Team Affinity Season 2 Chapter 2: Best Free 95 OVR Cards, How to Unlock Them

While MLB The Show 24’s Diamond Dynasty has been on a cold streak with the reset tied to Season 2 in early June, MLB’s regular season is about to take its All-Star Break – and the Midsummer Classic is bringing with it the release of Team Affinity Season 2 Chapter 2, a content drop all about All-Stars.

And as the the program’s 30 new cards are 95 OVR versions of many of the All-Stars who will be taking the field in Texas early next week, they are a significant power curve reset from not just the 89 OVR cards in Team Affinity Season 2 Chapter 1 but also Team Affinity Season 1 Chapter 2, which featured 93 OVR cards.

With Diamond Dynasty needing a shot in the arm and its player base quite possibly getting fractured and/or diminished by the impending release of College Football 25, Team Affinity Season 2 Chapter 2 – TAS2C2 – is a last best shot at making DD relevant through the summer months. Here’s what’s best about it, and how to do the grinding to unlock its rewards most efficiently.

Team Affinity Season 2 Chapter 2 Structure

Unsurprisingly, Team Affinity Season 2 Chapter 2 is structurally similar to all previous Team Affinity programs from Seasons and Sets past in The Show: Once more, players can make progress in six distinct sub-programs and six individual reward paths for each of the six MLB divisions, trying to accumulate 200,000 Team Affinity XP to complete each one.

Things should also be easier for Chapter 2 than they were in Chapter 1, with repeatable missions for Season 2 players – including a distinct one for Season 2 Bosses that means those Chapter 1 players are going to help players cruise through TAS2C2 – allowing for much faster grinding than players experienced last month.

Each TAS2C1 reward path awards 3,500 Stubs, 14,000 Season 2 XP, 11 The Show packs, three Ballin’ is a Habit packs, a random Headliners pack, and five packs each containing a choice of one of the five 95 OVR Team Affinity Season 2 Chapter 1 Bosses in each division, along with various cosmetic items. Over the six paths, that adds up to 21,000 Stubs, 84,000 Season 2 XP, 66 Show packs, 18 Ballin’ is a Habit packs, six Headliners packs. 

Those rewards are almost identical to those in TAS2C1: An extra Show pack per path and 2,500 more Season 2 XP compensates for losing two Millionaire packs per division – no great loss, that.

How to Grind Team Affinity Season 2 Chapter 2

As ever, obtaining Team Affinity XP requires playing Moments – only one Extreme version per path, though, in this iteration – a normal Showdown, and Conquest maps that cover the AL and NL versions of each division, and completing single-player and multiplayer missions that require tallying stats and/or Parallel XP.

As ever, repeatable missions are the top way to grind quickly, and adding whatever Bosses you have from Chapter 1 will help make getting the 60,000 Team Affinity XP necessary to unlock at least one Boss from each division in Chapter 2 a swift exercise, which in turn will equip players with the 95 OVR Chapter 2 Bosses that should make the game and grind easier.

Completing the TAS2C2 Showdown may not be the best use of your time, however. For getting through the five Showdowns on that path and taking down Tigers starter Tarik Skubal in the final matchup, you’ll receive just five S2C2 Vouchers – good for only 14,000 TA XP. Given that 500 Parallel XP with Bosses generates 5,000 TA XP on its own, hopping into a Conquest or Play vs. CPU game and avoiding the stress and strife of Showdown seems smart.

The Extreme Moments are also going to be on the tougher side for most. Here are what those Moments entail for each division:

• AL East: Hit two home runs in one game with Juan Soto on Hall of Fame

• AL Central: Hit one home run in one game with Salvador Perez on Legend

• AL West: Strike out eight batters over three perfect innings with Mason Miller on Hall of Fame 

• NL East: Get on base four times and tally eight total bases in one game with Pete Alonso on Hall of Fame

• NL Central: Get on base four times and tally two extra base hits with Christian Yelich on Hall of Fame

• NL West: Strike out 14 batters without giving up four hits in one game with Tyler Glasnow on Hall of Fame

Of those, the Glasnow one is probably the most lenient, while the Perez one is obviously the quickest – if you can launch one on Legend, that is. The Miller one seems like an incredible test of patience, as getting to a third inning after striking out the side twice still forces you to strike out two more batters in a perfect inning, which can be tough even with what should be an incredibly fun card to use.

