How To Complete the Jacob DeGrom Milestone Showdown in MLB The Show 26
Diamond Dynasty gets a fancy new Red Diamond 95 OVR Milestone Jacob DeGrom in his Texas Rangers garb to celebrate his 100th career win. DeGrom's Hall of Fame career took a detour when he arrived in Texas, where he pitched only 41 combined innings in his first two Ranger seasons. The dominant righty reclaimed his throne to a degree last season, earning All-Star honors in his age-37 season, where he eclipsed 170 innings for the first time since his then second-consecutive Cy Young Award season in 2019.
The DeGrominator returns in Diamond Dynasty, with a Milestone version checking in as a legitimate heavyweight - with a catch.
You'll have to defeat him in a 27-out Showdown - on Hall of Fame difficulty - by scoring 15 runs.
What is Showdown?
Showdown is an offline Diamond Dynasty mode where you draft a small squad, run through a gauntlet of mini-bosses with limited outs, and finish with a high-stakes final boss match-up. Each Showdown is themed around a program, legend tribute, or current event, and pays out player cards, packs, items, stubs, and XP.
The catch: you only get a finite pool of outs across the whole run. Every mini-boss eats into that pool. Runs you score in mini-bosses carry over into your total, so the better you do early, the lower the run requirement on the final boss. Check our Showdown section for a complete breakdown on Showdown, answers to frequently asked questions about the mode, and a full index of all Showdowns currently available in MLB The Show 26.
The Jacob deGrom Showdown just happens to fall under the category of Extreme Showdown, meaning you'll really have to grind for this one.
Tips on How to Beat Jacob deGrom Showdown in MLB The Show 26
You have two paths with this Showdown: defeat a younger deGrom variant in a Mini-Boss Showdown and earn 34 bonus runs to help you defeat the final boss version or skip the Mini-Boss altogether and tackle the final Showdown against the very Milestone card you're trying to earn.
Completing the Mini-Boss and earning the bonus runs brings victory within reach if you score the previously mentioned 15 runs. If you go into the final Showdown without those runs, you're on your own and will have to score 49 runs to complete the Showdown.
Best Path
Defeat the Mini-Boss. You'll face the Awards deGrom that dropped earlier this year on All-Star difficulty, where you'll need to score 4 runs on him with 15 outs to spare.
The final boss is on Hall of Fame difficulty, which features faster pitch speeds and sharper break on the pitching side, and reduced PCI sizes against really good cards like deGrom. Even if you're good enough to score 49 runs on Hall of Fame against deGrom - why the hell would you when you don't have to?
Squad Drafting Strategies
You're only facing Jacob deGrom in this Showdown, so stacking left-handed hitters will give you a guaranteed handedness advantage. You're choosing between the New York Mets and the Texas Rangers within the draft player pool, encompassing all cards released in Diamond Dynasty so far from both teams, respectively.
Prioritize mashers like Juan Soto, Francisco Lindor (switch), Corey Seager, and Rafael Palmeiro from the left side. You get the handedness advantage and typically superior attributes. Keep an eye out for mashing righties like Mark Vientos and Bo Bichette, as they will still be very helpful, unless you extremely value the handedness match-up.
IGNORE FIELDING POSITIONS ENTIRELY
You will never play the field during these Showdowns, which means you can play Corey Seager at catcher or Rafael Palmeiro at shortstop without penalty. There's literally zero reason to use the random scrubs installed on your squad after the draft. Bench them, fill out your lineup with all your drafted cards.
Pro Tip: Make sure you tab over to "out of position" in the card selection menu if you can't find a player after the draft.
Batting Order Sequencing
I always suggest doing this to your personal preference, but there's certainly value in stacking lefties or switch-hitters at the top of your line-up. My particular brand of autism prefers alternating R/L/S, so I give in to the gremlins and satiate their eternal desire for balance. There's no correct answer here. In general, you otherwise benefit from having your higher-Contact hitters in the top spots with your high-Clutch/Power guys in the middle.
Awards deGrom Showdown Tips
This version of deGrom isn't as deadly, but still has elite velocity and can make you look foolish. You essentially have 5 innings to score 4 runs, so stay patient at the plate. Take pitches, look for fastballs that you can drive, and launch anything that he hangs. You can't be late on the fastball, but you'll definitely see some changeups and sliders land in the middle of the plate if you're patient.
High-velo guys like this can be the most frustrating to face if you're free swinging. This is pure power and stuff, and over-eager swinging will have you turning inside at sliders low and away.
