The Show Classics Pack, Headliners 8 and Free Jazz in MLB The Show 24

While the Team Affinity Season 1 Chapter 2 coming on Friday, April 12 is the next major content drop — and likely the next massive bump to the power curve — in MLB The Show 24’s Diamond Dynasty, this Wednesday’s release of a new The Show Classics pack brings a jolt of its own in the form of player items that top out at 95 OVR.

And when one of those players is a 95 OVR Nick Castellanos? Well, there may be some drives into deep left field to be had.This The Show Classics pack joins the large and still-growing array of ways to spend chunks of Stubs in Diamond Dynasty, checking in at 40,000 Stubs for a choice of a card from either the Rare (95 OVR), Mid (94 OVR), and Base (90 OVR) tiers. The Rare tier consists of 95 OVR Nick Castellanos and Edward Cabrera cards,  the Mid tier — probably not exactly the best name, that — features 94 OVR Taylor Trammell and Mike Soroka items, and the Base tier has 91 OVR versions of Miguel Andujar, Kyle Lewis, and Logan Webb.

Cabrera and Castellanos are also the first 95 OVR cards available on the Diamond Dynasty marketplace this year. Prior to this release, every card at a higher OVR than the 94 OVR Live Series Shohei Ohtani was an unsellable collection reward.

As the name of the suggests, these The Show Classics players are all returning from previous editions of Diamond Dynasty: The Castellanos card is the August 2019 Player of the Month card with the same lightning art treatment, for example, while the Andujar is from the August 2018 Monthly Awards and Lewis was previously part of the 42 Series released in MLB The Show 21. That means none of these cards will be fully new to seasoned Diamond Dynasty players — and whether they’re well-received is going to depend largely on whether their returns are welcome.

For those Rare tier cards, that seems likely.

Castellanos, whose card represents an 11-homer month, is an absolute masher, especially against lefties, whom he should menace with his 125/112 Contact/Power split. A 97/104 split against righties is excellent, too, and 99 Clutch should make Castellanos an RBI machine so long as the 72 Vision isn’t a major hindrance. Pairing Dead Red and Breaking Ball Hitter as quirks should also help give a little extra oomph to the Cubs right fielder’s swing, and while his Silver defense is fair and accurate, having both first and third base as secondary positions means players can fit Castellanos into lineups without displacing more skilled outfielders or relegating him to designated hitter. Simply put, this card should be among Diamond Dynasty’s best hitters for at least a little while.

Cabrera, likewise, has a chance to be a top-tier Diamond Dynasty pitcher — whatever that means, given the difficulty of pitching in this year’s game. His 95 MPH sinker with Outlier is the star attraction here, and it is flanked by great stats — 102 Hits Per 9, 98 Strikeouts Per 9, and 99/94 Velocity/Break — that helped make this Future Stars card one of the most coveted of its prior release and should still play today. Cabrera’s pitch speed differential is fine if not ideal, with his five-pitch mix including a mid-80s slider and changeup and a low-80s curveball; batters will be able to pick out the heat from the breaking balls. Similarly, a slider as the only horizontal breaking pitch is limiting. But the break on all of Cabrera’s sinker, slider, and curve is in the low 90s, and he has Break Outlier to keep his stuff sharp later into outings.

The Mid tier’s cards also seem likely to outdo their unfortunate name.

Trammell has Diamond hitting and defense and the individual stats to support that status. His Contact is well ahead of his Power against both righties and lefties, but 103/82 against righties is perfectly acceptable for a lefty bat, and superb speed stats make him a potentially potent leadoff man. 

More importantly, he supplants the Live Series Fernando Tatis Jr. as the best Padres left fielder in the game for now … even though he never played an inning for San Diego in the majors, having been swapped twice as a minor leaguer — first from the Reds to the Padres in the Trevor Bauer/Yasiel Puig deal, then from the Padres to the Mariners in a trade that got Ty France and Andres Muñoz to the Pacific Northwest and Austin Nola to San Diego. Fitting that Sony San Diego might once again be looking out for the hometown team via a release dubbed The Show Classics.

Soroka’s card harkens back to a time when he was still so integral to the Braves as a young star that he went seven innings and struck out seven in an NLDS game in 2019, instead of being just one of five players sent to the White Sox in a trade for Aaron Bummer after multiple injury-plagued seasons. It’s also a strong finesse starter: Soroka’s five-pitch repertoire is led by a 92 MPH sinker and also has a slider, circle change, and cutter, making it close to the ideal assortment of types for online play. But the lack of velocity is a concession even though Soroka has stellar control (106 BB/9 and 89 Control). 

And Braves theme teams will never hurt for pitching options in Diamond Dynasty so long as all of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz are available, so it’s hard to see even this 94 OVR Soroka sticking in a rotation with those legends, Spencer Strider, Max Fried, and Chris Sale for too long, even if Strider’s real-life injury worries may limit his in-game cards.

The Base tier of this first The Show Classics pack, meanwhile, is more forgettable than classic.

