8th Inning Delivers Dozens of 99 OVR Legends in Diamond Dynasty

8th Inning Program Overview

It was probably fair to expect that San Diego Studio might finish out the year in Diamond Dynasty with a couple of less-thrilling 8th and 9th Inning programs before letting live updates for MLB The Show 25 dwindle as planning and development ramp up for MLB The Show 26.

Well, no. That's not what happened this Friday with the release of the 8th Inning in Diamond Dynasty -- and the dozens of 99 OVR Legends showing up in the game is a welcome sight.

The three that headline the 8th Inning itself as program Bosses are no slouches: Angels outfielder Vladimir Guerrero Sr., Mets catcher Mike Piazza, and Red Sox ace Pedro Martínez are those three 99 OVR players, and that two of them arrive as Hall of Fame series players (Guerrero and Piazza) and the third as an Awards series player paying tribute to Pedro's unbelievable Cy Young-winning 2000 campaign should do much of the necessary selling of how good they are.

Pedro is probably the most exciting of the three by a bit, with 115s in both Stamina and H/9 and a 125 Pitching Clutch that will make his filthy assortment of pitches (an Outlier-equipped fastball, his legendary circle change, and three other breaking pitches that will benefit from his Break Outlier) dangerous in any situation on the mound. The best Pedros have sometimes underwhelmed in Diamond Dynasty, to be fair, but this one has the chance to be great.

Vlad and Piazza are a little more commonly great. Piazza can do everything at the plate that any player can do, but has just Silver Fielding overall and has just average speed, so he doesn't distinguish himself from the current pool of insane catcher cards except by being technically free thanks to the XP reward path. Likewise, Guerrero is a great hitter with a perfect-by-DD-standards arm -- 99 Arm Strength and Accuracy -- but is perfect from a Contact standpoint (125s in Contact against righties and lefties and 125 Batting Clutch) but can't quite get to maxed-out Power (107/112 R/L) and is fast but not a total blazer. Both players -- and Pedro, for that matter -- are also with the second teams they primarily starred for, leaving Nationals fans without a theme team that has two famous Expos who never donned the curly W cap and Dodgers fans stuck with a lesser Piazza at the plate.

But that's a really solid trio of Inning Bosses, and they're once again available at 155,000 and 265,000 XP, seemingly the new standard for Inning XP reward paths lasting three weeks.

The three Cornerstone Evolution players in the 8th Inning are Craig Biggio, Trevor Hoffman, and Ed Mathews, and their 99 OVR versions are what you'd expect from all three: Biggio is a very good second baseman but also a stealth candidate for the game's best catcher with his secondary position eligibility and 90 Speed; Hoffman throws a mean 73 MPH circle change with maxed-out 99 Control and Break, and also has 125s in all of H/9, K/9, and Pitching Clutch; Mathews is a great hitter at third who will never be the Braves' best hitter at the position by virtue of Chipper Jones existing in both reality and as a Diamond Dynasty option.

The 8th Inning exclusive XP reward path player is a 99 OVR Todd Helton who hits really well but is stuck at first base with no secondary positions. He's fine.

The 8th Inning XP reward path also contains packs, Stubs, and unnecessary, unsellable cosmetics as rewards, and the now-routine array of of simple stat missions and player exchanges for XP.

John Donaldson Headlines New Legends and Flashbacks Collections

If we are being honest, though, what exists in the 8th Inning pales in comparison to the parallel release of three new Legends and Flashbacks collections with premier rewards for full completion: Alfonso Soriano, Hank Greenberg, and, towering above all, a John Donaldson card tied to a 1911 no-hitter -- one of 14 he is credited with by various sources -- that he pitched when he was 20 years old.

Soriano's collection requires 16 vouchers from other series collections, and yields a gorgeous Silver Slugger-tagged Awards series card that puts him in a Yankee-blue spotlight and makes him a tremendous second baseman whose major flaw is just adequate defense; that he should be very easily obtained mitigates any real worries about his viability.

Greenberg's collection requires 24 vouchers, and gets players a hitter with no weaknesses: This Hall of Fame series card's worst hitting stat among the ones that scale to 125 is 103 Vision, which is more than made up for by every other one of those stats being 115 or greater. This is a first base-primary card and not a great defender even there, but it also has left field eligibility, and we'll be lucky to see another outfielder as good with wood in DD this year as this iteration of the Hebrew Hammer is.

