Training Hitters
The single most important attribute to train seems to be Plate Vision. Also, Plate Vision apparently determines how large or small the PCI (Plate Coverage Indicator) will be. Contact and Power is also important otherwise your player will be hitting the ball weakly. Begin by training against right-handed pitchers first since you’ll likely face more right-handed pitchers than left-handed pitchers. Later, you also want to make sure your attributes against left-handed pitchers are decent.
A good goal would be to improve Plate Vision, Contact, and Power to at least 60 or 70 for all players in the starting lineup. If your budget allows, try pushing plate vision up from 70 to around 80 or 90 for a few batters and you’ll likely see quite an improvement. For middle infielders you could probably get by with hitting attributes being lower than 60 and instead invest that money on improving their fielding attributes.
You may want to hold off on putting money into the Clutch attribute for those in your starting lineup but you may want to improve the clutch attribute for a couple players on the bench for pinch hitting situations. The clutch attribute ONLY takes effect during situations when runners are in scoring position (RISP).
The amount of training that you do depends on your budget and preference. You may want to spend some time training some attributes after each game or you can train your players all in one sitting. The cost of training is the same either way and the player’s aptitude (if it’s high) will still save you the same amount.
Reserve players will have a $2 million training penalty limit when you initially add them to the roster. Players on the active roster get $500K of training expenses per game. One recommendation would be when a starting position player is within 10 games of retiring you may want to start finding a replacement card and activate it to the roster as a reserve. Train your reserves as much as possible and then activate them to the roster to avoid over training penalties when your starters are within 1-2 games from retiring.
Training Pitchers
Try to avoid spending money on the “Per 9” attributes such as K/9, H/9, HR/9, and BB/9. these attributes tend to be more important for CPU controlled pitchers. If you throw the ball down the middle of the plate, the hitter is going to be able to whack the ball no matter how good your Per 9 attributes are. Focus on improving your pitches instead. Start by improving the break and control attributes and then work on the velocity. Overall, break and control seem to be the most important attributes for pitching. If you can get all of your pitchers up to 80 break and control, on all pitches (especially curve balls and change-ups), they will become downright nasty.
Also see Diamond Dynasty Hitting Tips and Diamond Dynasty Tips: Roster Management.
PATIENCE at the plate is paramount. Taking pitches and working the count will do wonders for your success. If you aren’t taking more than 10+ pitches per inning you are being way too aggressive. Working the count and getting favorable hitters counts will allow you to sit on a pitch.
Most Diamond Dynasty pitchers have very low stamina to begin with so working on raising the opponent starting pitcher’s pitch count will help you later in the game. You may need to wait till the 4th or 5th inning before the opposing pitcher has reached his limit and then you can start producing runs. Your opponent will also end up having to go to his mediocre bullpen for relief.
A good strategy would be to always take two strikes with your lead off hitters. For the run producers look for a pitch in a specific zone. This will help force your opponent to throw about 30-40 pitches in the first couple innings.
Using the PCI (Pitch Coverage Indicator)
Never try to chase the ball with the PCI. Wait for your pitch and if it’s not there either take it or foul it off. Also, depending on the situation use the swing type (normal, contact, power) to your advantage.
For more hitting tips, take a look at my post from three years ago: 10 useful MLB 09 The Show hitting tips.
For additional Diamond dynasty tips see: Diamond Dynasty Tips: Roster Management.
1. You can check the stamina of your starting rotation by going into a game Vs the CPU and then just back out once you see the stamina. If you see two or more pitchers with full stamina put one on reserve. This can help save you from having games deducted from your pitchers. Be aware that if you put a tired pitcher on reserve he will remain tired once you activate him back on the roster.
2. Try to use only a 3 or 4 man starting rotation. Use your 5th starter as a long reliever. For your bullpen, pick one pitcher to be your workhorse. Increase his stamina, and you can use him for about 2 innings per game. To help save money, the rest of your bullpen can be filled up with bronze tiered pitchers.
3. Cards with tools seem to be more important than the tier or aptitude of a card. The cards that contain 3 or more tools should be added to your roster and the cards with less than 3 tools should be recycled or you can also attempt to sell them.
