLB newbies to veteran Michael Conforto, whose bat has been a boon for the San Francisco Giants thus far. His 91 OVR card might be as good or better for DD players in need of a lefty thumper: 93/97 Contact/Power against righties and 97 Clutch should allow him to rake, and his 81/93 against lefties is more than fine, as is the Breaking Ball Hitter quirk that may help bang the hangers. A good arm (85/84) also makes him a decent left fielder, although the Reactions and Speed might make for an adventure here and there.

Earning that quintet of players, however, will once again require either grinding to complete moments and missions from an objectives list … or taking the shortcut of buying or pulling the players in the Season 1 Awards Drop 2 store pack, which contains 92 OVR Season 1 Awards versions of Oswaldo Cabrera and Brady Singer in its rare round and 89 OVR Topps Now Christian Encarnacion and Victor Scott and a 89 OVR Season 1 Awards Ryan Borucki in its base round.

These Cabrera and Singer cards, like the 92 OVR Oneil Cruz and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. cards from Drop 1, are the true prizes of this program.

Cabrera pairs Diamond hitting and fielding as a switch-hitting third baseman, and is exceptionally well-suited to deal with righties as a lefty bat thanks to 101/93 Contact/Power — with 104 Clutch that could help even more in those situations. Positional flexibility is also a plus, as Cabrera can play anywhere but catcher and center. And, of course, he’s a budding star for the Yankees, which never hurts a player’s value.

Singer, who struck out 10 in seven scoreless innings in one of his finer MLB outings, is also rewarded with a compelling card that has an 85 or better in every pitching stat but Velocity. If players can tolerate the 83 there and a unique pitch mix of slider, sinker, circle change, and sweeping curve with the sinker at 93 MPH and Break Outlier as his only quirk, maybe they can make something of Singer’s 6’5” frame; at worst, he’s likely to be the best Royals pitcher available for some time.

Nabbing only Encarnacion, Scott, or Borucki from the store pack will obviously be less rewarding, though two of the three cards probably have spots on most teams.

The Reds’ Encarnacion is a righty who hits righties (90/102, 90 Clutch) but isn’t as good against lefties (72/81) and has just 50 Vision, and he only has Silver defense and first/third eligibility. Scott boasts maxed-out speed stats — all of his Speed, Stealing, and Baserunning Aggression are at 99 — and Diamond defense but is only in the 80s in his contact numbers and at 65 Power against righties, making him a fine table-setter.

Borucki is surely the clear best option from the base round, as a lefty reliever with 108 H/9, 93 K/9, 112 Pitching Clutch, and a 96/97 Velocity/Break combo. He doesn’t have a fireball, with an 89 MPH slider as his lead pitch, but there’s work to be done with that and all of a circle change, 95 MPH sinker, and sweeping curve up his sleeve.

But SDS is going to hear some more negative feedback for continuing with its choice to put the best — or at least higher-rated — players from a program exclusively in a store pack, and one that cannot be earned through the program itself, and there’s no consolation prize quite like getting “free” versions of Ohtani and Trout this week.

The Season 1 Awards Drop 2 pack costs 30,000 Stubs and is limited to five purchases. Listed odds give a 1-in-5 chance of pulling a 92 OVR player item from it.

To complete the Season 1 Awards Drop 2 program, players will need 50 Stars. Five Moments will yield 15, Topps Now and Season Awards Missions — including one for last week’s Garrett Crochet — will give 25, and General Missions hold 20, so there’s more than enough Stars available to breeze through the program even without collecting the players from the pack (16 for each of Cabrera and Singer, 6 for the two others).

Not So Jelly

Easter has come and gone in both reality and Diamond Dynasty, and the Jelly Bean Voucher collectibles that populated Show packs have done so as well, with Show packs both held in packs and available to purchase or obtain reverting to their standard design and contents.

Exchange sets for Jelly Bean Vouchers remain open, allowing players to acquire the Hidden Egg Voucher with 15 collectibles or the Spring Chickens Pack for 100. Additionally, the Egg Hunt Conquest Map now rewards 15 Jelly Beans, ensuring players can gather enough to fulfill the exchange requirements.