The two Conquest maps feature strongholds for 10 teams from each league, so you’re going to have to play at least 30 innings to get them done.

Team Affinity Season 2 Chapter 2’s Bosses

Here are some thoughts on the best, most valuable, and least crucial Team Affinity Season 2 Chapter 2 cards in each division

AL East

Best card: Orioles SP Corbin Burnes

First choice: Burnes

Last choice: Blue Jays 1B Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

The AL East’s TAS2C2 contingent obviously does not contain the best players in the division – notably absent here are the Orioles’ Gunnar Henderson and Adley Rutschman, and the Yankees’ Aaron Judge – but Burnes, cover star Vladi Jr., Tanner Houck, Isaac Paredes, and Juan Soto is no bunch of slackers. Burnes gets the pitchers-have-it-easy bump over Soto – who has 125 Batting Clutch – as the first pick and best card, and Paredes having every infield position available to him may make him a solid second pick even over Soto, whose Diamond defense is hampered significantly by 53 Speed and an arm that is good but nowhere near most top-tier outfielders. Having Soto as a lefty and Guerrero and Paredes as righties also makes for nice coverage at the plate.

AL Central

Best card: Tigers SP Tarik Skubal

First choice: Skubal

Last choice: Guardians 1B Bo Naylor

Skubal’s having one of the best seasons of any pitcher in MLB in 2024, and this is another strong card for him, with a five-pitch mix that features a 95 MPH sinker and three other breaking pitches that have dramatically different speeds. He’s going to be one of the best pitchers in Diamond Dynasty for a while, and certainly one of the best lefty starters.

Salvador Perez slotting into lineups at catcher probably makes him your no-brainer second pick unless you would rather have Carlos Correa doing so at short. White Sox flamethrower Garrett Crochet could have been more fun than Skubal but his fastball lamentably lacks Outlier; Naylor is a first baseman and his bat has great pop but lower Contact (81 against righties, just 70 against lefties) and his Batting Clutch is a bizarrely low 87 – has Sony San Diego forgotten that he’s walked off a game?

Skubal and Perez are great … and the rest of the Central is fairly forgettable.

AL West

Best card: Athletics CP Mason Miller

First choice: Miller

Last choice: Angels SP Tyler Anderson

The best reliever in baseball? Miller may not be that. But he is absolutely one of the most electrifying, and his triple-digit fastball and disgusting slider are miserable for batters. Giving him just 87 Pitching Clutch is a restrictor plate for a card with 124 H/9, 125 K/9, and 99 Velocity and Break; really, the best strategy against Miller might just be taking pitches and hoping that he misses spots.

The AL West’s two S2C2 batters are fairly different: Jose Altuve is high-contact, lower-power, while Marcus Semien should hammer lefties and struggle against righties. (Semien’s also either a second baseman or designated hitter, unless you want to amuse yourself by putting a card with a 46 Arm Strength at shortstop for some reason.)

The starting pitchers are also well removed from Miller’s tier. Logan Gilbert has the curse of being fine at everything at a position where being outstanding would be better, while Anderson is as soft a tosser as it gets, with no pitch even at 90 MPH; his 125 Pitching Clutch and excellent Break – on his cutter and sinker, not his circle change or slider – are unlikely to compensate all that well in game, and he’s only really in the All-Star Game because Mike Trout is hurt and a 2.81 ERA makes him the Angels’ best pick beyond Trout all but by default.

