2025 All-Star Program Takes Off in Diamond Dynasty With Nearly 100 New Cards

Nearly 100 Cards Come with 2025 All-Star Content

As one might imagine, the All-Star Game being MLB's celebration of its stars allows for all manner of content in MLB The Show, and this year's edition getting a slew of additions is no surprise. What might qualify as slightly shocking is the sheer quantity of stats being set in the firmament in this content drop in Diamond Dynasty: Almost 100 new players, across a Team Affinity update for every team, MLB All-Star Game and event participants, and 2025 MLB Draft picks, will be arriving in the game over the days to come.

The biggest batch of those is coming through the 30 Team Affinity cards that have been expected since the initial release of MLB The Show 25, with the Team Affinity XP reward path promising All-Stars for each MLB franchise coming on July 11 since the first reveals of Diamond Dynasty content. And those players, 96 OVRs earned via tallying the requisite 365,000 Team Affinity XP in the My Journey reward path, immediately reset the floor for top-level cards in DD.

Not all of these cards are their team's best All-Star representatives, of course: The Dodgers' card is Freddie Freeman, the Yankees' is Max Fried, and some other teams surely have former Braves who are very good but not their roster's superstars, too. But a 96 OVR version of, say, Astros shortstop Jeremy Pena is still going to be a top option at the position, and some of these cards are superstars, like the Paul Skenes who reps the Pirates or the Pete Alonso who serves as the Mets' selection. And one of them is free to unlock via a voucher available in the Show shop that can then be used in whichever collection a player might want. Given that only a small minority of players will have the Team Affinity progress to immediately have scads of players available -- your humble author, who averages at least an hour a day in Diamond Dynasty, had only the ones for his Braves and, bizarrely, the Cubs -- the voucher is a great way to give players a little buy-in on the sprawling All-Star content drop, but the, uh, devoutly dedicated player who has vouchers for 30 teams can also select an All-Star Deluxe pack.

The biggest chase and challenge of this drop -- it's not really a program as of yet, as there is no dedicated XP reward path for it -- is surely the new All-Star collection, which contains 99 OVR versions of Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani, the American and National League's Most Valuable Player front-runners, for collecting 55 and 50 2025 All-Star Series players, respectively. 30 of those players are the TA choices, but the other 25 you'll need to get to Judge are in packs, collections -- three players are available before Judge and Ohtani, including a 99 OVR Jose Ramirez -- and the new Diamond Quest (two players), Mini Seasons (four players), Showdown (a 96 OVR Logan Webb), and Moonshot tied to the Midsummer Classic. Whether those are the absolute best versions of these players we see over the course of the All-Star drop, given that All-Star Game MVPs and Home Run Derby champions have historically gotten great cards to reflect their showings, remains to be seen.

But there might be a little bit of help in the offing for players who can perfectly predict the Home Run Derby and All-Star Game, as a new set of prediction vouchers is free in the store for players to obtain and then use before Monday, July 14, at 7 p.m. Eastern to guess a few aspects of the Derby and the winner of the ASG and earn rewards for doing so. (Don't worry if you're a poor prognosticator: There will be rewards for losing vouchers, too.)

And then there's what is coming Sunday: A 2025 MLB Draft program that the Show team has touted as containing "the most draft picks in any MLB The Show title." How many exactly that ends up being is a mystery to the player base for now, but getting to the more than 90 players released as part of the All-Star festivities advertised elsewhere suggests that there are dozens of MLB draftees who already have deals signed to have their likenesses included in Diamond Dynasty as soon as their names are announced as major leaguers to be, and that same news post says "over 30 Draft picks" are on the way. So if you're hoping to hop on the sticks with Ethan Holliday or Jamie Arnold as soon as Sunday's release of this content, you might well get your wish.

The lack of an actual All-Star program leading into the weekend with objectives and rewards makes for a bit of an unusual content drop, especially for an All-Star Game that will have obvious moments to recreate and feats to celebrate, but that will still come with subsequent releases of content in the coming days. However, the high wave of new cards washing in for the summer celebration of all things baseball, including legitimate endgame-level versions of titans like Judge and Ohtani, might make that matter a lot less to much of the Diamond Dynasty community.

July Spotlight Drop 1 Highlighted by Addison Barger, Brandon Woodruff

The slightly less exciting piece of content that came with this Friday in Diamond Dynasty is the first July Spotlight Drop, which of course had to pan for gold beyond the massive class of All-Stars and related players for its featured performers.

That means the trio of 97 OVRs atop it includes Willy Adames, Addison Barger, and Brandon Woodruff, All-Stars of yesteryear, and the Topps Now crop of 95 OVRs includes names like Wilyer Abreu and Colson Montgomery, up-and-comers whose All-Star shine might happen in years to come. There's nothing really wrong with these players being on the undercard on this Friday, but it should probably be noted that 95 and 97 OVRs being the tiers for Spotlight content this July probably means it will take something incredible enough to get a 98 OVR version of a player into the Spotlight drops for any All-Star to double-dip over the course of what should be four Spotlight drops leading up to the Lightning players.

Weirdly, the best of all of the Drop 1 cards might well be a Topps Now pack card, in the form of a 95 OVR Teoscar Hernandez who will rip lefties with triple-digit Contact and Power as a righty but also has plenty of ability to hit righties and a nice assortment of quirks and 86 Speed that makes up for some otherwise middling defensive stats.

Other News and Notes

• Chase Pack 18's Ketel Marte is a 2025 All-Star Series card and carries Marte's typically great combination of hitting stats and switch-hitting to the top of the meta at second base and to his secondary positions of shosrtstop and center field. Expect this to be a six-figure card and merit the price.
• The sheer number of All-Star cards and the long-awaited debuts of non-Live Series versions of Judge and Ohtani, among other top-tier players, should provided some downward pressure on the prices of even those most rarefied Live Series options, making this a good time to put together pieces or even finalize the Live Series collection. And following from that, the Live Series prices on players like Bobby Witt Jr. being tied to their necessity to complete those collections could make selling those cards and buying cheaper but better All-Star Series versions a decent idea.
• Tuesday brought a strange stopgap Video Game Numbers program with just two new cards -- a 95 OVR Reid Detmers honoring his 2022 no-hitter and a 96 OVR Cal Ripken Jr. with great Contact numbers to celebrate his six-hit game in 1999 -- and 15,000 Inning XP. It requires the completion of at least five moments for full completion of the reward path, but also comes with a Conquest map with its own rewards.
• The very much overshadowed roster update for this cycle is probably most notable for once more making Ohtani's Live Series card a starting pitcher, reflecting the Dodgers' recent use of him as a glorified opener, but bumping Tarik Skubal's Live Series OVR to a 92 and making Pete Crow-Armstrong's an even better hitter to match his insane defensive talents makes a couple of top-end players in reality a little more viable in Diamond Dynasty.
• The really interesting bump this weekend, though, might be the Supercharged George Springer, who gets a 99 OVR version for a few days that has filthy hitting stars and also becomes an above-average right fielder. As this is a 16-point jump from a Gold that is definitely hanging out in many binders, there might be some serious value in either playing Springer and socking dingers or selling high and socking away some Stubs.