Team Affinity Season 2 Chapter 3: Best Free 99 OVR Cards, How to Unlock Them

Diamond Dynasty is entering the endgame of Season 2 this Friday, with the release of Team Affinity Season 2 Chapter 3 bringing a wave of content in the form of 30 new 99 OVR cards – most of them legends of the game.

And this dramatic resetting of the power curve coming just a few weeks after the release of Team Affinity Season 2 Chapter 2 – tied to the All-Star Game – inaugurates a period of god squads for MLB The Show’s card-collecting, team-building mode.

Here’s what’s best about Team Affinity Season 2 Chapter 3 (TAS2C3), 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 TAS2C3 reward path contains a total of 3,500 Stubs, 11,000 Season 2 XP, 10 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 99 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, 66,000 Season 2 XP, 60 Show packs, 18 Ballin’ is a Habit packs, and six Headliners packs. 

It should be no surprise that those rewards mirror those from earlier Chapters of Team Affinity, but players are actually getting very slightly less than in Chapter 2, with 3,000 less Season 2 XP and one fewer Show pack per path.

Maybe the coolest feature of this release is the choice by Sony San Diego to release all these cards as part of a new Action Figure Series, which renders all of these players as action figures still in the familiar plastic-and-cardboard enclosure that will be very familiar to players of a certain pre-Minecraft age. The style is reminiscent of a similar one in Hockey Ultimate Team, but it’s executed well, and it’s a neat treatment for Tom Seaver or Raul Ibanez to be depicted in uniform but in plastic in a game mode that generally has interesting art on top of using real-life baseball cards.

How to Grind Team Affinity Season 2 Chapter 3

Maybe the best aspect of TAS2C2 was the inclusion of special All-Star Missions that allowed players to do simple and easy tasks with Season 2 eligible players – four strikeouts with Orioles, for example – to rack up the 60,000 Team Affinity XP necessary to get to each reward path’s first Boss in a matter of a game or two.

Sadly, that does not return in TAS2C3, with a more traditional grind back in place. But the concession in place of that group of Missions may be the inclusion of non-repeatable ones that award a whopping 35,000 TA XP each for tallying 100 total bases with each of the 30 MLB teams. Three completions of just those Missions in each division will get players halfway to the end of each division’s reward path, making assembling a full theme team of White Sox or Rockies a slightly more rewarding experience than assembling a full theme team of White Sox or Rockies should really be in 2024. 

There are also Moments and Showdowns of the normal and Extreme varieties tied to TAS2C3, and the Extreme Showdown giving 20,000 XP to each division for completion makes storming through the mere four mini-boss Showdowns – or skipping to Fingers and trying to make up a 20-run deficit with a team that is already stocked with 99 OVR hitters – before facing off with Rollie Fingers an appealing way to quickly tally XP.

The Extreme Moments are, as usual, going to test your mettle. Here are what those Moments entail for each division:

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

• AL Central: Tally four hits and two extra-base hits in one game with Johnny Damon on All-Star

• AL West: Tally 12 total bases in one game with Torii Hunter on All-Star

• NL East: Tally 10 total bases in one game with Mike Lowell on Hall of Fame

• NL Central: Get on base four times in one game with Ralph Kiner on Hall of Fame

• NL West: Tally three extra-base hits in one game with Matt Holliday on Hall of Fame

It’s a little disappointing that none of these are single-swing Moments that can be completed in a matter of seconds, but the inclusion of a couple that are on All-Star difficulty should at least allow moderately talented players to grind away at the Damon and Hunter ones. The rest are flatly going to require some decent skills at the plate.

Maybe better than both the Showdown and Moments aspects of TAS2C3 is the singular Conquest map featuring just six strongholds to conquer, which should make it no more than a couple hours of work for most players. (In fact, players might want to eschew that Conquest map for the time being and dive into the ever-popular Shark map that also returned on Friday, as it is loaded with Diamond-heavy packs.)

Assessing Team Affinity Season 2 Chapter 3’s Bosses

Like we always do at this time, here are some thoughts on the best, most valuable, and least crucial Team Affinity Season 2 Chapter 3 cards in each division.

AL East

Best card: Blue Jays 1B Carlos Delgado
First choice: Orioles SS Cal Ripken Jr.
Last choice: Rays 1B Carlos Peña

It feels as though the AL East has had logjams throughout Team Affinity, and this release follows that pattern: Three of the five players are first basemen with no great secondary positions in the field, and all five are hitters rather than pitchers. So that makes Ripken, a well-rounded shortstop who can play the hot corner in a pinch, the first choice almost by default, as he’s going to slot into lineups far more easily than Peña, David Ortiz, or Delgado unless you’re really willing to play Delgado at catcher and suffer through what that will produce.

That said: Delgado’s catcher eligibility and maxed-out stats against righties as a lefty bat probably makes him the best of these cards if you do consider him a catcher, and he’s got an argument for that same status as a designated hitter, with Ortiz having slightly lesser stats against righties until he gets Paralleled into an even more well-rounded card and brutal defense that makes him a first baseman in name only. Bernie Williams is an interesting pick for Team Affinity for the Yankees, who do not lack for outfielders in any way, shape, or form, but he’s an excellent contact hitter whose pop will be a pleasant surprise rather than a constant presence.

AL Central

Best card: Guardians CF Larry Doby
First choice: Doby
Last choice: Twins RF Tony Oliva

If what the AL East has is a logjam this go-round, the AL Central’s crop of TAS2C3 players is more like a set of Lincoln Logs that fit flushly against each other. Four outfielders, all of the contact hitter variety, could easily comprise an in-game outfield and top of the lineup that gets on base to be driven in by the bigger bat of Tony Clark.

