The Best Players at Every Position in Diamond Dynasty for July 2024

Season 2 started slowly in Diamond Dynasty. But the release of Team Affinity Chapter 2 and the wave of All-Star content in MLB The Show’s team-building mode over the last two weeks has energized the game, even against the backdrop of College Football 25 finally coming into sports gamers’ lives. With a new power curve very much set, it’s time to redo our rankings of the best cards at every position in Diamond Dynasty for July 2024.

A few notes and caveats: We’re doing three to five players at each position as necessary; we’re not ranking designated hitters individually, as any card could be a designated hitter – and the best designated hitters are going to show up, trust; and we’re only ranking Season 2 cards in this assessment. Yes, the Season 1 XP Reward Path cards and Live Series Babe Ruth are still incredibly good. You do not need that refresher.

Starting Pitchers

No. 1: 99 Hall of Fame Bob Gibson

The most fearsome version of Bob Gibson – the one representing either his Hall of Fame career or his legendary 1968 season, in which he tallied 70 more strikeouts than he allowed hits – should be a monstrously good card in Diamond Dynasty. Now that the 99 OVR one that is in the Season 2 Collection choice pack is obtainable, it’s time to give it its due – even if it isn’t quite as formidable as it should be.

Don’t get me wrong: A card with 125 Stamina, a 99s-in-everything fastball with Outlier, excellent sinker and slider secondaries, and no pitching stat lower than a 91 in Control is a terrific card. But Gibson’s 1968 is one of the five best MLB pitching seasons in history – maybe the best – and giving him 125 H/9 or 100+ stats in every category really isn’t too much to ask.

Still, this card was obviously meant to be a top-of-the-meta card for Season 2 and definitely qualifies as that. It’s hard to see how it’s going to get eclipsed, either.

No. 2: 99 All-Star Paul Skenes

Last time we performed this exercise, the 99 Jin Kim Satchel Paige that was in the Season 1 Collection got edged by a ridiculous Paul Skenes partly due to the difficulty in attaining the Paige. This time, we’re putting the All-Star Skenes No. 2 behind a Collection card – and mostly because the Skenes isn’t quite as good.

Compare the two cards, and you’ll see that All-Star Skenes has conceded a fair bit of the numbers governing stuff for attributes related to control – but also lost critical points in HR/9, which fairly represents his one weakness in real life, as he’s been slightly susceptible to big swingers while putting together a Cy Young-caliber season.

Now, that stat shuffling also comes with the debut of Skenes’s terrifying “splinker” – the turbocharged splitter-sinker hybrid he learned essentially in the span of a year – as his top secondary pitch, and it’s a better secondary than anything the Pipeline Skenes had, not least because it has Outlier. It’s also still really, really hard to hit the mix of speed and movement that Skenes offers.

But from where we sit, the Pipeline Skenes is just a tad better – and with Gibson as the competition here, the All-Star one settles for No. 2.

No. 3: 99 All-Star Chris Sale

Sale’s one of the two other 99 OVR starters in Diamond Dynasty – spoiler: Roy’s on this list, too – and the only lefty, so he was guaranteed a top spot almost by default. But the best versions of Sale make great use of his wonky sidearm delivery, statuesque frame, and wipeout slider to be hell on lefties and tough for righties, and this is one of those cards.

The key is that slider, an unusual primary pitch that will only rarely touch 80 MPH but has absurd horizontal break and can get buried inside against righties and zip away from lefties with skilled use. Hang it and it’ll get banged – non-human versions of Sale have been easy for your author to hit for a long time – but locate it well and play it off his strong circle change while also alternating his fastball and sinker, and you have one of the best breaking pitches in DD.

Oh, and this Sale is essentially a free card for completion of Team Affinity Season 2 Chapter 2, as he requires just 30 cards in the All-Star Collection to unlock. That’s premium pitching for little more than elbow grease.

