10th Inning Program Arrives in Diamond Dynasty with Finest Bosses

10th Inning Program Overview

A maximum of two games remain in the 2025 MLB season as of this Halloween Friday, so it's time for things to turn toward season retrospective content in MLB The Show 25's Diamond Dynasty mode -- and using the 10th Inning program and XP reward path to introduce the first cards from the 2025 Finest Series is a, well, fine way to do so.

Those cards -- Boston Red Sox closer Aroldis Chapman, still-Oakland-to-me Athletics first baseman Nick Kurtz, and New York Mets right fielder Juan Soto -- are both the three 10th Inning Bosses and the first 2025 Finest players available this year, and they're all, uh, fine cards in their own rights.

Chapman gets control boosts for his improbable career-best season in terms of walks issued and maintains the potent combination of fireball and wipeout slider that earned him the Cuban Missile nickname more than a decade ago. Kurtz is a demolisher of sewn cowhide at the plate, with a 110 Contact against lefties his only non-125 stat among the big five for hitters, and should be at least adequate defensively.

Soto, though, might be the clear first pick of the bunch, with insane-for-him 85 Speed and 99 Stealing adding a fifth tool to his predictably great hitting attributes in recognition of his sudden development into a threat on the basepaths in a 38-steal age-26 season. That speed will also make him a better right fielder -- or left fielder, where his surprising 90 Arm Strength will play even better -- than his defensive stats in the 70s and Silver defense would generally portend, and a Soto that doesn't really register as a defensive liability or an impediment once on base is a substantially better player in DD than either Chapman or Kurtz.

And, of course, these new Finest cards have a fantastic art treatment, with dynamic flames and a Gothic font for each surname giving a Dark Souls-y feel for virtual warriors.

But that's not all for great players from the 10th Inning, as the Cornerstone Evolution programs have been turned into simply evolved Cornerstone players this go-round, and the featured trio is comprised of Cal Ripken, Jr., Nolan Ryan, and Frank Thomas.

All three of those no-doubter Hall of Famers are flawed in DD, with Ripken's swing and lower Speed helping keep him from the highest echelon of shortstops, Ryan's control remaining an issue even in his best versions, and Thomas's dismal defense making him a better designated hitter than first baseman. Those archetypes -- greats that aren't world-beaters -- make them perfect as free cards every Diamond Dynasty player can have at this late stage of the game cycle, though, as none of these cards are going to be able to skew the metagame even if they're on every roster.

And they will be, thanks to the 10th Inning being even more compressed than any previous Inning program this year, running for three weeks and topping out its slated rewards at 265,000 season XP. The Bosses are available at 100K and 190K XP -- the former level reachable via the voucher from collecting the three 9th Inning Bosses and the returning player exchanges alone -- and all three Cornerstones will accrue to players by 70K XP. The return of 1st Drop Missions will also allow for speedy progress -- though the most XP available there is for matching Soto's 38 stolen bases, which will be a tedious task.

The other key piece of the 10th Inning program is the inclusion of a separate player exchange for another Finest series player, a 99 OVR Jose Altuve that is available for a whopping 500K in exchange value. That would only ("only") cost five 91 OVR players, which is not an exorbitant ask as November dawns in DD, but the catch is that this is a Live series-only exchange, meaning that there simply aren't that many 91+ OVR players to fork over -- the full list of them is 10 names long, and as it includes players like Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge, who maintain massive Stub values on the marketplace and are also the most expensive components of the Live series collection -- and that this is more of a repository for lower-value lower-OVR Live series Diamonds.

While the 10th Inning does imply an overrun of regulation, San Diego Studios putting an expiration date on it and explicitly confirming another Inning to follow on its Friday live stream does point to at least one more for DD this year. In all likelihood, that will be an 11th Inning program -- the name given in the 10th Inning Boss collection description in game -- but it is unclear as of yet whether that will serve as the final farewell to MLB The Show 25 and the first bit of transition to MLB The Show 26.

New Negro Leagues Collections Supercharge a Theme Team

As heavily hinted at in game, having all of the previous Negro Leagues-related content -- various Storylines that exist outside of Diamond Dynasty and the Jackie Robinson Day program within it -- would have been a great idea before Friday's content drop of Negro Leagues collections. But how good an idea that was may have been undersold, as those collections turned out to be 13 individual ones that level up lower-OVR Negro Leagues players to 99 OVR versions that instantly make a Negro Leagues theme team one of the best in the game.

