Chipper Jones, Juan Soto, Clayton Kershaw Headline 5th Inning and June Spotlight in Diamond Dynasty

5th Inning Program Overview

The 5th Inning Program includes three inner-circle Hall of Famers as Bosses -- and all of them are former Atlanta Braves, who are hosting the 2025 MLB All-Star Game in just over a week. The clear headliner for in-game purposes is a 97 OVR Chipper Jones, who once again steps into Diamond Dynasty as one of the game's most potent switch-hitters, but his Braves teammate Greg Maddux is a compelling control pitcher as ever, and all-time All-Star appearance leader Hank Aaron is a complete right fielder.

This is a pre-shift to left field Chipper that dates to 1998 -- and some gorgeous Stadium Club cart art -- so he's purely a third baseman whose defense being good does not quite make up for not being able to deploy him away from the hot corner, where Braves fans and theme teamers already had an excellent Austin Riley. This is also not quite as powerful a Jones as the best that will come to DD, but his legendarily sweet swing and the ever-useful switch hitting will make him a reliable part of most elite lineups.

Maddux is one of the more consistent cards in DD: He brings almost unmatched control and finesse with an arsenal of pitches that gives players who can tolerate not being able to blow away batters many options to outfox them. This one is unquestionably in that vein, with triple-digit Stamina (112), H/9 (100), BB/9 (101), and Pitching Clutch (117) but no pitch speed better than the 90 MPH on his sinker. While the ability to change speeds is available on a five-pitch mix with significant differentials, the bottom line is that playing well with Maddux requires out-thinking opponents rather than daring them to hit 100+ MPH fire.

And Aaron's got the problem of being at once one of the greatest players in baseball history but being the sort of all-around outstanding player who is hard to capture in Diamond Dynasty. This card dates to a 1963 All-Star Game appearance during a season in which he posted one of his six seasons of 44 or more home runs and would finish third in NL MVP voting ... but his .319 batting average was the lowest of a four-year period from 1961 to 1964 in which he posted three of the seven seasonal batting averages of .320 or better he would have by the end of his age-30 campaign. There's really just no way to make an Aaron that is both intellectually honest and fair to his brand of greatness, so a 97 OVR card that is superb at everything but not the best at anything just has to do.

The real problem with a 97 Aaron dropping now, though, is that it is almost a cinch to be eclipsed by fellow Braves right fielder Ronald Acuna Jr.'s inevitable All-Star series card -- or cards, given that Acuna should get at least the Braves' Team Affinity card and a Home Run Derby card, and will also carry sentiment as a potential All-Star Game MVP should he show out in front of a home crowd that will be eager to celebrate one of the very few bright spots of a seemingly lost season. For as beloved as Aaron is and as good as this card is, his best DD cards do not beat out Acuna's, and creating a glut in right field for Braves fans is a bit of a bummer.

The two Bosses available from the XP reward path can be unlocked at 205,000 and 400,000 XP, the former representing a slight shift downward from the 235,000 XP necessary to nab the first Boss in the 4th Inning. But the XP reward path has been tweaked to better fit a 5th Inning that will run for just more than three weeks, ending on July 25, and new exchanges that allow players to obtain 65,000 5th Inning XP for what amounts to just a handful of Gold players can also turbocharge players' progress.

The three new Cornerstone Evolution players tied to the 5th Inning XP reward path are Giants third baseman Matt Chapman, Royals left fielder Alex Gordon, and Giants starter Juan Marichal. A nice quality-of-life upgrade comes with this iteration of that program, as the 95 OVR versions at the end of each program can be earned via accumulating stats alone with the 85 OVR versions that are acquired on the 5th Inning XP reward path, obviating the need to tediously play the moments tied to each player and get some stats to complete those reward paths. The three Cornerstone players are available at 7,500, 27,500, and 70,000 XP.

The XP reward path also features a 95 OVR Emmanuel Clase available at 135,000 XP, who hails from the Awards Series. Clase is filthy, with triple-digit stats everywhere and a cutter with Outlier, but his new and terrifying aspect is a sinker that replaces his four-seam fastball and provides him with a malevolent cutter-slider-sinker pitch mix that will

As has been the case all year, players can only unlock two of the three Bosses for free from the 5th Inning XP path, meaning one of Aaron, Jones, and Maddux will need to be acquired from the marketplace. But these should be unlocked faster and more widely than every Boss to date, and thus should also be a bit cheaper in terms of Studs cost.

Juan Soto's Molten Month Gets Lightning Honors

After a slow start to his first season playing for the senior circuit's Subway Series representative, Mets superstar Juan Soto had a June befitting his behemoth contract, blasting 11 homers and putting up a titanic 227 wRC+ in an onslaught that definitely, absolutely, for sure did not coincide with the Mets going 3-13 to finish the month and falling out of first place in the NL East. But the Lightning player of a month in Diamond Dynasty need not have been the winningest player of the lunar cycle, and so Soto gets the honors for June's Spotlight program, edging out Jo Adell and getting a monstrous card as a result.