No. 4: 99 Hall of Fame Roy Halladay

The stats are great. The name and game are legendary. The pitch mix, though, leaves Halladay’s cards a little light on punchout stuff, and so even this arguable best version that Diamond Dynasty has had isn’t the card you want on the mound.

That’s a frustrating thing to have to say about a card whose 105+ stats in five of the six non-composite (i.e. Control, Velocity, and Break) pitching stats are about as gaudy as it gets. (A 95 HR/9 is the exception.) But Halladay’s primary cutter and secondary sinker are good but not great pitches for DD, with mid-90s speeds limiting how effective they can be, and the other three are worse: A curveball is an off-meta pitch no matter how good it is, his splitter is nowhere near as good as, say, Skenes’s, and Halladay’s fastball is a fifth pitch for good reason.

And, yeah, this is a free card, too – but it’s a free card that should be last of the three 99 OVRs players pick from the XP Reward Path choices, and it’s possible that other 99 OVR starters will nudge it down this list, too.

T-No. 5: 98 Draft Chase Burns / 97 Standout Nolan Ryan

If you’ve ever played against a Nolan Ryan, you’ve played against this one: He throws hard but throws wild. The thing is that the Burns is almost the same card, with better (?) K/9 and a slider that should play better than Ryan’s curveball in DD.

Neither is exactly cheap, with Burns being a rare-round choice pack card and Ryan being a Chase Pack card, but if you want to throw triple digits with someone other than Gibson or Skenes en route to those two being top-tier rotation options, Burns and Ryan are your picks.

Honorable mentions: 97 Draft Hagen Smith (120 K/9), 95 All-Star Tyler Anderson (125 Pitching Clutch)

Relief Pitchers

1. 99 All-Star Emmanuel Clase

2. 95 All-Star Mason Miller

3. 95 All-Star Kirby Yates

4. 95 All-Star Robert Suarez

5. 96 All-Star Game Liam Hendriks

Clase is the only 99 OVR reliever in Diamond Dynasty at the moment, so he’d top this list almost by default even if he didn’t have the golden double of 125 H/9 and Pitching Clutch that will shrink PCIs to thimble size. His cutter has Outlier and his weirdly low K/9 of 87 – which, fairly, reflects his strikeout numbers being down over the last two years – shouldn’t be that much of an impediment to getting outs.

Miller is the consummate fireballer reliever, and his fastball-slider pairing might be the best 1-2 combination in all of DD. Yates has far less velocity but 125s in all of H/9, K/9, and Pitching Clutch. Suarez has five pitches, tremendous and rare for relievers, and two of them have Outlier. Hendricks has four pitches and the best control of any of these picks.

First Base

No. 1: 99 Hall of Fame Frank Thomas

The best part of this Frank Thomas card might be just how good he is: 111 Power against righties is the worst of his Contact/Power stats, his Vision is 101, his Batting Clutch is 125, and he has more quirks than a season of Young Sheldon. There may be no bigger gap between the best player at a position at this point in Season 2 than the one between Thomas and No. 2 on this list, but the gap between Babe Ruth and Thomas is also tiny.

Once the Big Hurt gets to your lineup, you won’t be replacing him without pain.

No. 2: 98 Draft Charlie Condon

Condon comes to DD off a titanic power season in college baseball, and his MLB numbers are sure to be staggering if he blossoms into what he could be as a Rockies first baseman. His DD card also has the only set of 100+ Contact/Power stats for a player with first base as even a secondary position in Season 2 other than Thomas, and he’s got a decent glove and decent speed. This isn’t exactly a must-try card when he’ll only ever be keeping the bag warm for Thomas, but it’s better than a slew of flawed options vying for second.

And, y’know, technically a third baseman.

No. 3: 97 All-Star Anthony Santander

See what I mean about the slew of flawed options? Once again, first base is a position ruled in DD by players who are far from everyday players at the spot.

Santander beats out a bunch of honorable mentions because of his switch hitting and excellent 118/109 Power numbers, but he might be occasionally shaky in the field and is also fairly slow even for first.

