Ranking the New Legends in MLB The Show 25 Diamond Dynasty

One of the best things about each new iteration of MLB The Show is a new crop of legends imported into the game and specifically Diamond Dynasty, where they slot into theme teams and become keystones for the whole season of live updates. And the MLB The Show 25 class of new legends is an exciting one, led by three superlative Boston Red Sox players who are among the most-requested legends in recent years.

But there are dozens of legends being added to MLB The Show 25, with Sony San Diego debuting its annual legends trailer on March 11 to showcase this season’s additions – and it’s worth ranking them all by tier to see who might be fantastic and who will be fodder.

And it bears mentioning that this is not a fully comprehensive list of legends on the way, as Sony San Diego has historically added a few legends over the course of the year even after its trailer drops, with employees of the developer hinting that this will happen again this year during live streams this week. We’ll rank those other legends as they are announced and added.

S-Tier

Ted Williams

Williams would have likely been in the top 10 – if not the top five – of most community wish lists for new legends, and the Splendid Splinter’s return to MLB The Show after several years out of the game means players will once again be able to use one of the greatest hitters in baseball history.

Few if any players should have better Contact stats than Williams, who registered one season of under a .316 batting average in a career that spanned 21 years, and while he never hit more than 43 homers in a season, his five years of 36 or more homers means that his best cards should be threats to send several over the Green Monster in any given game. Williams was never a top-tier fielder, but, really, who cares? Stick him at designated hitter if need be.

Manny Ramírez

Adding one of the few modern hitters who could hold a candle to Williams in the same cycle is also a neat move by Sony San Diego, and Ramirez having his own storied Red Sox history makes for a neat symmetry. Ramírez brought plenty of pop in both Cleveland and Boston, and matched the slugging with great contact skills more often than not, though his 2000 campaign (a 1.154 OPS that was better than Barry Bonds’s in the same season) and injury-shortened 2002 onslaught (a .330 average with 33 homers in just 120 games) will be what we hope his best cards are based on.

Of course, Manny’s defense was, uh, legendarily adventurous, and his career careened after his Red Sox stint, so folks hoping for great Dodgers and White Sox iterations of the slugger will inevitably disappointed. But it’s hard to paint the picture of the ‘90s and 2000s in Major League Baseball without Ramirez’s colorful contributions, and it’s wonderful that he’s back in The Show.

Roger Clemens

If it’s difficult to capture the full scope of the ‘90s and 2000s without Manny, though, it’s impossible to do so without the Rocket, whose distinctive dominance with four separate teams makes him maybe the most accomplished pitcher in baseball history. His absence from The Show has been a glaring one, and though his pitching may be less compelling as a gameplay hook than sweet swings, his Diamond Dynasty cards could represent any of his seven Cy Young seasons – with all of the Red Sox, Blue Jays, Yankees, and Astros – and put an ace on your squad.

Taken together with Ramírez and the growing crop of ‘90s-era hitters (Rafael Palmeiro) and pitchers (Andy Pettitte) who were implicated in or admitted to PED use, as well, Clemens being arguably one of three players most notably tarred by that steroid era, along with Bonds and Alex Rodriguez, closes the case on whether those players should all be in The Show. While having A-Rod or Barry in The Show without Clemens – much like how Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa have made triumphant returns – could have been construed as simply getting all-time greats in the game, Clemens is the one of those three who most memorably testified before Congress at the height of the hysteria about what was uncovered in Mitchell Report, and is the one paying the greatest price in regards to Baseball Hall of Fame candidacy purely on PEDs, with Bonds and Rodriguez having done somewhat more to transgress as churlish sportsmen.

But at the same time, Bonds and A-Rod would be seismic inclusions; Clemens being back is more like a sizable stone hitting the pond than the boulder that would swamp the shore. And there has been no great pushback to his inclusion since it was revealed weeks ago, making the signal clear: It’s time for the fullest sweep of baseball’s history, sordid though it may be at its worst, to be covered by The Show and Diamond Dynasty.

James “Cool Papa” Bell

Perhaps the last remaining widely known Negro Leaguer not already in Diamond Dynasty, Bell’s legendary speed – he’s the subject of the fabled Satchel Paige anecdote about a player being able to be in bed after hitting a light switch but before the light went out – beautifully matches this iteration of The Show’s emphasis on base-stealing at a time when it has been revived in Major League Baseball.

