The Career Tribute Program does what baseball often does best – celebrates history. This program features quite a few players, but the core subjects are Adam Wainwright and Miguel Cabrera. These two players have etched their names into baseball lore for eternity and receive their presumable final cards in Diamond Dynasty for the foreseeable future. There’s a lot to get into so let’s dig right in.

MLB The Show 23 Career Tribute Program Breakdown

We saw SDS experiment a bit with the recent Pennant Chase Program design and it wasn’t necessarily for the best. I talked about how much the design fell flat for me personally and questioned the direction of programs. Thankfully, this program appears to be a bit of course direction by SDS and incorporates something we’ve been asking for all year – online-specific missions.

There’s no reason to wax poetic about the structure this time, as it’s the same traditional program structure we’re used to with the same components.

Moments

If I do have a gripe with the program, it’s that Moments are again relegated to 1 program star each upon completion. Are the Moments difficult? No, but they’re such a monotonous element to include that having them pay out a little extra simply saves us time. They aren’t complicated, they won’t take much time and this is not a world-ending truth. Do not take this as a criticism – it’s literally a whiny gripe. Still, for those of us that are severely time-strapped, Moments paying out a bit more saves us time grinding missions or even Stubs to lock in a collection. If these paid out, say, 3 program stars each then I think this would be nearly a perfect program. All told, finish these Moments and get yourself 15 program stars.

PXP Missions

You’ll also have a chance to earn a minimum of 15 program stars with these PXP missions:

• REPEATABLE: Tally 2,500 PXP with Career Tribute Program players – 5 program stars
• Tally 1,250 PXP with Career Tribute Pack players (Goldschmidt, Moustakas, Longoria, Corbin, Andrus, Jansen) – 5 program stars
• Tally 500 PXP with Career Tribute Choice Pack players (Yelich, Carpenter, Santana) – 5 program stars

A good note here is that the repeatable PXP mission includes Wainwright and Cabrera. Often, these programs require you to grind so long that the “main” card rewards aren’t really usable within the program. Here, with these cards obtainable before completing the entire program, you get a chance to use them during your grind and actually make them a part of the completion grind.

Stat Missions (Offline)

• Tally 15 Innings Pitched with Dallas Keuchel – 5 program stars
• Tally 12 Strikeouts with Adam Ottavino – 5 program stars
• Tally 10 Hits with Jean Segura – 5 program stars
• Tally 3 Wins with Kyle Hendricks – 5 program stars
• Tally 6 Saves with Mark Melancon – 5 program stars
• Get On Base 12 times with D.J. LeMahieu – 5 program stars
• Tally 10 HR with Miguel Cabrera – 5 program stars

That’s a potential total of 40 program stars for completing these missions. These truly are geared towards offline grinders because of the time involved here.

Stat Missions (Online)

• Tally 9 IP with Dallas Keuchel – 5 program stars
• Tally 6 Strikeouts with Adam Ottavino – 5 program stars
• Tally 5 Hits with Jean Segura – 5 program stars
• Tally 2 Wins with Kyle Hendricks – 5 program stars
• Tally 3 Saves with Mark Melancon – 5 program stars
• Get On Base 8 times with D.J. LeMahieu – 5 program stars
• Tally 5 HR with Miguel Cabrera – 5 program stars
• Tally 9 IP with Adam Wainwright – 5 program stars

There’s another 40 program stars available for completing all online missions. It needs to be noted that you do not earn progress in both categories simultaneously. You must play online and offline separately in order to complete each set of missions.

Showdown

Defeat Adam Wainwright in the Final Showdown to earn yourself another 15 program stars.

Conquest

Fear not as there’s also a Conquest map to help work on offline missions and earn some additional program stars. Complete the new map to earn 20 program stars.

Event Collection (Optional)

The latest Event also went live today and provides an extra opportunity to earn up to 40 program stars.

• Collect Lance Lynn (5-win reward) – 4 program stars
• Collect Xander Bogaerts (20-win reward) – 16 program stars
• Collect Jason Heyward (12-win entry reward) – 16 program stars

We finally get a 99 overall event reward with Signature Series Xander Bogaerts. He might not be a top-tier SS by sliding into the 30’s in overall SS rank, but it’s a step in the right direction as the flood of 97 overalls has been blindingly boring.

Career Tribute Pack Collection (Optional)

Similar to the Pennant Chase Program, there’s a special pack featuring exclusive cards with a corresponding collection. The major plus here is that the Career Tribute Program does not feature multiple stages. That means you can lock in every single one of these cards to gain significant progress in the entire program.