Honorable mentions: 97 All-Star Bryce Harper; 97 Draft Nick Kurtz; 95 Home Run Derby Jason Giambi; 97 All-Star Alec Bohm

Second Base

Tied-No. 1: 99 Draft Travis Bazzana / 99 Pipeline Jackson Holliday

Two great options at either middle infield slot come in atop second – and will recur at short – because of well-rounded skillsets with practically no weaknesses. Holliday having maxed-out Contact against righties and Batting Clutch makes it a little easier to boost him with Captains – and there are, uh, a few decent Orioles cards in this game – and has better fielding stats, but will be out of position at second and penalized a bit for that. Holliday is also free – if a Collection card – while Bazzana will probably cost around 70K Stubs, but Bazzana also has every secondary position except first, catcher, and pitcher, and is thus easier to slide into a lineup.

Either way, you can’t go wrong.

Tied-No. 3: 99 All-Star Fernando Tatis Jr. / 97 All-Star Game Alfonso Soriano / 97 Home Run Derby Jose Ramirez / 97 All-Star Trea Turner

The second tier of second basemen – who mostly aren’t second basemen – is also quite good, an A-tier beneath two S-tier selections. Tatis is turning into an all-around star in DD who can be deployed all over; Soriano pairs pop and speed with a lot of quirks; this version of Ramirez really amps up his Power numbers at the price of some Contact, and his switch hitting distinguishes him; Turner is, as usual, an ultra-fast, high-Contact table-setter.

There’s not much to differentiate between these players in terms of quality, so style and personal preference should be your guide.

Honorable mentions: 97 Draft Christian Moore; 95 All-Star Marcus Semien

Third Base

No. 1: 99 Hall of Fame Chipper Jones

I mean: LOL.

Chipper Jones' 125 Contact against both righties and lefties and 125 Batting Clutch on a switch hitter obviously means that Ol’ Chip is the best contact hitter in Diamond Dynasty and can only really be equaled in that regard, not surpassed. With the quirks on offer here, he’s going to mash anything anyone throws at him – oh, and his swing is buttery and his power is more than fine.

Chipper cards do concede a little defense, of course, and are more tolerable than terrific on the bases or in running down fly balls, should you play them in left. But this is a fantastic Chipper even relative to the best in DD history – and it should rule the virtual summer like he did so many sweltering ones in Georgia.

Tied-No. 2: 99 Bazzana / 99 Holliday

No need to belabor the point here: Both guys have better stats than anyone else in the mix for second place at third behind Chipper, and they’re showing up at a third position, too.

No. 4: 97 All-Star Alec Bohm

If you’re willing to punt on fielding almost entirely at third, you can reach for Bohm, who might have the biggest bat of any third-eligible Season 2 player – Chipper included. 120 Power against both righties and lefties certainly plays, and he’s helpfully boosted by a few different Captains: Rafael Devers can max out his Power, Nolan Arenado gets him nearly maxed Contact against righties and maxed Power against lefties, and Phillies theme teams will turn him into one of the game’s best hitters, period.

But, yeah, the fielding is an issue, especially at third, and you probably shouldn’t build a theme team around making Alec Bohm especially good.

No. 5: 98 Condon

Man, the corners are bereft of great options other than the greatest ones, huh?

Honorable mentions: Ramirez

Shortstop

No. 1: 99 Hall of Fame Derek Jeter

I am a Braves fan who remembers the 1990s and thus the best Derek Jeter ever was, and this card being his best is laughable to me. 99 Arm Strength? A very generous 85 Reaction? Maxed-out Contact I can buy, because Jeter really was a fantastic singles-and-doubles hitter – but 92 Power for a guy who slugged over .500 once in an era when offense was much, much easier than it is today?

Okay, yes, I am being uncharitable: Jeter was great and has somehow gotten to be a little underrated because of how his overrated defense has come to be the first topic of discussion of his career. Overrating that same defense in a video game he adorned the cover of is no great crime against humanity, especially when his limited Power actually balances this card nicely.