But do you want to know a weird but true fact? Bell never stole more than 49 bases in a season, and never stole 20 bases in a season after the 1928 season with the St. Louis Stars in which he swiped those 49 bags. Basing his speed and base-running on his legendary reputation rather than his actual stats would seem prudent, if Bell is to be a widely-used Diamond Dynasty card.

Hank Greenberg

You would swear Greenberg has been in Diamond Dynasty before, given his astonishing 58-homer season in 1938 and his status as one of the sport’s greatest Jewish stars. But the Tigers titan is seemingly making a debut in this year’s version, and his brilliant but abbreviated career should be a fun one to relive – especially if there’s a way to tie his and Williams’s World War II service into live content releases.

Greenberg wraps up a quintet of deserving Hall of Famers and Bell, whose reputation transcends his career. Beyond that, the new names in the game get decidedly less legendary and more obscure – though there are definitely some superstars remaining.

A-Tier

Wilber “Bullet Joe” Rogan

A legend by acclamation from his peers more than acknowledgment from the public, Rogan was touted as a rival to Satchel Paige with the added ability to hit. And while that profile will seem familiar to Diamond Dynasty players well-acquainted – and maybe still a bit traumatized by – John Donaldson and other Negro League two-way stars, Rogan was more of a hit-for-average player at the plate, and his best hitting seasons did not always coincide with his best pitching seasons and vice versa.

Rogan’s career stats are also substantially diminished from what they could have been had he played baseball consecutively or in a major league for all of what might have been a 25-year career, instead of spending much of his early years with the U.S. Army and its baseball squad and tailing off with the Kansas City Monarchs in his mid-30s despite making appearances with them at age 43 and 44.

It’s hard to scry what his best card will look like, but his Storylines appearances could be quite enlightening.

Bobby Abreu

One of the modern era’s most underappreciated stars, Abreu – who got a 51st birthday present with the debut of the trailer – posted a WAR of 5 or better for seven straight seasons with the Phillies around the turn of the 21st century, then had decent-to-good years over the next decade or so. With 288 homers and a career .291 batting average, he’s below the conventional round-number thresholds for Hall of Fame inclusion, but has a fringe chance of making the Hall if his candidacy gains ground in the next few years.

For now, his best seasons should translate to formidable cards at the plate.

Jim Kaat

Another Hall of Fame near-miss, Kaat – who debuted as a Washington Senator – spent a long span of his career with the Twins as they settled into Minnesota and was considered a fine pitcher and great fielder of his position. But he might be most interesting to DD players for his two stellar seasons with the White Sox late in his career, as he won 20 games in back-to-back seasons while giving up more than 500 combined hits and not reaching 300 combined strikeouts. 

That sort of pitching-to-contact profile might be intriguing on a defense-heavy build, though Kaat’s control was not quite in the realm of Greg Maddux – a fellow defensive wizard off the mound – and his 6’4” frame is another differentiator.

José Bautista

Sony San Diego clearly gets Bautista’s appeal, as his instantly iconic bat flip – bat jettisoning? bat launch? – is his clip in the trailer. But Bautista did author one 54-homer year and then followed it with an even better one, and then had several more good seasons. He might be the best Blue Jays hitter of the 21st century, and could also be the franchise’s No. 2 player of recent vintage, with Roy Halladay holding the top spot firmly.

Also, Roughned Odor is not in The Show, so his virtual jaw is safe. For now.

B-Tier

Bobby Grich

A truly unsung superstar, Grich managed five seasons of 6 WAR or better mostly at second base for the Orioles in the 1970s, and managed to get hit by 20 pitches in one of them. Then he had a sort of second peak in his 30s with the Angels, clicking off two more 5.5+ WAR seasons and hitting 23 and 30 homers in them. On the all-time WAR leaderboard, Grich sits directly between Derek Jeter and Alan Trammell. 

But Grich never won a postseason series and struggled in playoffs play, never hitting better than .250 in any of the five series he lost. That’s probably part of why DD could well be most players’ introduction to Grich.

Lance Berkman

The third part of the second iteration of Houston’s “Killer Bs” never reached the heights of Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio, but he did have a pair of 40-homer seasons that earned him third-place NL MVP finishes. Does he substantially improve Astros and Cardinals theme teams? Sure, but where are those teams on the Diamond Dynasty hierarchy?

Norman “Turkey” Stearnes

A wiry power hitter, Stearnes finished his career with a .616 slugging percentage despite playing semi-regularly in the Negro Leagues until his late 30s, and hit 187 home runs in just under 1,000 career games. We’ll see if Sony San Diego got his legendary arm-flapping baserunning style, proffered as one of the reasons for his nickname, into The Show, but Stearns should be a serviceable power hitter and could feature in Storylines.

