One of the drawbacks of this year’s MLB 12 The Show Diamond Dynasty is that you aren’t notified when a card has been sold or when you win a bid on a card.  If a card is sold, it will be automatically removed from your inventory and the earnings will be added to your budget.  If you win a bid on a card it will simply be added to your inventory and you need to try to discern which new card was added.  When dealing with a bunch of generic named Diamond Dynasty cards it can be a bit difficult to find new cards especially when the inventory limit is 100 cards.

To help overcome this drawback, I wrote this userscript (for The Show Nation website) which will help keep track of the inventory count and it will also show how many cards were added and removed since the last page refresh.  When cards have been added, the script will display a list of the new player names.

Download Diamond Dynasty Inventory Tracker

Grid Drawing or copying images with a grid is a popular way to ensure that your proportions and layout in a drawing are correct. Here’s a method that I used for drawing Diamond Dynasty logos:

1. Install ImageGrid.
2. Find an image on the internet that you like and right click on it and go to Image info to get the location of the image.
3. Go to the image location and click on the imagegrid bookmarklet. You will now see a grid on your image. Change the grid line count to your preference. In Diamond Dynasty, the logo grid is 20×20 and the uniform logo grid is 20×10.

4. After you have chosen the desired grid right click and save the image. The default name might be canvas.png.
5.  Open the image in your favorite image editor and color in the boxes on the image that you have drawn in Diamond Dynasty so you can keep track which boxes have been completed.

I’ve added a section that shows MLB 12 The Show Ratings  for all players that were on a 25 man roster when MLB 12 The Show was first released.  I thought having these sortable ratings available might be valuable when training Diamond Dynasty players.  Using these MLB ratings helps give you a basis for the type of Diamond Dynasty player you might want to develop.  I would imagine Franchise and RTTS mode players would also benefit from this database.

The other day, I sorted through the pitching attributes and found some values that could be used to build an elite starting pitcher.  If you sort the pitchers by Clutch you’ll see several of the elite starting pitchers at the top of the list.  Most of them have a pitching Clutch of 80 and above, K/9 is around 90+, and BB/9 is at least above 75.

I also included a way to sort by pitch type.  Now you can filter out which pitchers have the Running FB in their repertoire or you can determine what pitcher has the highest Break rating in their sinker.  Also take a look at the pitching attributes for Roy Halladay.  His sinker Break is at 76 and his change-up Control is at 83.  Also, take note of his high Clutch and BB/9 attributes.  If you are looking for defense up the middle you’ll notice that most top 2B and SS players will have fielding and reaction attributes of at least 75.  In the outfield, most good fielders will have an 85+ Fielding and Reaction and an 80+ Arm with 75+ Accuracy.  For catchers look for an 80+ Arm with 75+ Accuracy.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Diamond Dynasty allows you to create a team from scratch by customizing your team’s location, name, colors, uniforms, and logos, all of which can be edited freely at anytime.  Once, created, the team is given a handful of MLB baseball cards and Dynasty baseball cards that, when activated, add the players to your team roster.

The fundamentals of Diamond Dynasty revolve around the difference between MLB and dynasty cards the unique systems that support each type.

A Dynasty player is a long-term investment that requires training similar to that of the ‘Road to the Show‘ player.  Dynasty players come with between 35 and 45 games available.  Each Dynasty player has an “aptitude” rating that will affect how much it costs to train him.  Dynasty players are supplemented with an award/achievement system that unlocks unique uniform patches.

MLB players are short-term investments that slot into your roster ready to play at their current attribute levels.  MLB players always come with 10 games available and cannot be trained.  Completing collections of MLB players will reward you with budget bonuses.  Budget is used to train your players, purchase card packs (Dynasty or MLB), and purchase cards from other users.  Most of your budget is earned by playing either head-to-head online games, or vs. CPU against MLB teams.  Head-to-head games are matched and ranked using an ELO rating system that most competitive online games now use in some form.