Except: Doby actually has slightly better power numbers than Clark – which make sense, as Doby hit 273 homers as a major leaguer to Clark’s 251, and slugged .499 to Clark’s .486 – and thus stands out from both the rest of his outfield brethren and in the pack as a whole. 

Of the other outfielders, Damon’s the one with maxed-out contact, but it comes at the expense of power, and that mix has been noticeable – along with his water pistol of an arm – on every excellent version of Damon your author has ever used in Diamond Dynasty. Still, he’s probably slightly better than Oliva because maxed-out contact is a touch better than almost maxed-out contact, and he’s definitely better than the late Minnie Miñoso, whose curse here is being worse than all of the the other outfielders in their best respects and whose name in game is missing that crucial ñ again.

AL West

Best card: Athletics RP Rollie Fingers
First choice: Fingers
Last choice: Mariners RF Raúl Ibañez

Three divisions in, we finally get pitchers in the mix in TAS2C3, and they’re both excellent: Fingers immediately becomes one of the best relievers in the game, if one whose velocity isn’t elite, and Roy Oswalt becomes one of the better starters. Relievers are easier to reuse in the XP grind and scarcer than starters, making Fingers the first choice and best card, but Oswalt would be both of those things without the mustachioed man’s presence – and, really, given that the A’s are seemingly destined to alternate between Fingers, Mason Miller, and Dennis Eckersley as Team Affinity choices, it might have been better to pull Fingers from this pack.

The rest of the AL West has some real staples of the division: Michael Young is seemingly a TA representative for the Rangers in some form or fashion every year in Diamond Dynasty, and Torii Hunter inevitably shows up in an Angels uniform to go with his Twins cards. Raúl Ibañez is the more unusual pick, though this card is tied to his best MLB season and notably pairs well with any Ken Griffey Jr. as a lefty bat and right fielder who contrasts with Griffey’s righty bat and post in center. You can’t really go wrong with any of them, though Young’s ability to play second and third is probably a good tiebreaker.

NL East

Best card: Nationals LF Tim Raines
First choice: Mets SP Tom Seaver
Last choice: Phillies 1B John Kruk

The NL East brings us the first division with two starting pitchers, and thus a caveat: If you can pitch well with Greg Maddux, especially against human opponents, he should probably be your first pick, as he’s also going to be your best card in this division despite being a soft-tosser. Most of the rest of us – or most of you all, as I am a Maddux diehard – will be better off with Seaver, who throws hard and has a rather good trio of top pitches to work with in his fastball, sinker, and slider.

The best card here, though, has to be Raines, whose switch hitting and speed fit the Carlos Santana and Corbin Carroll Captains and whose handy secondary eligibility at second base makes him easy to deploy in the outfield and shift to the infield once other options become available.

Mike Lowell is the only true third baseman in the entirety of TAS2C3, which counts for something, and John Kruk is entertaining on a microphone, which counts for significantly less. Also, blessedly, this is the first Season 2 Chapter of Team Affinity without Tanner Scott representing the Marlins – though I suppose we will never know if he would have been magnetized to that spot in this pack if not for being traded to the Padres earlier this week.

NL Central

Best card: Reds C Johnny Bench
First choice: Bench
Last choice: Brewers LF Ryan Braun

The NL Central is surprisingly loaded in this edition of Team Affinity, with Bench, the recently passed Orlando Cepeda, Ralph Kiner, and Ryne Sandberg each arguably being a top-10 player in a storied franchise’s history. Bench is immediately a top-three and possibly the best catcher in the game – as usual for his best cards – so everyone else is kind of playing for second place, but Sandberg’s a top-tier second baseman, Cepeda is a good first baseman who is probably better used at third, and Kiner’s bat is superb, if one of many such bats among the currently available outfielders.

There is also Ryan Braun, whose status as a confirmed and suspended PED user sets him apart from the rest of this division in the wrong ways. He does hit lefties well, so there’s that.

NL West

Best card: Padres CP Trevor Hoffman
First choice: Hoffman
Last choice: Giants SS Rich Aurilia

Finally, in the NL West, we get four fairly iconic players … and Rich Aurilia.

Hoffman is the best of those icons owing to reliever scarcity for the most part, but it’s amusing and maybe a little annoying that he obviously doesn’t qualify for the boosts that the Hoffman Captains card can grant because you cannot put both in a lineup simultaneously. Still, his circle change is legendary, and it’s unlikely there will be a better version of that pitch in DD all year.

Steve Finley, Matt Holliday, and Duke Snider comprise another fine trio of outfielders, but there’s not a lot to recommend one over the other two: Finley might be the most well-rounded, Snider bats lefty and should crush righties, and Holliday compensates for the least fielding of the three by probably having the most complete bat – if marginally, in both cases.

And then there’s Aurilia, whose inclusion as a Legend only gets more puzzling unless it was almost exclusively done to shore up the Giants’ lackluster roster of them below the Willie Mays tier. (Have you noticed Willie McCovey isn’t in this year’s game outside of an Egg Hunt card? Weird, right?) It’s Aurilia’s singular All-Star campaign in 2001 that is being represented here, with great contact reflecting a .324 average that he never again got close to matching – but with that great year on his resume, he still posted a 99 OPS+ and never sniffed a Gold Glove, so it’s arguable that this card is still overrating him.

And if you’re a Giants fan, are you really wanting to grind in Diamond Dynasty for Rich Aurilia? It’s not his fault that he’s standing in for Barry Bonds or McCovey or even Juan Marichal or Pablo Sandoval, but when the player who had the most career WAR for the Giants (Cepeda had 30.3 WAR for the Giants, more than twice Aurilia’s 14.6) that is part of a Team Affinity release isn’t the Giants’ player of choice, there’s a structural issue to be solved.