But the most accurate version of Jeter would have to be a 99 OVR with a different sort of stat distribution than this one – the 1999 Jeter who hit .349 and 24 homers and thus a colossal 153 OPS+ also began a five-year streak of making 14 or more errors while failing to make it to a .980 fielding percentage – so we purists and haters will have to settle for a merely excellent card that fudges some of the finer points.

And I can admit that this is more fun.

No. 2: 99 Home Run Derby Bobby Witt Jr.

When you give Witt the best possible power numbers, it turns out that you make his card terrifying. This version swings a booming stick to go with Witt’s usual profile of great contact and speed, and while its fielding is nerfed a bit as a Home Run Derby card, the Corbin Carroll Captain – try saying that five times fast – morphs it into an absolute monster at the plate.

The best version of Witt is still probably yet to come, as there’s enough of a concession to get this card its power to leave room for a Finest – or Postseason? – Witt that has no weaknesses. For now, this is the powerful complement to his contact-and-speed Lightning version that promises tantalizing things in the future.

Tied-No. 3: 99 Bazzana / 99 Holliday

Huh, wow, incredible, imagine seeing you here. This might slant slightly to Holliday because he won’t have secondary position defense, but these cards are what they are, and so difficult to differentiate.

No. 5: Turner

If you’re willing to go all in on speed and the Phillies: Combining the Corbin Carroll and Seranthony Dominguez Tier 3 boosts would get this Turner to 125 Contact against both righties and lefties and gets his Power split to 93/101. There are certainly far worse leadoff hitters.

Honorable mentions: Tatis; Ramirez; All-Star Carlos Correa

Catcher

No. 1: 97 Topps Now Yasmani Grandal

The best catcher in Diamond Dynasty is a Topps Now card? From the XP Reward Path? Believe it or not, yes: Grandal’s offense is, as usual, the draw, with 102 his lowest Contact or Power number, and his sweet swing and switch hitting make it clear he’ll be plodding into first on 370-foot singles as usual.

But weirdly, it’s his defense – good but not elite – that makes him No. 1 ahead of…

No. 2: 95 All-Star Salvador Perez

…a catcher who is arguably a slightly better hitter than even the mighty Grandal, but has lost enough defensively from his peak that he’s far more bat than glove now. Perez’s own Contact/Power numbers are plenty good – the 90 for Power against lefties is the only sub-100 stat of the four – and reflective of him impressively continuing to rake into his mid-30s with nearly 1,500 games (over 1,250 at catcher) on his treads.

Teaming Perez with Witt – either one – and the Season 1 George Brett gives Royals theme teams a rather excellent trio of hitters at premium positions, too.

No. 3: 93 Captain Elias Diaz

Some Diamond Dynasty cards just seem to play above their stats. For me, this Elias Diaz is one of them: With him, I am hitting, over a small sample size, .528 with a 1.430 OPS, and everything has been a rope. Maybe it’s because he’s often been up with runners on, and so that 116 Batting Clutch has kicked in, but I sincerely think this card just pounds pitches with a strong, compact swing.

Oh, and its Captain boosts apply to almost 100 cards. That’s helpful!

No. 4: 97 All-Star David Fry

David Fry does not sound like a real name, but this one has legit game – three 100+ Contact/Power stats, solid defense, and a bizarre assortment of secondary positions.

But if you’re going to use a David Fry – if you’re that much of a Guardians fan – why wouldn’t you just spend a Wild Card slot on his much, much better Season 1 card?

Honorable mentions: 90 The Show Classics Daulton Varsho; 94 All-Star Game Willson Contreras

Outfielders

Once again: Evaluating outfielders in MLB The Show means attempting to parse what positional eligibilities are most valuable and establishing what profiles are individually worth at each position. Better fielders with great arms are going to be most valuable as right fielders; great speed is most valuable in center field; arm strength and defense matter less in left.