NL East

Best card: Phillies SP Zack Wheeler

First choice: Marlins CP Tanner Scott (again)

Last choice: Braves SP Reynaldo Lopez

The NL East has the only repeat among Team Affinity Season 2 Chapter 2 Bosses, as Tanner Scott shows up again for the Marlins, owing to no other Marlins making the All-Star Game – no, the guy on the cover of last year’s MLB The Show didn’t make it. Scott’s card is excellent, and a first choice as a lefty reliever, but it’s hard to call it the best card in this release when that feels like rewarding a bad design choice for S2C1, given that the Marlins deserved two distinct TA cards through two Chapters of Season 2 like every other team.

So let’s anoint Wheeler as the best card of this bunch, with his five-pitch mix helping him considerably thanks to four of those being sinker, cutter, slurve, and splitter. Pete Alonso is a better bat than CJ Abrams, but Abrams’s versatility might make him a better pick. Reynaldo Lopez is also here, and with 125 Pitching Clutch, but his surprising sterling season is not well represented by his afterthought of a card, and players not only also have two other choices at pitcher, but already have one of the other choices, thanks to Scott’s repeat status.

NL Central

Best card: Reds SS Elly De La Cruz

First choice: De La Cruz

Last choice: Brewers LF Christian Yelich

Look: Obviously, Paul Skenes was not going to be in this Team Affinity Season 2 Chapter 2 release even before his brilliant first half got the cherry on top of seven no-hit innings on Thursday and his naming as the NL’s All-Star Game starter. He is destined to get a 97-99 OVR All-Star card, and that card is going to be fantastic, and giving out that Skenes for free would have both been a thrill for most players and a pain in the ass after one week of him being all over online play.

So kudos to Sony San Diego for a smart pivot that brings the Central’s 1B for thrilling players – maybe a top-five one-name player in MLB at present! – as a free card in the form of Elly De La Cruz. This isn’t as overwhelmingly good as the best Elly cards Diamond Dynasty has already seen during his short but often astonishing MLB career, but it’s a switch-hitting shortstop with every Contact/Power stat at or above 90, a 99 Arm Strength that still might be underrating things, and 99s in all the baserunning stats that definitely fail to fully capture the havoc being wrought by the guy with 45 stolen bases in 93 games at the time of its release.

And the rest of the division feels a little juiced to compensate for Skenes’s absence, too. Ryan Helsley is one of the best relievers in DD instantly, Shota Imanaga’s card represents his breaking stuff well, Bryan Reynolds provides a second switch-hitter, and Yelich is a great lefty bat with less Power and more Contact to better duplicate his late-career resurgence.

All this doesn’t just keep a better version of Skenes at bay, either – the other NL Central All-Star not included here is Reds starter Hunter Greene, whose own gas is nothing to sniff at.

NL West

Best card: Diamondbacks 2B Ketel Marte

First choice: Dodgers SP Tyler Glasnow

Last choice: Giants SP Logan Webb

The NL West’s best players are obviously not here, because they are named Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts and might well get 99 OVR All-Star cards. Freddie Freeman, former cover athlete Fernando Tatis Jr., and last season’s NL Rookie of the Year in Corbin Carroll are also all not here, though that last part is Carroll’s fault, as he’s not an All-Star.

So this is an underwhelming division as a whole, with Marte’s card – despite 125 Contact/Power against lefties – obviously not quite matching his best one from Season 1, Glasnow’s card not being that much better than his Live Series edition at this point (and representing an injured player who will not see the field in Texas), and Webb being, well, Webb.

And I say that despite this being something of an ideal mix of players I personally love using in game. Glasnow’s quick motion makes him a dream for mowing down hitters with alacrity, Marte and Ryan McMahon have swings that have kept even lesser versions of them in my lineup, Luis Arraez finds his way back to my roster all the time, and … well, he’s still Logan Webb.

But fans of NL West squads are right to have a little beef with the content here: Apart from McMahon, the Rockies’ lone All-Star, I don’t think any of the other four NL West picks for S2C2 are anywhere close to their teams’ most exciting All-Star.