Jason Varitek

Tek was a really good catcher for some Red Sox teams that ranged from good to great to iconic, and his best card in Diamond Dynasty should reflect 25 homers in 2003, a 10-steal season (!?) in 2004, or a Gold Glove won in 2005.

He is not Carlton Fisk, a Hall of Famer who also starred behind the plate for the Red Sox, but he’s the next best thing, I suppose.

Gil Hodges

Hodges was made a Hall of Famer via the Golden Era Committee, who were only to get the well-liked Dodgers first baseman turned Mets manager into the Hall on their third try, some 50 years after his tragic death via heart attack just before the strike-delayed 1972 season. And that was seen as a long-overdue honor because of his greatness at first in the 1950s and his beloved status as a member of legendary Brooklyn and then Los Angeles Dodgers teams who vied for baseball supremacy with the Yankees in their twin dynastic eras.

To look at Hodges’s stats now, though, is to see a player who merited that sort of route to Cooperstown: He never hit better than .304 or more than 42 homers in a season, and his best MVP finish was seventh. There is nothing wrong and much right with having Hodges in Diamond Dynasty, but he’s not a needle-mover.

Ted Simmons

A portrait of consistency at catcher, Simmons had better than 3.0 WAR in all but one season from age 21 to age 33, but never exceeded 36 homers or a .303 average during that span. Inducted to the Hall of Fame by the Modern Era Committee, Simmons would probably have forever stayed in a Hall of Very Good otherwise, as his seven All-Star appearances were matched by just two top-10 finishes in MVP voting.

One thing that didn’t help? Almost the entirety of that consistent production came with the Cardinals, who never made the playoffs with Simmons on the roster. Bad luck, really, to be born 14 years before Bob Gibson, and debut with the Redbirds at 21 when Gibson was 35 and just past his unfathomable best.

Mark Davis

Baseball used to be a different sport. A sport in which, for example, a reliever could have 44 saves for an 89-win team that missed the playoffs and win the Cy Young. This is what Mark Davis did in 1989 with the Padres. 

And, to be fair, he was very good beyond just the saves, a 191 ERA+, and an absurd 65 games finished for the Fathers – only 64 seasons of more than that number have been recorded in MLB history – thanks to a strong K/BB for a reliever and good homer prevention. But the saves and a 1.85 ERA were why he won.

And, well, Orel Hershieser was up the road having a 7-WAR season for the Dodgers, Mike Scott won 20 games for the Astros, and Greg Maddux had a sub-3.00 ERA with 19 wins for the Cubs in the same season – and the Cubs, at least, made the playoffs. Since Davis winning in 1989, just two relievers have won the Cy Young – and Dennis Eckersley in 1992 and Éric Gagné in 2003 both recorded more than 50 saves and a sub-2.00 ERA in earning them, with Eck making the playoffs and Gagné having one of the great seasons ever by a pitcher. Davis is an outlier now and his candidacy probably would not survive today’s standards.

All that said: It’s cool he’s in the game, though Sony San Diego surely knows that Trevor Hoffman is probably all the Padres will ever need at reliever.

C-Tier

Terry Pendleton

Pendleton won the 1991 NL MVP, was an integral spark for the the Atlanta resurgence that would become dynastic in the ‘90s, and was arguably the Braves’ best third baseman until this guy named Chipper came along … but if we’re being real, the best part of Pendleton in Diamond Dynasty will be seeing how the portly and diminutive hitter is represented at the plate, as his compact stance and uncoiling swing are among the more iconic in baseball history.

Clay Buchholz

Buchholz had a couple of anomalously great seasons for the Red Sox, putting up an insane 187 ERA+ in 2010 and then exceeding that in an injury-curtailed 2013 in which he went 12-1 in 16 starts with an ERA of 1.74 and a not-a-misprint 237 ERA+. Either of those years equals a fine DD pitcher.

But Buchholz also had a tidy 2.01 ERA (a staggering 209 ERA+) at age 33 with the Diamondbacks in 2018, one year after two ghastly starts with the Phillies left him with a 12.27 ERA. Lowering your ERA from an SAT score to whatever Twitter thinks a first date should cost in the twilight of your career is ridiculous.