Stay patient, take your walks, and you'll be able to defeat Mini deGrom and earn your entry into the real Showdown.
Milestone deGrom Showdown Tips
The higher-rated deGrom is much tougher as you'd expect. In addition to better attributes across the board, the Milestone version also has the legendary Outlier 4-Seamer. That means this deGrom will pump 100+ MPH fastballs with ease, which is even more daunting on Hall of Fame difficulty like this Showdown.
This iteration of deGrom also features a much harder slider, pushing 92+ MPH, while the younger deGrom was throwing a softer slider. There's no Outlier on the sinker, which creates even more velocity separation between the 4-Seamer and Sinker. That vertical plane gets absolutely rocked with the hard slider and slow Slurve combination.
TAKE PITCHES
Be patient. You essentially have a full 9-inning game to score the 15 runs needed to defeat deGrom. Drain his Stamina by taking pitches, with focus on hunting the fastball. You're going to see more 4-Seamers than any other pitch, so sit on the heat and be willing to look like a fool when he throws the slider. This dude won an award for doing that to guys in real life.
Sit on the heater. As you drain the Stamina and string baserunners together, deGrom's confidence will plummet, and you'll wear him down.
There's no call to the bullpen in Showdown. deGrom is at your mercy, so there's no downside to making him throw pitches.
COMMIT TO THE SWING
The boys and I took ole Jake deep several times, including an Ian Kinsler walk-off 3-Run HR to wrap up the Showdown and earn Mr. deGrom for my own squad.
With the addition of the ABS strike zone, there's no reason to hesitate with two strikes anymore. Sit back and take your pitches, but when you're in a 2-strike count - let it rip.
If a pitch fools you and still clips the zone, that's called a pitcher's pitch. This deGrom cat is pretty good. He gets those.
Return to center and go back to looking for fastballs to drive, punish hanging off-speed, and be ready for the next pitch because it's coming fast.
STEAL ALL THE BASES
The CPU won't hold your baserunners or even attempt to throw them out because they're ahead by so many runs. They let me steal second and third without even attempting a throw until I was within 3 runs. That means I scored 12 runs while stealing every base I could. My big bats hit several bombs for me, so I didn't need to abuse this as much. If you're stringing hits and stealing bases, I'd still keep your guard up if you steal successfully many times in a row. However, you should be stealing until they make you stop. This keeps you out of double plays, but also adds an insane amount of value to your outs.
Here's the defensive alignment, including arm strength and accuracy of the defense you'll be facing in this Showdown.
Leaving a runner on first can obviously lead to a double play. Moving that runner to third for free means they can score on practically any ball hit to the outfield, or even grounders on the infield, depending on your runner's speed.
I typically steal in Showdown with 75+Speed/75+Stealing, so I still considered that after they began trying to throw me out. Still, this will help you make up a ton of ground and potentially save you several outs.
SUCCESS
It took me about 6 innings, or 18 outs, to knock out the final boss version of deGrom. I saw a lot of 4-Seamers painted on the outside, followed by that devastating slider. I also fell victim to several painted changeups low in the zone that were perfectly placed. Overall, I saw deGrom well and hit him pretty hard simply by hunting the fastball as mentioned above. There are some really good hitters in the draft pool, so you'll definitely have enough firepower to go along with these tips to help you defeat Milestone Jacob deGrom and add him to your squad.
95 OVR Milestone Jacob deGrom Card Review
The attributes are great on this deGrom card, which plays a huge role in him debuting as the #2 Meta Overall starting pitcher in Diamond Dynasty. However, his pitching animation was very easy to time with my swings, and there's very little deception, so I was reading the ball out of his hand very well. I am very curious if this means his effectiveness online is affected, as I've struggled against previous versions of deGrom but lit this one up like a Christmas tree.
This card has everything you should want on a frontline starter. The stuff will play well on All-Star for a while, I'd imagine, but I still wonder if he'll get beat up on Hall of Fame and above.
I absolutely recommend at least giving this Showdown a shot to unlock deGrom. You can always go back and revisit it in the future, or you can simply buy deGrom from the marketplace. SDS added a unique design wrinkle, making the Showdown repeatable. You initially earn a No-Sell version that can only be collected, not sold. However, you can exchange this No-Sell version for a sellable version. This becomes a fairly reliable way to grind Stubs, and the card is legitimately one of the best cards attribute-wise in the game, which should result in the card being popular enough to be fairly affordable for most players.