4. It’s not necessary to carry the maximum of 25 players on your active roster. If a player is on the active roster a game will be deducted from his contract after each game even if they didn’t participate in a game. Also, there do not seem to be any injuries in Diamond Dynasty so you don’t really need any backup catchers on your roster.
Here’s a few money management tips:
1. Get the most out of your money right away. There’s really no need to save your money unless you plan on saving up to buy a pack or buying a card from the marketplace.
2. Play a few games against the CPU every once in a while. If you feel that you can maintain a winning record against the CPU on Legend mode you can add a lot more money to your budget.
3. Always check the marketplace for cheap Gold and Platinum cards. On some days, I can find some cheap upper tier cards for only 3 to 4 million.
In MLB The Show Diamond Dynasty you can customize your Diamond Dynasty players’ appearance, full name, and even their uniform number. Player customization is definitely a good feature especially considering the generic random names MLB the Show has come up with for these Dynasty players. With names like “Ron Makepeace”, it’s a little difficult to be able to form an identity with your team. It’s hard to keep track of who’s who on your team unless you’ve played with them for a few games. Before you know it, a Diamond Dynasty player’s 30-40 game contract will have expired by the time you became fully familiarized with the names.
To help form an identity with my team, I’ve devised an MLB player database that can be used as a reference when customizing new Diamond Dynasty players before they are activated. The database grades each MLB player from A through F. Although, it’s not a perfect rating system it’s still a pretty useful resource for customizing a Diamond Dynasty player based on his aptitude. The grading that was used is based on ESPN’s player ratings. Right now, home runs and run production seem to play a big factor in how good a batter’s rating is. The rating system should probably be refined to be a little more accurate but for now the current system is in workable shape. Again, the current rating system not perfect but it can still help give you pretty good idea on naming your Diamond Dynasty players after MLB players.
I’ve also included baseball card images on the player pages so one can get a better idea on how to customize their Diamond Dynasty player’s appearance to look like the MLB player version.
To use, go to the Buy/Sell/Manage Cards screen on PS3. Before activating a card to your roster, search for an MLB player that fits the same criterea as your Diamond Dynasty player. Let’s take Chris Chavez, for instance, he’s a third baseman with a B- aptitude so we will need to search for B rated MLB third basemen. Chris Chavez also bats left-handed so we can filter the search to include left-handed hitters only. I’ll also filter the search to include players who played for the New York Yankees. It looks like Chris Chavez might be best fitted to perform like a Graig Nettles type.
I think this database look up makes Diamond Dynasty a bit more fun when you are able to recognize the names of your players. So far, as a Giants fan, I’ve named a platinum card after Juan Marichal. I’ve also had a gold lefty starter named after Steve Carlton. Jesus Alou, who is my current left fielder, is actually turning into quite a star in Diamond Dynasty.
Hope you Enjoy! MLB Player Baseball Database for Diamond Dynasty.
MLB 12 The Show has come out with a new feature called Diamond Dynasty which consists of teams that are made up of real MLB players and randomized “Dynasty players”. You can create a team from scratch by customizing the team’s location, name, colors, uniforms, and logos. Understanding how to manage a team, player progression through training, and online head to head competition are some of the major aspects that make up Diamond dynasty.
The team leader board page for Diamond Dynasty is located on The Show Nation website. I have written a Greasmonkey script for Firefox which helps enhance the overall view ability of the team stats on one screen. Instead of having to click through all of the pages all you do is click on a team and it will bring up all of the stats that are available in one window. Click on the window again and it will disappear.
Below are some of the features that were added to the script:
Progression Percentage Values
For season stats, the leader board also provides meter graphs which show the amount of progression in the following categories: Contact, Power, Speed, Defense, Pitching, and a team’s overall amount. I’ve added actual percentage values to these so one can get a better idea in details how much they have progressed:
Direct link to your Username
While using the leader boards, I found that I would look up my own team’s stats quite often so I added a link to my team so it will always appear on all pages. In order for this feature to work, you will need to login to your PSN Account at the upper right hand corner of the page at least once so the script can store your gamer tag.
Correct WHIP value
I also fixed the WHIP calculations. The original value seemed too high. Now, the WHIP adds up the total number of hits and walks that a team has allowed and divides that amount by number of innings pitched.
Download Diamond Dynasty One Page Stats