Andujar is a strong bat but a dreadful fielder for a third baseman. 96/104 Power/Contact against righties makes him a reverse platoon possibility, though his 100/74 against lefties and 97 Clutch are perfectly fine. But playing a Bronze fielder at third or DHing Andujar are players’ only options, and taking the amusing risk of allowing a card with 90 Arm Strength but just 65 Arm Accuracy to man the hot corner does not seem worth the offensive upside except for Yankees diehards who might recall his real-life star turn — Andujar hit .297 and 27 homers for the Bronx Bombers in 2018, but has played fewer games since then than he did in that season, and is now on his second team since then.

Lewis, an erstwhile mega-prospect for the Mariners, is also now no longer part of the team his card depicts — something true of all of the cards in this release except Cabrera and Webb. And his card was essentially a Future Stars snuck into a different program, so its Diamond hitting and fielding, with a 95/89 split against righties but a 70/105 divide against lefties and good but not great defensive stats, represent what could have been for Lewis much more than what he has been as an MLB player. 

Good thing, that: Despite hitting homers in his first three MLB games in 2019 and being named the 2020 AL Rookie of the Year for swatting 11 homers and hitting .259 in the shortened 2020 season, Lewis hasn’t appeared in 60 games in any of his six seasons spent partly in the majors thanks largely to injuries. And hitting .143 in his last stint with the Mariners in 2022 and .157 with the D’Backs in 2023 suggests his time as a pro may be done, with no team picking him up this off-season.

Given that, it’s hard to fathom even wistful Mariners fans wanting to make something happen with this Lewis card, and that helps make his — and Andujar’s — inclusion in this release a little puzzling.

Logan Webb rounding out the Base round is less confusing, but also not particularly thrilling. It’s not that the Webb is a bad card; players who can make soft-tossers with that sinker/slider/cutter trinity work will surely enjoy Webb’s 99 Break, which includes 99 Break on both his sinker and changeup. But it’s a Logan Webb card, and even the ones that have had gaudier OVR ratings to reflect his many accomplishments as an MLB ace have not been able to make his efficient but unspectacular style translate into must-use items.

Players who luck out with the 1:10 Rares will obviously be happy to pull 95 OVR cards that are strong candidates live up to that number in the upper right corner — and those cards seem likely to sell for low six-figure sums of Stubs at least until the potential market crash wrought by Team Affinity Season 1 Chapter 2. The Mid round should be a break-even Stubs proposition, as well, though Trammell is probably a significantly better pick than Soroka.

But pulling only Andujar, Lewis, or Webb is all but burning 30,000 Stubs on a pack for a card that is not top-tier now and will soon be eclipsed, and players who end up in that position are not going to be particularly happy.

Players can purchase this The Show Classics pack — labeled Pack 1 in the store, which certainly foreshadows future releases — up to three times.

Also new to the store is Headliners Pack 8, which features Brewers catching prospect Jeferson Quero, who comes from the Pipeline Series. His Diamond hitting is based on good-for-a-catcher stats: Contact, Power, and Clutch numbers in the span from 78 to 86. But his fielding profile is legitimately great, with every stat between 90 and 95, and makes him by a wide margin the best defensive catcher released in Diamond Dynasty thus far.

Happy Holliday Day

On a brighter note for all players, this The Show Classics release is accompanied by two free packs in the store: One containing a free Live Series Jackson Holliday that is presently Supercharged to a 93 OVR to celebrate his call-up to the Orioles, and one containing a Jazz Chisholm Jr. that honors the former MLB The Show cover athlete.

Of the two, the Holliday is the clear star, with his Supercharged stats at 87 or above in all of his Contact and Power categories, a 98 Clutch supporting him coming through in those situations, and plus-10s to all of his fielding stats making him a very good option at second base and a decent one at shortstop and third, his two secondary positions. The card itself is only a Live Series Silver for now, and won’t be relevant to the metagame unless Holliday makes good on the immense hype that has surrounded his imminent MLB debut since last fall with a bravura show in the coming days, but his Supercharged status lasts until April 15, so players can definitely do damage with him through the weekend.

The Chisholm card having the distinction of being the first free 90+ OVR “Blue Diamond” available through the packs shop is also arguably a case of inflated value, as the MLB The Show 23 cover star — and avid player of the game — has had his in-game cards outpace his on-field exploits for most of the time since his flashy 2021 campaign. This card at least has justification for that, as it flashes back to his years spent as a full-time second baseman prior to his transition to the outfield, and includes Diamond defense (with 90 Fielding and 91 Reactions) that compensates for a fairly light at-the-plate profile with only his 84 Power against righties exceeding 80.

There's plenty of value in a free second baseman at this moment in Diamond Dynasty, especially with every obvious upgrade from this Jazz liable to cost thousands — or tens of thousands — of Stubs or hours of grinding a program. But most of those upgrades are substantial ones on this card — even the Live Series Luis Arraez, thanks to his massive Contact numbers, may be more appealing.

The Chisholm pack is available in the pack store until 3 p.m. Eastern on April 19.