Darren O’Day

I am biased as a fellow Florida Gator, but O’Day is the sort of low-stakes addition Sony San Diego should constantly be making to its legends pool. A reliever with a funky delivery who played for a slew of teams, never had a negative WAR season, and pitched until age 39 with an ERA under 3.00 fills out the roster at a position where legends are in short supply without being – or needing to be – a draw. Some of these players just have to be that.

Don Baylor

Baylor will be familiar to many The Show players as the manager of the Sosa-era Cubs, or the first manager in Rockies history, but he acquitted himself well as a player, winning the 1979 AL MVP and earning a reputation as an excellent hitter and even better hit-by-pitch-er while largely performing as one of baseball’s first regular designated hitters.

That distinction probably helped keep Baylor well shy of the Hall of Fame, as his numbers – 338 homers and a .260 average … with a .777 OPS thanks in no small part to averaging 19 plunkings per years – would be excellent today but are more testament to his longevity in a better era for hitters. Still, two awesome nicknames – Groove and The Sneak Thief – and a few clutch postseason homers is a better legacy than most.

Reggie Sanders

In the best year the second-best Sanders in American pro sports in the 1990s had, he smacked 28 homers, stole 36 bases, and had a .975 OPS. 

It may have helped that the Reds traded Deion Sanders to the Giants in that 1995 season – meaning that Deion ended up as a Giant a year after leaving the 49ers for the Cowboys – to establish one true Sanders as the regnant king in Cincy. But that ‘95 campaign is a good one to base an excellent Sanders card on, as he never really approached its greatness again despite having a long and very good career as an itinerant outfielder.

Chase Headley

Another one-season wonder, Headley had 31 homers and won the Gold Glove in 2012 in what seemed like a delayed breakout season for a hot prospect at the hot corner. He immediately returned to his lesser level – Headley never hit more than 14 homers in a season outside of 2012, but hit double-digit homers seven other times – and would not recreate that campaign, but, hey, it’s not like the Padres have any other great options at thi … I am being told they currently have a future Hall of Famer at the position? Oh.

Jason Kipnis

Kipnis once hit 23 homers in a season. He once hit .303 in a season. He once finished 11th in AL MVP voting and tallied 5.0 WAR while Cleveland closed on a tear to make the AL Wild Card game.

Those are all different seasons, mind, and the career line for Kipnis shows just 126 homers and a .260 average, so I’m not sure why he would be here instead of, say, Travis Hafner – a past DD inclusion – unless somehow Travis Hafner costs too much.

Preston Wilson

One of the longer-gestating prospects of the ‘90s, Wilson was drafted from high school in 1992 and would play his rookie season in 1998, flashing power and speed as a Marlins outfielder. He finished second in NL Rookie of the Year voting to Reds hurler Scott Williamson, but would go on to have the better career, peaking in his first season as a Rockie with a 36-homer campaign and an All-Star appearance.

Wilson might be fifth or sixth on any list of desired Rockies outfielders, but he fills out the pool of available Marlins nicely.

Ubaldo Jimenez

Far better for Rockies fans is the inclusion of fireballer Jimenez, one of the few pitchers to ever even briefly master pitching on the plateau that houses Coors Field. Jimenez’s heater cut through the Colorado air for much of his early career, culminating in a third-place NL Cy Young finish in 2010 for a season that featured a no-hitter and a vanishingly rare sub-3.00 ERA for a Rockies starter – his 2.88 ERA was then the only such season, and has been bested just once since.

The less said about his time in Cleveland and Baltimore, the better – but Jimenez is the rare player who might be the best pitcher or hitter in a franchise’s history that Sony San Diego can still sign up for Diamond Dynasty, and getting him in the game will absolutely matter to some Rockies diehards who are inexplicably still baseball fans after the last several years of being a Rockies diehard.

Jordan Zimmermann

It seems like forever ago, but Jordan Zimmermann put together back-to-back All-Star seasons in the mid-2010s, winning 19 games in 2013 and going 14-5 with a sub-3.00 ERA in 2014.

As a helpful point of comparison, Stephen Strasburg was in those same Nationals rotations, and had the worst two of his first eight seasons from the perspective of FIP in them … and had a better ERA than Zimmermann in 2013 before leading the NL in strikeouts in 2014.

Maybe there are some Nationals fans who would prefer Zimmermann to the newly-retired – and financially set – Strasburg as a Diamond Dynasty legend, but their cases would have to be pretty compelling to persuade me that Zim should be the lone such inclusion from the 2010s Nationals pitching staff.