A new Starting Pitcher enters the chat in the form of Milestone Gerrit Cole. The current Yankees’ ace gets an Astros card this week, based off his 300 Strikeout season in 2019 when he struck out a total of 326 hitters.
SP Milestone Gerrit Cole (Houston Astros) – Meta Overall: 90.35; #18 SP
Gerrit Cole cards have never really fared well online in Diamond Dynasty. Despite being one of the best pitchers in baseball for a while, Cole cards typically get beat up online. Cole’s pitch mix simply doesn’t translate very well to MLB The Show 24 and that is the case yet again.
Firstly, Cole doesn’t have an Outlier 4-Seamer which is already a bad start. He’ll hit 100 MPH, but there’s a big difference between touching 100 MPH and throwing 102 with every heater in this game. Cole does get Break Outlier, but that’s not much of a saving grace here.
Secondly, the overall pitch mix is just not conducive to a stellar card. Knuckle-Curves are one of the worst breaking pitches in the game and Cole gets a 2-Seamer instead of a Sinker. The Curve has 99 Break and is the slowest offering this Cole card has, but I still don’t know how often I’d throw it. Pitches like this typically end up as get-me-over strikes or trying to steal front door strikes a couple times a game.
The attributes are pretty solid across the board, which makes the pitch mix even more disappointing.
Headliners Pack 20 is available now in the Show Shop for 7,500 Stubs each with a purchase limit of 5 packs per user. A Headliners Choice Pack with increased pull-odds is also available for 35,000 Stubs each with a purchase limit of 3 packs per user.
Free Vault Pack
An additional bit of content today is a new Conquest map to grind. By Conquest standards it can probably be considered on the beefier side with 9 total strongholds to play.
There’s free packs as usual, including the brand new Headliner pack featuring Gerrit Cole and a free Season 1 Vault pack.
You’ll also earn some XP for completing the map.
Overall, a nice little grind-piece here even it’ll take a bit longer than I like with CQ maps. Vault packs are worth the grind, though, so it’s definitely worth blasting through this map. If you’re looking to keep padding your Season 1 collection to earn Willie Mays, Satchel Paige and/or George Brett; content like this is a godsend.
Cory Wayne Dell
Cory has been writing about all things baseball and gaming since 2022 and has been featured at Operation Sports as well as cited by Forbes. Cory is also a multi-instrumentalist and founder of the band Cargocastle. Cargocastle's latest single, "Truth and Reconciliation," is available on Spotify and all major streaming platforms. Cory is also the author of Shadow of a Monster, a personal memoir currently seeking publication.