• Collect Signature Series Paul Goldschmidt (#23 1B)- 10 program stars
• Collect Prime Mike Moustakas (#36 3B) – 10 program stars
• Collect Signature Series Evan Longoria (#34 3B) – 10 program stars
• Collect Prime Patrick Corbin (#68 SP) – 10 programs stars
• Collect Signature Series Elvis Andrus (#52 SS) – 10 program stars
• Collect Signature Series Kenley Jansen (#2 RP/CP) – 10 program stars

These might not all be top cards to add to your squad, but there’s a lot of fun players here. It also doesn’t hurt that Kenley Jansen is easily one of the top relievers in the game. You still need to have some pack luck or shell out some Stubs for these as the Career Tribute Pack features 1:5 odds of pulling the featured cards. You can gain a total of 60 program stars just for locking these cards in.

Career Tribute Choice Pack

Finally, the “boss” pack of the program features three hugely popular hitters in Diamond Dynasty: Christian Yellich, Matt Carpenter and Carlos Santana. There’s no collection attached to these cards, so the only program progress you’ll earn is through the PXP mission. You’ll come away with two Choice packs for completing the program.

3B Signature Series Matt Carpenter (St. Louis Cardinals)
Meta Overall rating: 107.40 – #15 3B

RF Signature Series Christian Yelich (Milwaukee Brewers)
Meta Overall rating: 105.29 – #41 RF

1B Signature Series Carlos Santana (Cleveland Guardians)
Meta Overall rating: 107.92 – #17 1B; #7 C

All three of these players have fan-favorite swings and are Diamond Dynasty legends in their own right. They also fit the theme of the program as they’re all grizzled veterans at this point and in the case of Carpenter and Santana – could feasibly be done after this season. Yelich will play a pretty solid outfield for you across the grass, while Carpenter can play three positions on the infield safely. Santana has the huge selling point with Catcher eligibility, where he actually ranks out as a top-10 backstop. The switch-hitting capability combined with the attributes and swing will make Santana one of the more popular cards, at least through the rest of the season.

The bread and butter of this program is easily Adam Wainwright and Miguel Cabrera. As the featured icons this program is built around, both guys get pretty good cards to send them off into the sunset.

SP Signature Series Adam Wainwright (St. Louis Cardinals)
Meta Overall rating: 104.79 – #12 SP

Waino gets what is easily his best card ever in this program. He’s always featured a Sinker/Cutter combo with the big Curveball to boot, but he gets juicy attributes here. Coming in with 114 H/9, 109 K/9, 104 BB/9 and 117 Clutch, Wainwright just misses out on being considered a top-10 SP in Diamond Dynasty. That Sinker might not the fastest or have Outlier, but it does feature 99 Control with 92 Break which will be plenty strong enough. The Cutter has 98 Control with 99 Break and comes in at 86 MPH, creating enough of a differential with the Sinker to cause timing problems for the batter. Wainwright’s signature Curveball is here in the form of a Sweeping Curve that comes in at a slow 75 MPH with 95 Control and 99 Break. Ultimately, this is the best version of Wainwright we could hope to see and should be plenty good enough with proper sequencing and pitch selection.

1B Signature Series Miguel Cabrera (Detroit Tigers)
Meta Overall rating: 109.18 – #10 1B

This is the third version of a Signature Series Miggy we’ve gotten and not only is it the best – it’s also the best Miguel Cabrera card in general that we’ve gotten. One of the greatest right-handed hitters in baseball history, Cabrera features max Contact against both sides with 121 POW R and 112 POW L with 125 Clutch. The defense is quite a bit better than I’d have imagined with 83 stock Fielding. Granted, a primary 1B doesn’t need off-the-chart defensive attributes but it does increase the likelihood that Miggy will make some crucial scoops at 1B. Cabrera does have LF and RF eligibility along with 3B, though the 52 Speed should hopefully low enough that no one willingly runs him in the grass.

Inexplicably, though, Miguel Cabrera features zero Quirks on this card. I suppose it’s entirely possible we get another Cabrera before the end of the game, maybe a super-juiced Retro Finest from his Triple Crown year to truly send him off into the sunset. But quite a few of these cards lack Quirks, which probably explains their relatively low meta overall ratings.

The Closer

SDS rebounds nicely here with the Career Tribute Program. After the Pennant Chase program introduced a needless and convoluted design, we get a more traditional and streamlined path here with offline and online missions. Programs ultimately still need some work in terms of overall design, but this course correct is a step in the right direction. The introduction of online-centric missions needs to be permanent. I still don’t know how I feel about introducing the special packs within the programs, especially with collections attached. It just feels like a lazy way to force FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) as opposed to generating a reason to grind/collect cards. At the end of the day, it does provide a way for players to reliably generate Stubs and that alone might make it a good decision.

Adam Wainwright and Miguel Cabrera get respectively competitive cards, at least from an attribute standpoint. There’s some other really fun cards here like Christian Yelich and Carlos Santana. Not to mention the literal #2 reliever in the entire game in Kenley Jansen. Where the Pennant Chase Program felt skippable, the Career Tribute Program feels like a must-play.

There’s the full breakdown of the Career Tribute Program. Are you excited for any of the cards in the program? Do you have any fun memories of Adam Wainwright or Miguel Cabrera? Let us know in the comments!