On this page
New Captains and new Finest players arriving in Diamond Dynasty allows for a bit deeper team-building for players still on the sticks in MLB The Show 25.
Captain Blizzard Drop 1 Brings Whitey Ford, Brian Roberts
The principle of new Captains in Diamond Dynasty is a good one, even at this late stage of the game cycle. Those players should enable new and interesting theme teams, or at least change up how players might approach building their squads.
Limiting that to two players in Captain Blizzard Drop 1 feels more like hinting at what might be to come than a "blizzard," however.
Those two players released on Friday are Yankees starter Whitey Ford, the World Series MVP Captain, and Orioles second baseman Brian Roberts, the 50 Stolen Bases Club Captain, and while each is an interesting player getting feted for a feat of note, it's tough to be too thrilled by those being the groups these new cards boost.
In Ford's case, players who have won the World Series MVP award get a variety of batting stat boosts -- Hits Per 9, Batting Clutch, and Vision -- but also Speed, topping out at +10 for the Tier 3 boost with 10 players assembled on a roster. While that won't help 2025 World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto much if at all, he doesn't really need pitching boosts. Tacking more pitching prowess onto versions of Randy Johnson or Tom Glavine might have been more interesting, however, and using a captain who is a pitcher to boost batters is illogical even if it enables a blended theme team.
For Roberts, boosting players who stole 50 or more bases in one season in their Power against both righties and lefties, Batting Clutch, and Fielding Ability makes a little more sense, especially as it is shoring up weaknesses for some speedsters in so doing. Specifically, the September Spotlight Ronald Acuña Jr. gets a lot of benefit from the Batting Clutch and Fielding, and noted thieves like Eric Davis and Rickey Henderson will benefit beautifully from this boost.
One player who does not get a ton of help from Roberts is Extreme Elly De La Cruz, whose stats are already good enough that this boost is mostly wasted on him, perhaps the first player who comes to mind when thinking about stolen bases in modern baseball. Of course, another one is Shohei Ohtani -- and while he doesn't need the help, either, making him a nearly perfect player by virtue of a one-time feat for his career that seems likely to be an afterthought on a staggering list of accomplishments is admittedly funny.
Unlocking Ford and Roberts is a matter of grinding some easy statistical missions requiring strikeouts and homers with World Series MVPs, stolen bases with 50-steal players and Orioles -- Moonshot Luis Aparicio and Finest Gunnar Henderson are good choices -- and Parallel XP with any Captains, which includes every Team Affinity-tied release.
The next Captain Blizzard program is advertised for December 2 in game. Let's hope it has more than a couple of players.
Finest Program Yields Bryce Harper
In a follow-up to last Friday's "Finest Friday" release of most of the dozens of Finest cards for Diamond Dynasty in MLB The Show 25, Tuesday brought a 2025 Finest program for putting all those cards to good use and unlocking a handful more players from the series.
The 100-Star XP reward path contains five Finest players, most notably a tandem of talented rookies in Yankees first baseman Ben Rice and Nationals left fielder James Wood and a suitable top-tier reward in Phillies first baseman Bryce Harper, and is remarkably easy to complete, with only Parallel XP for players on the reward path likely to slow anyone halfway decent at the game down.
Rice's secondary position of catcher might be the most intriguing facet of any of the reward path players, as Bryan Abreu is a forgettable starter, Dansby Swanson is just solid at shortstop, and Wood is great at the plate but just okay in the field, but the real disappointment is Harper, whose settling in at first base has limited his value substantially in DD. Not only does he obviously pale in comparison to the best Harpers of yesteryear, who combined a smoking bat with a big arm in right field, he can't quite hold a candle to the best first basemen in DD at this point, with players like David Ortiz and Frank Thomas outclassing him as lefty and overall bats.
But five more free-with-effort Finest players does help anyone trying to get to the upper tiers of the Finest collection, and that's fine enough for a cleanup program.
Other News and Notes
- New missions for the 10th Inning XP reward path also dropped on Tuesday, adding another 27,500 XP to the previously available 22,500 for statistical milestones within DD.
- A new Conquest map -- the Sunset map, which is poetic -- dropped on Friday, with good hidden rewards and a Complete Chase pack, the one allowing a choice of any previously released Chase player, as its completion reward. Unfortunately, with 10 strongholds to conquer, it will be a bit more of a slog than most maps.
- A Retro Finest program is on the in-game rundown as the only release scheduled for Tuesday, November 18.
- Next Friday still portends to be one of the bigger post-World Series days for DD in MLB The Show 25, if not the biggest: A new Inning XP path and Weekend Classic headline the scheduled content, but a new player program and Diamond Quest could provide some extra replayability as Black Friday and the hot stove season near.