So take these rankings less as a pecking order at each position and more as a general assessment of players who have outfield positional eligibility.

No. 1: 99 Hall of Fame Ken Griffey Jr.

The Kid is the best center fielder in Diamond Dynasty, as he should be. And he’s one of the best left-handed bats, too, with that whip-like swing ready to launch balls to center and right. But he’s going to struggle slightly more with lefties than some options in the outfield, and it really is his speed and defense that is doing the work to elevate him over some of the other great cards available at this point in July. 

And there’s less distance between him and No. 2 – whichever Yankee you think should be there – than you might expect.

Tied-No. 2: 99 All-Star Aaron Judge / 99 All-Star Juan Soto

Possibly, that’s because Judge has great Contact – for once – to go with maxed-out Power numbers that are more than well-deserved. Possibly, it’s because this Soto got an alarmingly good card – one with 10 quirks, one more than Griffey – to replicate his own great 2024 season.

Maybe it’s also because great Yankees theme teams are easy to assemble, meaning that Judge and Soto are easier to buff than Griffey, who is sorely lacking in great Mariners of yesteryear and today to team with.

But if not for Griffey being free – compared to Soto being exceedingly expensive and Judge being at the very end of the All-Star Collection – I think I might have the other two tied with him atop this list.

No. 4: 99 Milestone Wyatt Langford

This is an admittedly biased pick, as a Florida Gators fan who adored how hard Langford played in orange and blue. But his cycle – and the hot streak he’s been on for about a month – announced his arrival as a MLB player doing more than frantically trying to tread water, and this card makes him the sort of holy terror to lefty pitching that the best version of Langford should be, with 125 Contact/Power against lefties and 125 Batting Clutch to match. 99 Speed also means he could play right or center as well as left, and makes him eligible for good Carroll Captain boosts.

No. 5: 99 Home Run Derby Teoscar Hernandez

Possibly the best designated hitter in Diamond Dynasty, this card with 112 as its lowest Contact or Power stat is obviously going to rake. But it’s an outfielder, too, and no defensive stat even at an 80 is a big sacrifice even for the immense power on offer here. And unlike Judge, Soto, and the next guy on this list, this card is barely quirky at all.

No. 6: 99 All-Star Shohei Ohtani

Is it possible that this 99 OVR card is underrating Ohtani very slightly? Obviously, the lack of pitching stats – though Break Outlier is here, weirdly – on a designated hitter card that reflects Ohtani only tearing the cover off the ball while recovering from Tommy John surgery makes this an inherently less valuable card but accurately reflective of an inherently less valuable player.

But: Ohtani is the NL MVP front-runner, and has almost unfathomably leveled up as a hitter while playing through what most pitchers would have simply spent a year rehabilitating. His .316 batting average and 189 OPS+ – in a new-to-him league – are on pace to be career highs, and he’s on pace to eclipse 50 homers for the first time, too. It’s conceivable that he could also invent the 50-40 Club – he’s at 23 steals! – and lead the NL’s best team, though the Dodgers do have some work to do in that regard.

It’s not exactly fair to put Ohtani in the mix with outfielders because 1) this card isn’t one and 2) any outfielder card for Ohtani, who does have all three as secondary positions here, is based on less than a full MLB game’s worth of innings in the field, so anything other than his 99 Arm Strength – which, well, seems fair for a pitcher who throws triple digits – is probably based on him firing lasers as a right fielder in Japan some eight years ago.

On the other hand: Is it fair to Ohtani to compare him to mere mortals?

No. 7: 99 All-Star Jarren Duran

Congratulations on winning All-Star Game MVP, dude. Here is your card that is largely a mirror image of a rookie who just hit for the cycle. Enjoy the second half!

Honorable mentions: Ramirez (left fielder eligibility!); Tatis (every outfield position!); 97 Home Run Derby Sammy Sosa (power!); 97 All-Star Game Mike Trout (well-rounded, but slightly outdated); 95 All-Star Vladimir Guerrero (is Vladimir Guerrero)