This 97 OVR Soto is weirdly great at everything at the plate but the vaunted selectivity that has made him one of baseball's smartest hitters in recent memory, with an 85 Vision being the lone major batting stat south of the 100-point threshold. 115 Contact and Power against righties as a lefty bat will obviously play on Soto, but he's also got 108 Power against lefties and 102 Batting Clutch that will play up in a pinch thanks to his many useful quirks. Silver Defense is about all that could reasonably be expected for Soto, a frequently adventurous right fielder, but he does have left field eligibility, so there's a way to stash his unimpressive arm and 53 Speed in what is at least the less crucial corner outfield spot.

To unlock Soto, players will need to add June Spotlight Drop 4's Jo Adell -- itself a really impressive card reflecting Adell's own 11-homer June -- to the Nolan Arenado, Evan Carter, and Hunter Goodman cards available at the ends of the June Spotlight Drop XP reward paths.

To unlock Retro Lightning player Bobby Grich, whose massive June 1979 earns a 97 OVR card that is probably the best second baseman in Diamond Dynasty by a tier or two, players will need all eight of the June Spotlight pack players, with 96 OVR Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Adrian Morejon cards joining that octet this Thursday. And while the cost associated there is still quite steep, it should be south of a half-million Stubs -- which was not the case for prior Retro Lightning players -- thanks to a bevy of June Spotlight packs in the Drop 4 XP reward path.

99 OVR Clayton Kershaw Celebrates 3,000th K

Dodgers mainstay Clayton Kershaw reached a milestone that he might be the last MLB pitcher to achieve for a long time on Wednesday night, recording his 3,000th strikeout in a win over the Arizona Diamondbacks. For that, he is getting honored with MLB The Show 25's first 99 OVR player outside of its costly collections, a Milestone Series card that is likely to be the best Kershaw in Diamond Dynasty this cycle -- and that can be unlocked as quickly as stick skills allow.

The Kershaw program is tucked into the player programs menu, next to all the Cornerstone programs and the Evolution program for Yu Darvish, and functions similarly to those: Players will unlock an All-Star series Kershaw -- a 92 OVR card with an early-career build that is mostly unremarkable -- at 20 program Stars, which can be earned via moments or stat missions tied to Dodgers pitchers. Completing a combination of those moments and missions, stat missions for the All-Star Kershaw, a Showdown against the 99 OVR Kershaw, and/or the My Legacy feat of 3,000 strikeouts across all Diamond Dynasty modes will net the 100 Stars needed to complete the program and obtain the new best lefty in Diamond Dynasty.

And this Kershaw might hold that title for a while. It's a monster of a card, with no pitching stat lower than its 94 HR/9, and a fantastic 111/100/109/110 across the big four stats of Stamina, H/9, K/9, and Pitching Clutch, meaning opponents are going to be dealing with small PCIs that shrink even further with runners on. Kershaw's pitch mix is also ferocious, with his fastball topping out at 96 MPH doing little to diminish the effectiveness of a quartet of pitches that feature a slider and circle change that both sit in the mid-80s, a 12-6 curveball that will fall off the proverbial table, and a sinker that should play well off the fastball. About the only major flaw in this Kershaw is it having a single quirk -- Day Player, which boosts performance in day games -- that neither helps all that much nor makes sense for a card whose art literally depicts Dodger Stadium at night.

Still, that lack of an assortment of quirks won't stop this from being a card reminiscent of the early-cycle Kershaw that terrorized Diamond Dynasty a few years ago, and while it's probably not the last Kershaw we will see this year, it wouldn't be out of place as the final boss version of the Dodgers ace.

Other News and Notes

• Chase Pack 17 arrives under the radar on a loaded Thursday of Inning changeover and Spotlight climax, but its contents shouldn't be overlooked: It's a 98 OVR Mickey Mantle that is both a candidate for best center fielder in Diamond Dynasty and a bit off what the eventual best Mantle should be, with a surprising 80 Power against lefties and defensive stats that are good but not as otherworldly as the Commerce Comet was at his best. Expect this to be a 300,000-Stub card at minimum.
• The latest Weekend Classic runs from Thursday to Monday, giving players an extra day of play in the sweat mines for the Fourth of July holiday weekend. The players on offer this go-round are a 96 OVR Andrew McCutchen that pales in comparison to this week's other outfielders of note and a 96 OVR Andrew Miller that will leave outfielders and others pale as one of the best relievers in Diamond Dynasty. (Hint: If you earn the pack containing them, pick Miller.)
• Headliners Pack 21 has arrived; it could contain a 94 OVR Willie McCovey and 1947 Giants uniforms.
• A free Fourth of July bundle of cosmetic items is now available in the shop.