Brice Turang, Gary Sánchez Lead August Lightning in MLB The Show 25

Brice Turang, Gary Sánchez Strike as August Lightning Players

The Milwaukee Brewers have been one of baseball's best teams in 2025, and sit at 86 wins -- five games clear of any other MLB team -- as of the dawn of this September Friday. But they have done their damage largely with a balanced, talented roster that has had many above-average performers but few stars or standouts. So giving Brice Turang the August Lightning honors in Diamond Dynasty as MLB The Show's de facto Player of the Month award is a deserved designation, but certainly not a showy one.

And to be clear: Turang merits the bolt from the blue (well, the card art is mostly teal, but go with me.) He hit 10 homers, drove in 24 runs, and posted a 1.093 OPS -- so, uh, almost as good as Aaron Judge's for the entirety of 2025 -- in August, and the Brew Crew won their first 14 games in the month before skidding towards its end. As a second baseman, he plays a position that still has significant scarcity in DD, and his card is very, very good, carrying 118/125 Contact and 125 Power against righties as a left-handed hitter, optimal 125 Batting Clutch, 90+ attributes on defense minus Arm Strength -- no real worry at second, though maybe not as good at his secondary position of shortstop -- and a speed triad in which 96 Speed is his only non-99.

It's just that, uh, he's Brice Turang? Who is maybe fifth on the list of exciting Brewers -- give me Jacob Misorowski, Christian Yelich, William Contreras, and Jackson Chourio over Turang, at minimum -- and only leads them in hits, not any of batting average, homers, RBI, slugging, or OPS? It's understandable and maybe unavoidable that some Lightning players are likely to be duds in terms of either star power or merit if the program is caught between the twin goals of rewarding MLB's best performances in a month and spotlighting stars of the game, but, fair or not, Turang is the sort of player who might never be an All-Star and is only ever going to be slightly disappointing in a video game where his Platinum Glove-worthy defense can be only so important.

Possibly even less exciting for most, though, is August's Retro Lightning card: A 99 OVR version of Gary Sánchez that adds to a glut of great 99 OVR -- and legitimately end-game -- catchers. Sanchez, whose card is tied to his August in 2016, when he looked like an utter superstar in hitting 11 homers as a Yankees call-up, has long been one of the great power-hitting catchers in Diamond Dynasty, and while his career seems to be trickling to its end, his bat has always carried respect.

This year, though, his 99 OVR joins a sea of catchers that range from super competent (Ted Simmons, Jorge Posada, Francisco Alvarez, Mike Napoli) to mashers (Josh Gibson, Salvador Perez) to legitimately incredible (Biz Mackey), and it's really hard to make a case that he's an essential use of the time and Stubs necessary to obtain him.

The best argument for Sánchez is that the card itself is incredible: His only non-125 among Contact and Power is 115 Contact against lefties, his 125 Batting Clutch will nullify that often, and his 90+ stats in all of the defensive categories are a fantastic gesture for a player who has been below-average basically since that scintillating debut. He can't really run, but only in Diamond Dynasty are catchers actually expected to, and his hitting plus defense is really, really good.

That's just not worth hundreds of thousands of Stubs that you could otherwise allocate to Mackey -- who, unlike Sánchez, you could also resell -- at catcher, though.

August's Spotlight Drop 5 is otherwise fine content, with the usual batch of Spotlight cards and Spotlight packs -- including two specifically for May -- in the reward path, and the usual smattering of moments and missions providing the Stars for advancement. Of note among the players are Diamondbacks closer Taylor Rashi, who gets 125 H/9 and Pitching Clutch on a card that tops out at 91 MPH, Tigers reliever Kyle Finnegan, whose own 125s in those stats are accompanied by a 97 MPH heater, and reward path capstone Jakob Marsee, whose blazing August gets a card with triple digits in every Contact and Power stat and Batting Clutch to go with some superb defensive and speed attributes, but no quirks.

And if you want to get half of that reward path done in one moment, all you need to do is hit four home runs with Phillies slugger Kyle Schwarber -- on All-Star. That should be hard but doable.

To unlock Turang, players will need to add the five freely obtained August Spotlight Drop players from their respective XP reward paths to the August Lightning collection; to obtain Sánchez, players will need 10 of the 13 August Spotlight pack players, with one such player guaranteed in the pack one rung below Duran on the XP reward path for Drop 5. And it's also worth noting those collections have midpoint rewards: Four lock-ins in the Lightning collection gets a 99 OVR Yelich who serves as a nice complement to Turang for the Brewers, while four lock-ins in the Retro one yields an August Spotlight pack and seven nets a 99 OVR Roman Anthony that might be a salve to Red Sox fans mourning what may end up a season-ending injury to their young prospect.

Triple XP Presents Prime Opportunity

Perhaps as a gesture to a community otherwise enervated by a fairly underwhelming August Lightning pairing, Diamond Dynasty is getting an unprecedented opportunity for the next few days: Triple XP for the week that remains of the 7th Inning program, to go along with double Parallel XP.

That should make for very easy progress toward the end of a reward path that features Steve Carlton, David Ortiz, and some other guy, but also for an uptick in the number of players coming from the packs at the end of that reward path and its infinite spin-to-win rewards beyond it. Those packs include a Deluxe Choice pack and a Signature series pack, so expect that supply to help nudge prices downward in both that Signature series and in other coveted programs like the All-Star Game series.

Double Parallel XP should also make for some quick progress in the week-old Team Affinity Neon series, where three Parallel XP-based missions can produce all 50,000 Team Affinity XP necessary to complete any team's reward path. Assemble squads and do work as needed.

Other News and Notes

• A genuinely intriguing new Mini Seasons is also part of Friday's content drop, with the Run It Back program allowing players to chase rewards from previous Mini Seasons or other programs while beating up on overmatched squads, as the CPU opponents are limited to Bronze and Common players against players' unrestricted teams. It's not that there are a ton of those packs yielding players from specific programs in the rewards, but that there are some means this is now a way to grind out rewards that can consistently generate Stubs, not unlike the U.S.A. Conquest maps from previous Diamond Dynasties and various Diamond Quests in this year's game -- and that alone is a buff to Mini Seasons.
• The latest great Chase Pack player is a 99 OVR Chipper Jones with just about everything you'd want from Ol' Chip: Brilliant hitting stats from both sides of the plate, adequate defense at third, the secondary left field position, and even 74 Speed to make him a good baserunner and outfield defender. Unsurprisingly, it's a card the market likes a lot, and is going for about half a million Stubs at present, but that's probably a fair price to pay for what is unlikely to be unseated as the best third baseman in Diamond Dynasty and will have a chance to be the mode's best hitter period.
• Next Friday's content, which includes the 8th Inning program and another Weekend Classic, comes with a stream from San Diego Studio, but Tuesday's content will include both a new Conquest map and new Diamond Quest, which should be fun for stragglers finishing up the last bits of 7th Inning content or prepping for the 8th.