99 OVR Ted Williams, Summer Series Program Arrive in Diamond Dynasty

New Legends and Flashbacks Collection Reward: 99 OVR Ted Williams

When the Sony San Diego social team made Ted Williams's return an integral part of their pre-release hype for this year's edition of MLB The Show, it was a clear signal that he would play a major role in Diamond Dynasty at some point this season. That point would appear to be just before the summer solstice, as the Splendid Splinter's best card of the year is now surely here in the form of a 99 OVR Hall of Fame series monster that is tied to a new Legends and Flashbacks collection released this Friday.

This Williams is not just the best version of the Red Sox maestro yet, but probably the best card in the game at the moment: It has 125 Contact against righties and lefties, 125 Power against righties that plays beautifully with the left-handed Williams's great swing, and 120 Vision plus 125 Discipline and Batting Clutch. Its only flaws at the plate are 100 Power against lefties, which is still quite good, and average bunting stats, which should be a problem for approximately zero plate appearances Williams gets in any DD lineup. Just seven quirks and good but unremarkable defensive and speed stats mean this isn't quite an unapproachably great pinnacle card, but it is endgame good without question and it's hard to pick three outfielders that are likely to displace it from even the highest-end team's lineup. True Rating grading Williams out as substantially ahead of Carlos Beltran as a designated hitter backs up this assessment, but Beltran being a switch-hitter and center fielder

The drawback, of course, is its prohibitive cost. Players will need to lock in 24 items representing various collections in Diamond Dynasty to unlock Williams, including the Corey Seager and Byron Buxton awarded for collecting 25 players from the Pipeline Past program and 41 players from the Moonshot program, respectively. While players who have obtained Scott Rolen from the similar collection that holds him are more than halfway to Williams, that's a small subset of the DD player base: Rolen's card has just over 50,000 Parallel I completions, which is substantially smaller than the almost 80,000 that Beltran has.

If fear of missing out might persuade you to overspend on obtaining Williams now rather than in a few weeks, a word to the wise: Don't let it. He'll still be amazing, no matter how soon he strides to the box for you or how much he costs you in Stubs and sweat equity.

And if you need to use a Williams not nearly as good as the 99 OVR, there is now a free 92 OVR All-Star series version in the Show Shop. It's not bad, with 109/105 Contact/Power against righties and 110 Batting Clutch, but it's certainly a far cry from the collection reward.

Summer Series Program Makes Waves with Willie Mays, Nick Castellanos

A new and colorful program also washed ashore in Diamond Dynasty on Friday, and brought with it a 95 OVR Willie Mays that gives the icon his first elite card of the year.

But while this Mays is obviously the best version of the Say Hey Kid to arrive in Diamond Dynasty so far, it leaves plenty of room for subsequent versions to be far superior. With no hitting stat over 100, Mays is better understood as an all-rounder than a crusher at the plate -- but without top-end speed or defensive stats in the 90s, he's still a compromise in the field, unable to do quite as much as faster center fielders would. True Rating still pegs him as the second-best center fielder in Diamond Dynasty behind Beltran, but I think I'd rather have a number of other better hitters at the position in my lineup, like the Retro Lightning Bryce Harper or even switch-hitting (and lefty-killing) Bernie Williams. In a sense, putting this Mays in a Chase Pack does somewhat address the problem of too many of DD's finest items being made prohibitively expensive through scarcity ... but it would also be okay to give one of the five best baseball players in history an awesome card.

This Castellanos, on the other hand, might be the best free card in all of DD. With 116/106 Contact/Power against lefties as a right-handed batter, he's going to do a ton of damage -- and his 99/95 split against lefties and 106 Clutch, which seems fair, means he isn't a liability in any way at the plate. Bronze defense and average speed does make him only adequate in the field, and he should probably be deployed as a designated hitter more often than as a right fielder if possible, but for the 100 Stars required to get him, this is a worthy card.

Those 100 Stars come from the usual array of moments and missions, but there's a twist this time: An additional Extreme-branded sequence of Hot Streak moments in which players can progress from tagging the Common Moonshot Josh Hader for a run in three outs to putting up a crooked number -- seven, specifically -- of runs against the 99 OVR Roger Clemens on Legend holds 75 Stars for full completion, making it a breeze to almost totally complete the Summer Series program in a matter of a few hours with the requisite stick skills. But even those of us who lack Legend-level chops can get 25 of those Stars for moments that are on Veteran or All-Star, which makes the Hot Streak a nice add for all levels of player.

And a program would scarcely be one in MLB The Show 25 without a player-rewarding collection, so of course there's one of those: 11 Summer Series players nets a 93 OVR Aaron Bummer who will be one of the game's better relievers, 19 yields a 94 OVR Jarren Duran that is a strong defender with a little less power than most high-level outfielders possess, and the full-program reward at 27 lock-ins is a 95 OVR Adley Rutschman that may well reset the power rankings at the surprisingly deep position of catcher.

June Spotlight Drop 1 Features Hunter Goodman, Jac Caglianone

The afterthought today in Diamond Dynasty is unquestionably the beginning of the June Spotlight program in the form of Drop 1, which presents as its leading card a Colorado Rockies player from the 2025 Colorado Rockies.

That isn't meant to be a damning slight to catcher Hunter Goodman, who has 70 Speed at the position and an appealing list of secondary positions -- first base, yeah, but also left and right field -- that make him an exceedingly useful bench catcher. But the caption on his card literally reads "Homered 3 times in first 3 games of June," and that qualifying a player for a pseudo-Player of the Week honor in DD is a fairly sad reflection on the unfairly sad Rockies.

The program's XP reward path also contains a more exciting player whose honor might be even less deserved at this moment: Royals right fielder Jac Caglianone, whose scalding bat in Triple-A has cooled off considerably in the bigs since his celebrated call-up a week ago, with his .216 batting average matched by a .216 on-base percentage that hints at one stat he has yet to record with Kansas City. But this Cags also has 90+ Power against both righties and lefties, 101 Contact against righties, and 100 Clutch, all of which make for an exciting card that matches the hype around one of baseball's most exciting prospects, and it's an unusually high-profile name for the Spotlight weekly drops, so it's a win for DD players.

Also a win for Royals fans: One of the two 93 OVR Spotlight pack players this week is Vinnie Pasquantino, making for a nice shot in the arm for any Royals theme teams. The other such player is Rays starter Drew Rasmussen, whose 23 straight scoreless innings of work earned him a card with eight pitching stats within eight points of triple digits, but none at or over the 100 threshold.