Those 13 players -- Buck Leonard, Monte Irvin, Rube Foster, Andy Cooper, Leroy Matlock, Bullet Rogan, Leon Day, Jose Mendez, Bill Foster, Hilton Smith, Rap Dixon, Turkey Stearnes, and Buck O'Neil -- did not previously have cards even in the 90s when it comes to OVR ratings, and now rate among the best in all of Diamond Dynasty. Leonard's is especially powerful, as he serves as a Captain for the Negro Leagues series, boosting hitting stats for assemblages of five, eight, and 12 Negro Leaguers. And with a handful of other 99 OVR Negro League players available cheaply -- purchasing both do-everything catcher Biz Mackey and speedy first baseman Oscar Charleston, two of the best players at their respective positions, will cost much less than half of either the Live series Ohtani or Judge -- and a 99 OVR Satchel Paige available through this week's Weekend Classic now serving as that squad's ace or its 1B option alongside the ultimate collection reward of John Donaldson, it's suddenly a viable, formidable endgame team.

Kudos to SDS for doing something a bit unorthodox to make one of Diamond Dynasty's most compelling selling points -- its inclusion and exaltation of players who were excluded from baseball's mainstream history for too long -- a cool thing even at this late stage of the game.

Other News and Notes

• As mentioned just above, this edition of the Weekend Classic competition has a Satchel Paige that rates among DD's best pitchers as a reward, but that actually isn't the only great Weekend Classic card this go-round, as a Finest Jose Ramirez is Paige's counterpart. While Paige's velocity and variety make him hard to hit, Ramirez's switch-hitting and condensed strike zone make him difficult to get out, and both are rewards commensurate to the sweat equity necessary to obtain them in the ultra-competitive mode. A half-step down from both of those beasts is a Spooky series Jasson Dominguez also included in Weekend Classic rewards, and whose lack of maxed-out Power -- odd for a guy whose nickname of The Martian and prodigious physical development as a teenager promised prodigious power (which, fairly, has not yet manifested) in real life -- and merely good defensive stats beyond an arm make him a great but not quite insuperable option in the outfield, where he's got plenty of competition (from fellow Yankees, even) for spots in a lineup and in the field.
• Ramirez might not be the best second baseman-eligible player made available this Friday, however, because a Spooky series Ketel Marte was revealed as the ultimate reward from the Spooky program's XP reward path. This is another great Marte in a long line of them, if maybe not quite as good as 2024's best, with Diamond hitting and defense and 80 Speed to boot -- which makes his center field and shortstop eligibility more than cosmetic. Players will need to rack up just 1,000 Parallel XP with Spooky series players to finish the XP reward path, too, making that final bit of distance to the top a trivial task.
• One place for players to do their Spooky XP stacking? The new Spooky-themed Diamond Quest with 99 OVR Spooky versions of Josh Bell and Catfish Hunter as Epic-tier rewards. There is, sadly, no new Halloween-themed Conquest map to pair with it.
• The 2025 World Series program is confirmed as coming on Monday, November 3 meaning it will lag the completion of the World Series by either 48ish or 24ish hours, depending on the results of Friday's Game 6 and Saturday's possible Game 7. But I already wrote more than enough words about that earlier this week.
• A new Multiplayer program with new Ranked rewards is set to arrive on Tuesday, November 4.
• Next week will also see the rollout of Finest reveals leading into Friday's release of the final Team Affinity program of the year in DD. Players who receive SDS's Scouting Report newsletter will get emails beginning on Monday that contain codes allowing them to participate in the reveals and make progress toward community-earned in-game rewards.
• Hiding quietly in the Show Shop -- alongside free bats containing the "torpedo" bats that took MLB by storm during the opening weekend of the year and then were forgotten by May because they were not the game-changer a bunch of professional hyperventilators overreacted them into -- are a pair of Express Program packs that serve as superb catch-ups for players who may not have gotten through previous programs during the season. With each of the four Express Program packs (cost: 30K Stubs) available having unsellable versions of all player items from a previous program and the singular Jumbo Express Program pack (cost: 100K Stubs) covering four programs, completing eight previously released programs for under a quarter-million Stubs seems like a great deal for the completionist with too many Stubs to spend.
• Finally, the final roster attributes update for Diamond Dynasty in MLB The Show 25 is also set for next Friday, with Postseason teams featured. If you want to stash some Trey Yesavage and Yoshinobu Yamamoto Live series cards, now might be your last good chance to do so.