MLB The Show 23: Diamond Dynasty Captains explained

Baseball season is officially here! You might have already started to see your favorite players take the field as part of the MLB 2023 Spring Training. You might have noticed some new rules being put into effect this year, such as the pitch clock and making the shift illegal. Like new rules in the sport, Sony San Diego works to add new features in their yearly baseball game and we can expect the same in MLB The Show 23.

MLB The Show 23 will feature some big, new features. One of these is actually taking place in Diamond Dynasty mode this year with the addition of “Captains.” If you aren’t familiar with Diamond Dynasty, this mode allows you to collect players via player cards and try to put together the best baseball team the MLB has ever seen. This game mode is very similar to Hockey Ultimate Team in EA’s NHL game, and Madden Ultimate Team in Madden NFL. Once you have your all-star team put together, you can do battle with other custom teams to see competitively see which team will reign supreme.

Captains are brand new this year and is going to allow you to create more synergies within your team. Fulfilling these synergies will grant your players stat boosts. Captains can be picked out of the crowd due to the “Captain Patch” marked on the card itself. Each Captain will present you with different stat boosts upon fulfilling the requirements.

In order to better understand the full extent of how Captains will work in MLB The Show 23, I will use the Willie Mays Diamond Dynasty Captain card from up above. If you have a Willie Mays Captain card similar to the one up above and make him the Captain of your Squad, you will have the opportunity to achieve three tiers of boosts.

• Tier 1: +5 Power vs R, +5 Speed, +5 Fielding Ability (Requires that you have at least 3 hitters from the 1950s or 1960s on your squad)
• Tier 2: +10 Power vs R, +10 Speed, +10 Fielding Ability (Requires that you have at least 5 hitters from the 1950s or 1960s on your squad)
• Tier 3: +15 Power vs R, +15 Speed, +15 Fielding Ability (Requires that you have at least 8 hitters from the 1950s or 1960s on your squad)

Gaining the stats boost from the Willie Mays Captain card requires you to build a team around players who played in the 1950s and the 1960s. If you can successfully build a team around players who played in this era, you will get better stats boosts. The more players that you add to your squad that fit this requirement, the higher of stats increase you will be granted.

Captains were added to Diamond Dynasty as a way for gamers to create teams based on chemistry and various themes. What makes Captains even more dynamic is that each Captain will require different stipulations to achieve each tier and also the number of players will be different as well. Just because it takes 8 players to reach Tier 3 on Willie Mays doesn’t mean it will take 8 players on a different Captain to reach their Tier 3. Some other Captains Tier 3’s might require 11 players on a team to activate their Tier 3 stat boost.

Another thing that you need to make sure of is that your Captain plays at least 6 innings. If your Captain does not play at least 6 innings, you won’t be able to take advantage of their Tier boosts that they are offering. This aspect of Captains makes it so that there is a little bit more of a strategy involved rather than just adding Captains and removing them after the first inning.

All 30 teams will have at least one player on their team that have the Captain ability in Diamond Dynasty. More Captains will be added over time, but all 30 teams have some Captain love to begin Diamond Dynasty in MLB The Show 23.

It will be interesting to see all the cool combinations of players that gamers create because of this Captain feature in Diamond Dynasty. Captains offer gamers a lot of incentives to create a team that revolves around certain themes, rather than creating a team using the best players in the game. You can definitely still create a squad of the best-rated players in Diamond Dynasty, you just most likely won’t get any added Tier boosts that may come in handy more often than you think.

MLB The Show 23 officially releases on March 28 on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.