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It may seem early in the baseball season, but MLB The Show 25 is already onto its 3rd Inning content drop in Diamond Dynasty -- and two of its XP Reward Path Bosses hail from flagship MLB franchises.
3rd Inning XP Reward Path Highlighted by Gagne, Story, Williams
The 3rd Inning XP Reward Path departs from the 2nd Inning's wide-ranging lead by featuring three stars of baseball's last 30 years: Closer extraordinaire Eric Gagne from his dominant days as a Dodger, Trevor Story from his early years as a Rockies shortstop, and Yankees outfield stalwart Bernie Williams. With just two of the three 92 OVR Bosses available for free at the 245,000 and 400,000 XP marks on that reward path, it seems likely that Gagne and Williams will be the choices for most DD players.
Gagne immediately becomes the best reliever available in Diamond Dynasty, with a superb fastball with Outlier, 100+ stats in all of H/9, K/9, and Pitching Clutch, and a five-pitch mix with multiple off-speed options to offset his heater; if he's not being brought in for shutdown situations by the end of this Weekend Classic, it will only be because 245,000 XP is a heavy lift for a couple of days at the 0utset of a new Inning.
Williams is the easy second choice of these three for anyone needing a center fielder, as he is a switch-hitter who will destroy lefties with 125/115 Contact/Power and also has 111 Batting Clutch. With decent 67 Speed and a respectable defensive profile, he fits nicely into the spot probably held by 2nd Inning Boss Ken Griffey Jr. in many lineups.
Story, meanwhile, is a superb shortstop, with his own 100+ Contact/Power split against lefties and an admirable defense and speed combination. But if he's better than Live Series Bobby Witt Jr. or Fernando Tatis Jr. at the position, it's only slightly, making Gagne and Williams significantly more appealing as top-of-position picks.
The 3rd Inning XP Reward Path also has three new Cornerstone Evolution players: Ralph Kiner, Jim Palmer, and Justin Turner. All three are available in packs earned on the path as 83 OVR Golds, and their respective Cornerstone Evolution programs yield 90 OVR Diamonds for completion, with Turner's looking like a great right-handed bench bat with 125/100 Contact/Power against lefties.
Also studded in the XP Reward Path is a 91 OVR Matt Cain from the Postseason series that well-represents his best days with the Giants. With 110 Pitching Clutch as his standout attribute, he might be best with runners on, making him a sneaky good choice to stash in a rotation but use as a stopper.
Second Weekend Classic Comes With Underwhelming Rewards
What might be a downbeat from the 3rd Inning program this weekend, though, is what awaits the victors valiant of the second Weekend Classic in MLB The Show 25, as the Ryne Sandberg and Giancarlo Stanton awaiting players who win enough to snag the Weekend Classic choice pack could end up quite disappointed with those rewards.
Sandberg is a historically excellent Diamond Dynasty player -- and his best versions have been phenomenal for your author in years past, to be clear -- but checks in at 91 OVR with just one relevant hitting stat over 95, a 111 Contact against lefties that is undermined by his mere 78 Power against southpaws. A 94/90 split against righties is also solid, but not nearly what his best cards have had -- and his 78 Clutch feels downright disrespectful for a 2nd Half Heroes series card tied to the second half of his 1989 season, in which he sported a .975 OPS ... even if his .229 batting average with runners in scoring position that year does suggest his Clutch stat should be on the low side.
But if Sandberg is a liability as an RBI man with that Clutch, the 91 OVR Stanton is genuinely being shafted with his 80 Batting Clutch, which massively hampers what is otherwise a really good card -- even as a right fielder. It's an All-Star series card, so it's more or less about what Stanton did in the first half of the 2012 season with the Marlins, back when he went by Mike, and he finished that first half with 19 homers, 50 RBI, and a healthy .919 OPS -- then, after missing most of July (including the All-Star Game, making this card's series an even weirder pick), put up a 1.057 OPS in 43 second-half games. Stanton hit .266 with runners in scoring position and drove in 49 of his 86 RBI that year in those situations, too, putting him well above the MLB averages per plate appearance.
There's a decent chance that both Sandberg and Stanton retain a fair bit of value because of their scarcity -- and, in Sandberg's case, the perennial lack of great second basemen in Diamond Dynasty -- but these do not feel like elite-level, "best in the game" rewards that Weekend Classic has been touted to have.
Chase Pack 9 Drops Wonderul Willi Castro
Then again, if the passels of The Show packs that Weekend League also rewards happen to contain one or more copies of Chase Pack 9, it might all be worth it after all, given how extraordinary the 93 OVR Willi Castro in that pack happens to be.
Castro, a long-loved DD card because of his switch-hitting and high Contact, checks in with 116/125 Contact against righties and lefties respectively, 86/83 Power that will play from both sides of the plate, and 125 Batting Clutch that will make him a menace with men on. He's an average defender for either his primary position of shortstop or his secondary of third base, and his 81 Speed is undercut in its usefulness by a literal 0 Stealing -- but as the lone 93 OVR card available on the market at present, a shortstop head and shoulders above the newly released Story, and a third baseman that well outstrips switch-hitting star Chipper Jones, Castro might be the best Chase Pack card relative to the metagame that we see all year in Diamond Dynasty. And his early price of about 350,000 Stubs, which rivals Aaron Judge and trails only Shohei Ohtani, reflects that possibility.
May Spotlight Program Begets Stowers
April's show of light-tower power from Marlins outfielder Kyle Stowers earned him a spot as the top free reward of the first drop of the May Spotlight program, with his 91 OVR card having a 91/102 combo against righties that reflects his month of mashing. This Stowers card also has first base and both corner outfield positions as secondaries, making it a bit more versatile than most.
The rest of May Spotlight's first drop is more on the underwhelming side, with Maikel Garcia and Bailey Ober topping the drop pack as solid but unspectacular 91 OVR performers at third and starter and the Daniel Schneemann in the pack being the best of the 88 OVR options, with 95/103 Contact/Power against righties and positional eligibility everywhere but first and catcher making him a really useful lefty bench bat.
Odds and Ends
- Two new Conquest maps tied to the City Connect jerseys for the Diamondbacks and Marlins are now available in game.
- This week's drop of the April Spotlight Lightning players -- Corbin Carroll for April in the present day and Carlos Santana as the Retro Lightning choice -- appears likely to be echoed by the May Spotlight's cadence, as the collections for both suggest five May Spotlight drops in total.
- This coming Tuesday, May 13, promises a new Multiplayer program and World Series rewards, with Thursday, May 15 holding new Flawless rewards for Battle Royale and a new Program heavily hinted on stream to be tied to the real-life Rivalries Weekend that MLB is promoting for May 16-18.
- Also on the Coming Soon calendar in game: Something on May 16 tied to emojis featuring the phases of the moon. While this may seem unlikely to be a Moonshot program given that the Moonshot Event has already come and gone in game, it's not out of the question for San Diego Studio to go back to that well, especially given how poorly-received that Moonshot event was without players tied to it.