Finally, though, there is a player whose reputation in Diamond Dynasty is sterling based on a previous meta-defining card -- and whose new meta-defining card feels like a Negro Leagues equivalent to Shohei Ohtani. Donaldson's previous dominance hinged in no small part on an unintended consequence of getting two-way players in DD, and the Stamina that players got in that situation, but this one just has 115 Stamina to begin with, a nasty arsenal of five pitches that all sit at different velocities, and Outlier on both his primary slider and secondary four-seam fastball. And then there's Donaldson as a hitter and runner: He has triple-digit hitting stats everywhere but Power against lefties, 93s or better in every defensive stat, and a 90/99/99 speed and baserunning trio. Essentially, he has all of the proverbial five tools -- and maybe more -- but can also pitch and will rapidly progress through the Parallel XP path that makes him even better.

The cost to have Donaldson on your squad is a titanic 32 vouchers, which means every single one of the vouchers currently available for collection in all of Diamond Dynasty -- which, in turn, means collecting literally hundreds of cards -- but it's hard to say it isn't worth it for a giant of the early days of baseball, or for a card representing a game in which Donaldson threw 18 innings and had 31 strikeouts (but maybe didn't actually throw a no-hitter, though he threw more than nine consecutive innings of no-hit ball.)

New Moonshot 2.0 Program Adds Heavy-Hitting Hank Aaron, Ozzie Smith, Tim Raines

The newest of the 32 collections necessary to complete en route to unlocking Donaldson also dropped Friday, and is technically more of an extension of the existing Moonshot program than a fully-fledged new one, not unlike the New Threads program released at the year's outset and updated after the MLB trade deadline.

That said, the refresh of the popular Moonshot content comes with a bunch of neat new players, beginning with a Hank Aaron that is suitably great for baseball's one-time home run king and arguably most consistent hitter ever. This Aaron is the new capstone Moonshot collection reward, has perfect 125s in all of the Contact, Power, and Pitching Clutch stats, and will require a measly 60 Moonshot players to be collected. It still might not be the best Aaron we get in DD -- this one has somewhat nerfed defense and speed, as it ties to the latter half of Aaron's 30s -- but it is a problem at the plate.

And then, on the rungs beneath Aaron in the collection's rewards, are Ozzie Smith and Tim Raines cards that make the Wizard and Rock long-ball hitters unlike their real-life counterparts. Giving defensive whiz Smith 125 Power against lefties makes no reality-based sense, given that his season high for homers was six, and giving Raines -- who never hit 20 homers in a season and mustered just 170 over 23 MLB seasons -- triple-digit Power makes scarcely more, but these are fun, fantastical cards that feel fair for a game that is trending toward every card having superheroic powers at this point.

In total, 20 new 99 OVR players in Moonshot livery were added on Friday, with most of them available in packs or on the XP reward path that culminates with a 99 OVR Joe Mauer -- yet another one of those 99 OVR catchers in Diamond Dynasty that are like so many fallen leaves as we approach the fall. The program naturally brings back the always-popular Moonshot event, where players can tee off on poor pitchers, and its moments and missions revolve mostly around socking dingers and sticking it out with the new Common-tier pitchers for Parallel XP.

There's also a set of new Extreme-level moments in this Moonshot program, tasking players with going yard against good pitchers, like Roger Clemens and Rob Dibble -- on Hall of Fame difficulty. Good luck and well-played to those attempting to grind through that gauntlet.

Other News and Notes

• The 8th Inning's arrival coincides with a new Weekend Classic that also has some phenomenal cards as rewards: 99 OVR versions of Bob Gibson and Honus Wagner that are a stupendous ace and an all-around menace, respectively. Wagner's eligibility everywhere but catcher and well-rounded skillset make him an ideal utility player, while Gibson is a force of nature -- but not actually tied to his indelible 1968 season, and instead a card from his 1970 Cy Young run. Both cards are available for crusading work in Weekend Classic, and will consequently be rare and expensive, but both are great enough to justify the sweating necessary to snag them.
• The first drop of the September Spotlight program features such luminaries as Brad Keller, Daylen Lile, and ... okay, some non-sickos have heard of Mets call-up Brandon Sproat and Phillies mainstay Brandon Marsh. As the Spotlight program draws to a close and 99 OVR cards populate DD like kudzu, the names will get more obscure and the deserve quotient more dubious, but there will remain packs and progress toward Lightning cards to be made.
• There's no new Chase pack player this week, but, really, was SDS suppose to top Chipper?
• Double XP for both the 8th Inning and Parallel paths will run through September 16 at noon Pacific, which will coincide with a new Multiplayer program and new World Series rewards.
• Far more exciting? The new program, pack, Showdown, and collection coming next Friday, September 19, which clearly coincides with the finals of MLB's Home Run Derby X. And if that's not exciting enough without more context, the context SDS provided in teasing 17 new HRDX -- terrible acronym, but so be it -- Legends coming as part of the program is certainly tantalizing, with the possible names being another intriguing list.