There’s a lot of focus on the “stick skills” aspect of Diamond Dynasty. That’s for good reason as a player’s mechanical skills will ultimately determine how successful they’ll be on the virtual diamond. However, we can’t ignore the integral strategy aspect of Diamond Dynasty as well. With so much content available in MLB The Show 23, there’s more cards to choose from than ever before. Ultimately, the cards chosen will depend on your collection and personal preference. How you use them will entirely be up to you.
Let’s talk lineup construction and setting a batting order in Diamond Dynasty.
Setting A Batting Order In Diamond Dynasty
Captain Boosts
Let’s start with one of the coolest features in DD this year. The addition of Captain boosts has brought true team-building elements to MLB The Show 23 and it’s an absolute blast to experiment now. When it comes to deciding who you’ll have in your starting lineup, one of the main factors for you might be the Captain boosts. Depending on the Captain and their respective abilities, you can take a fairly bland team and turn them into All-Stars.
I’m an Atlanta Braves fan so we’ll use them to highlight this aspect.
Within Team Affinity, there’s 92 overall Captain cards available for each team. The Braves’ Affinity Captain is none other than Big Thicc himself, Austin Riley.
By tabbing to the left in the squad menu, you’ll bring up your Captain selection screen. Here, all your available Captains will be listed along with the boosts they can provide once the specified criteria is met. An important note is that Captains must be in your starting lineup to have their Captain boosts available. For example, if Riley was on my bench he would not appear in this screen.
Now that we have our Captain highlighted, we can hit A (X on PlayStation) and assign him officially as the Captain. As you can see, the maximum tier 3 boost requires 11 Atlanta Braves hitters in my lineup and Captain Riley to be at Parallel Level II. I’ve filled my entire starting lineup with Braves so we’ve easily hit this requirement.
Related: Read how to play MLB The Show 23 on PC on Dot Esports.
Now, we can see our entire lineup is boosted by Captain Riley thanks to the arrow markers on each card. By highlighting each card, you’ll bring up the attribute pie wheel in the center of the screen. This screen will show you the newly adjusted attributes after all boosts are taken into consideration.
I loaded my roster to make this a true Braves theme team since it actually matters this year. Every single card is getting a boost, including the guys on the bench. This is where some next-level strategy will come into play throughout the year. With the advent of the designated hitter, we no longer have to stack our benches with specific lefties and righties to take advantage of pinch hitting opportunities. We can still platoon hitters — meaning alternate righties and lefties at the same position to maximize advantage against the pitcher. For example, I could have a beefy right-handed hitter on the bench who I use to pinch hit for Michael Harris when a tough left-handed pitcher comes in. This strategy still exists.
However, the DH also means we can take advantage of Captain boosts without worrying about pinch hitting. One of the XP reward path choice pack bosses was All-Star Bryce Harper. This Harper Captain boosts all cards that are from the All-Star card series. Feasibly, we could stack our bench with nothing but All-Star cards to help us reach the required criteria to get Harper’s maximum boosts. That means potentially using cards that are somewhat weak that we have no intention of hitting with. If we had even more All-Star cards in the starting lineup along with Harper, we’d have a really good chance at maximum boosts.
The Captain feature is incredibly fun to experiment with and I have a feeling we’ll get even crazier boosts and builds as the year goes on.
Batting Order And Lineup Construction
Setting a batting order in Diamond Dynasty is a pretty straight forward task for the most part. There’s some more advanced nuance we’ll discuss, but overall it’s going to come down to the cards you have available and want to use. Once you have a starting 9 in mind, deciding how to structure your batting order will depend on several factors. We’ll continue using this Braves theme team as the example on how to set a batting order.
Some of those more nuanced aspects I discussed involve the meta and your personal performance with each card. Right now, the starting pitcher meta is right-handed heavy so that certainly can affect your lineup construction. Again, your collection will play a large role in the cards you can even use so that won’t necessarily apply to you in each example.
Our Braves theme team is right-handed heavy with only three hitters who aren’t right-handed. So how do we handle balancing the batting order in that case?
For starters, I have Charisma series Ronald Acuna Jr. leading off. Again, Braves fan here so hitting Ronnie anywhere but #1 would just feel wrong. Overall, this is still the best spot for him in this lineup as he has great hitting attributes, 90+ speed, and I absolutely rake with him. That’s where my focus is when setting my lineups in Diamond Dynasty. I don’t go the “conventional” route and put a bunch of speed at the top. I focus on handedness-balance and ordering my hitters with the cards I do best with at the top and build down from there.
In the 2-hole is Captain Riley. His boosted attributes are great and I tend to hit well with him, too. Remembering that we only have three non-righty hitters, that means I want to space them out in order to lessen any potential advantages an opponent will have once they get into their bullpen. That’s why Matt Olson is hitting third, followed by Travis d’Arnaud and Adam Duvall. Ozzie Albies is a switch hitter, which lets us break up the righties, then Marcell Ozuna and Vaughn Grissom come next with Michael Harris hitting ninth.
Basically, my batting order goes from my best hitter to my worst hitter with each handedness. Harris and Albies could be interchanged here, but I love the idea of Harris’ speed potentially being on the basepaths for Acuna, Riley, and Olson.
Bottom Line
Setting a batting order in Diamond Dynasty isn’t rocket science, but there’s some important strategy to consider. If you’re a new player, you might not have found all the cards that work for you yet. As you get more experience and at-bats with each card, you’ll be able to mentally order them based off how they perform for you. As you obtain more cards throughout the year, this exercise will be constant. You might end up acquiring several left-handed hitters that completely throw off your balance. That’s not a bad thing — it’s just a new challenge with your batting order construction. Acquiring switch hitters can often make the process a bit easier as well.
Either way, I always have a blast with roster crafting theories and the satisfaction of getting that ideal balance with cards I love is when I feel like Diamond Dynasty is hitting on all cylinders.
That’s a look at Captains and setting a batting order in Diamond Dynasty! Do you have any specific lineup construction strategies?
