Diamond Dynasty Ranked Seasons 2 Delivers Kershaw and Castilla

Ranked Seasons 2 in MLB The Show 22 Diamond Dynasty launched today, and some light structural changes have taken place alongside the addition of four new cards. Let’s get into all the details below.

Diamond Dynasty – Ranked Seasons 2

The four new cards are Breakout Clayton Kershaw and All-Star Vinny Castilla at the World Series level, and then All-Star Richie Ashburn and Breakout Troy Percival at the Pennant Race level.

Rewards (Road To WS)

Spring Training – Play 1 game

• Bronze live series player
• 100 stubs

Regular Season – 200 points

• Silver live series player
• 300 stubs

All-Star – 400 points

• Silver live series player
• Silver nameplate and icon
• 600 stubs

Pennant Race – 500 points

• Choice of gold Garret Anderson/Johnny Bench/Jim Palmer, or diamond Troy Percival/Richie Ashburn
• Gold nameplate and icon
• 1,000 stubs

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Wild Card – 600 points

• Gold Live Series player
• Gold nameplate and icon
• 1,500 stubs

Division Series – 700 points

• Diamond bat skin
• Gold nameplate and icon
• 2,000 stubs

Championship Series – 800 points

• Gold Live Series player
• The Show pack (x5)
• Diamond nameplate and icon
• 3,000 stubs

World Series – 900 points

• Choice of Milestone Dontrelle Willis, 2nd Half Heroes Cal Ripken Jr., 2nd Half Heroes Jorge Posada, Breakout Clayton Kershaw, or All-Star Vinny Castilla
• Diamond nameplate and icon
• 4,000 stubs

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Rewards Structure For Total Innings

Here is where the structural change occurred. Beyond slightly modifying the rewards and adding in a new reward at 325 innings, the World Series reward was taken from 400 innings down to 350 innings. This means you have to play roughly a little under 40 “full” games to get the reward via just grinding. People were complaining that it was too much of a grind to get the World Series reward since people are still quitting quite a bit right now in Ranked. I think it was a fair complaint since even removing the “wins” requirement has still led to lots of people not wanting to play a full 9-inning game. I won’t be shocked if this is nudged even slightly further downwards at some point, but this is probably a proper place for it as of now since you just need to play a little over 12 innings a day now to get the reward.

• Play 50 innings – 5,000 XP, The Show pack
• Play 100 innings – 2,500 stubs
• Play 150 innings – 5,000 XP, The Show pack (x5)
• Play 200 innings – 7,500 XP, Pennant Race choice pack
• Play 250 innings – 2,500 stubs
• Play 300 innings – 5,000 XP, Ballin’ Is A Habit pack
• Play 325 innings – 5,000 XP, Headliners Set 7 pack
• Play 350 innings – 15,000 XP, World Series choice pack
• Play 400 innings – 10,000 XP, The Show pack (x10)
• Play 450 innings – 5,000 XP, Headliners Set 8 pack
• Play 500 innings – 5,000 XP, Ballin’ Is A Habit pack (x5)
• Play 550 innings – 5,000 stubs
• Play 600 innings – 10,000 XP, The Show pack (x20)

Bottom Line

SDS made some smart, small changes to the structure of the Ranked Seasons program, but I don’t really love any of the four cards that were released today. Richie Ashburn having under 30 power just means even in All-Star it might be a little dicey when you square a ball up. Percival has zero control and a non-meta pitch mix.

At World Series, Kershaw will be okay, but the H/9 is only 86. Between Cabrera and Kershaw, it’s just been bad timing for SDS because they clearly don’t want to release 99 overall Milestone cards yet, so we’re all sort of waiting for those cards and getting “inferior” versions until then. The All-Star Vinny Castilla will probably end up the best card if I had to guess because it mashes and the defense holds up well enough.