Finest Friday Brings Team Affinity Release in Diamond Dynasty

Team Affinity Finest Released for 2025

On what San Diego Studio's 17th and final livestream for the MLB The Show 25 dubbed "Finest Friday," the social squad for the folks out by the Gaslamp Quarter revealed almost all of the 2025 Finest selections that will serve as the last large piece of content dropped in Diamond Dynasty this fall. With at least one player coming to DD for all 30 teams and some of the best players in the game unlockable through various means, this is almost certainly the last hurrah for broad additions to the DD roster pool, and the biggest celebration of the whole year in the sport of baseball that SDS can muster.

Team Affinity Finest Players

Each of these 30 players is available through the My Journey programs for each MLB team in the Team Affinity program, and will require 365,000 Team Affinity XP to unlock via a voucher awarded after reaching that threshold and redeemable in a new collection. All of them also serve as Captains for their respective teams, providing attribute boosts for rosters with specific numbers of teammates.

• Arizona Diamondbacks: RF Corbin Carroll
• Atlanta Braves: C Drake Baldwin
• Baltimore Orioles: SP Trevor Rogers
• Boston Red Sox: SP Garrett Crochet
• Chicago Cubs: CF Pete Crow-Armstrong
• Chicago White Sox: SS Colson Montgomery
• Cincinnati Reds: SP Andrew Abbott
• Cleveland Guardians: SP Gavin Williams
• Colorado Rockies: RP Jimmy Herget
• Detroit Tigers: SP Tarik Skubal
• Houston Astros: SP Hunter Brown
• Kansas City Royals: 3B Maikel Garcia
• Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim: CF Jo Adell
• Los Angeles Dodgers: CF Andy Pages
• Miami Marlins: LF Kyle Stowers
• Milwaukee Brewers: C William Contreras
• Minnesota Twins: SP Joe Ryan
• New York Mets: SS Francisco Lindor
• New York Yankees: LF Cody Bellinger
• (Not Actually Oakland) Athletics: RP Sean Newcomb
• Philadelphia Phillies: SS Trea Turner
• Pittsburgh Pirates: CP Dennis Santana
• San Diego Padres: SP Nick Pivetta
• San Francisco Giants: SP Logan Webb
• Seattle Mariners: SP Logan Gilbert
• St. Louis Cardinals: SP Sonny Gray
• Tampa Bay Rays: SP Drew Rasmussen
• Texas Rangers: LF Wyatt Langford
• Toronto Blue Jays: SP Kevin Gausman
• Washington Nationals: SS C.J. Abrams

If that list of players seems wildly imbalanced, it is: 12 of the 30 players are starting pitchers, and of the position players, there are zero first or second basemen. Those are consequences of Finest having last picks of players not used in other programs, to a degree (witness Gausman and Pages repping the World Series matchup), but it is also a bit disappointing when some of these teams have other Finest players who aren't freely available as free rewards for gameplay alone.

Other Finest Players

Beyond those Team Affinity Finest players, there are dozens of other 2025 Finest players dropping in Diamond Dynasty this Friday.

Mini Seasons -- through a new Finest Mini Seasons, one that is stuffed with rewards for its missions and has no roster requirements -- holds four of them, in the form of Red Sox defensive whiz Cedanne Rafaela, Rays raker Yandy Diaz, Guardians reliever Cade Smith, and Padres superstar Fernando Tatis Jr., who is the reward for winning the championship in the Mini Seasons campaign, making him effectively a reward for playing dozens of Mini Seasons games.

A new 2025 Finest Choice pack in the store contains 21 Finest players, staggered into the familiar three tiers of rare (Max Fried, Riley Greene, Ranger Suarez, Kyle Schwarber, Ranger Suarez, and Kyle Tucker), mid (Jazz Chisholm Jr., Nathan Eovaldi, Josh Hader, Manny Machado, Brandon Nimmo, Carlos Rodon, Brent Rooker) and base (Matthew Boyd, Matt Chapman, Edwin Diaz, Dillon Dingler, Hunter Goodman, Trent Grisham, Jesus Luzardo, Spencer Torkelson, and Framber Valdez). This pack costs 40,000 Stubs and is limited to six purchases, but two other copies of it are available for free in the store, two more are available as rewards in the Finest collection, and it will surely be rewarded throughout DD going forward.

Finally, there is that Finest collection for all of these 2025 Finest series players. It holds Bobby Witt Jr. (30 2025 Finest players), Paul Skenes (40), and Cal Raleigh (50) as collection rewards. These cards -- especially the Raleigh, an unfathomably good hitter who just happens to be a switch-hitter and a catcher -- are likely to be the best players in all of 2025's Finest release ... outside of the 2025 Finest program, which is set to be released on Tuesday.

These cards join a small handful of previously released 2025 Finest cards -- the three dropped as 10th Inning bosses last Friday, three more in the Multiplayer 10 program, and one in the 10th Inning program as a exchange -- to comprise what appears to be the entire Finest series at the moment, which numbers 67 players.

And that means, for now, that while the Witt can be had from Team Affinity progress alone, and the Skenes requires just a bit more work to acquire, that having the Big Dumper Raleigh on your roster will require a significant investment of time or (more likely) money, whether in-game or real-life currency.

Other News and Notes

• The final Diamond Dynasty roster update to touch attributes for the MLB The Show 25 game cycle also happened Friday, taking a pass at nearly 100 players who played Postseason baseball this fall. The headlines here are Live series Aaron Judge rising to an unthinkable 97 OVR, Skubal and Shohei Ohtani following closely behind at 95 OVR, Raleigh climbing to 94 OVR, World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto vaulting six points of OVR to get to 93 OVR, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. making an even bigger seven-point leap to 92 OVR. But there are also seven new Diamonds around the 85 OVR threshold, including Blue Jays Gausman, Bo Bichette, and Ernie Clement, so check your binders for any unexpected come-ups.
• While SDS's streams for DD in MLB The Show 25 will not continue, content will, with the aforementioned 2025 Finest program and more Multiplayer program content coming on November 11, a Captain Blizzard program coming on November 14, a Retro Finest program billed for November 18, and the 11th Inning XP reward path and another -- perhaps final? -- Weekend Classic arriving on November 21.