Every fifth game played, your team is reevaluated for placement into one of five competitive divisions in Diamond Dynasty, Spring Training, Season Series, Division Series, Championship Series, and World Series.

Training
Training is unique to Dynasty player types.  MLB players cannot be trained.  All training is done from the ‘Training’ screen, found from the Diamond Dynasty Home.

Training Costs
Training a player costs budget.  The budget cost to increase an attribute is listed next to the attribute.  Training costs are determined by a number of inputs; Aptitude, Position, current attribute level, and recent training history.  The higher a players Aptitude, the lower his training costs.  Specific Attribute costs vary depending on the position of the player being trained.  For example, it costs less to train a catcher in blocking than an outfielder, because blocking is a more important attribute for catchers.  The higher an attribute gets, the more expensive it is to increase it.  Lastly, if you train a player excessively in a short period of time, it will cost more to train him due to exhaustion.

Managing Your Team

Most management aspects of Diamond Dynasty take place in the three screens: Manage Roster, Lineups, and Pitching Rotation.

Each teams roster consisted of a mandatory 25-man roster, and an optional 15-man reserve roster, totaling to a maximum of 40 players you can have on your roster at any given time.  Pressing X on a player will bring up the list of management options.  This list is where you Release players or Move them between the Active and Reserve roster.  Releasing a player removes him from your roster permanently and is irreversible.  Sort and Generate Lineups are also among the options in the list.  The Sort option simply reorganizes your roster list by the column currently selected.  Generate Lineups will automatically readjust your Lineups and Pitching Rotation.  If you encounter an invalid roster message, Generate Lineups can often timed be utilized for an easy fix.

You can have up to 100 total cards at any given time.

Activating A Card
To activate a card onto your roster, simply press X on the card and choose the “Activate Card to Roster” option.  If the card activated is an MLB card, it will be added to your collections.  Once activated, a card is removed from your inventory and no longer redeemable.

You can have a maximum of 40 players (25 active, 15 inactive) at anytime.  If you already have 40 players on your roster, you will not be able to activate any cards onto your roster until you release a player or a player expires.  Note:  You can release a player by pressing X on them from the Manage Roster screen and selecting the “Release” option.

Card Recycler
If you don’t intend to activate or sell a card, you can recycle it.  Between 2 and 5 cards can be recycled for a random card of equivalent value and type.  If MLB cards are recycled, they will still count towards your collections.

 Buying and Selling Cards

The Buy/Sell/Manage Cards screen allows you to buy Card Packs, Buy Dynasty or MLB cards, and Sell cards.

Buying Card Packs
Find the “Buy Card Packs” screen from Diamond Dynasty Home.  L1 and R1 tab between Dynasty and MLB packs, and X prompts you to choose your payment method.  You can purchase packs with your teams Budget, or with Credits purchased at the PS store.  Once, purchased, the pack will instantly be opened and display what cards your received.  Any additional management of the cards can be done from “Buy/Sell/Manage Cards”.

Buying Individual MLB Cards
If you are looking for particular MLB players, press X anywhere in the “Buy/Sell/Manage Cards” screen and select “Buy MLB Players”.  Initially, you’ll see a master list of all the MLB players and the lowest prices someone is currently willing to sell them for.  You can filter the list by pressing triangle and choosing the overall range, position, and team of the player you’re looking for.  Press X on a player and you’ll be prompted to either buy them instantly at the current price, or if that price isn’t low enough for you, create a Buy Order.  Creating a Buy order will post a listing for the player you wish to buy and deduct and attach the amount of Budget you are willing to pay.  Players who go to sell that card will see your listing and be able to sell the card directly to you for the amount you’ve offered.

Buying Individual Dynasty Cards
if you are looking for a particular Dynasty player types, press X anywhere in the “Buy/Sell/Manage Cards” screen and select “Buy Dynasty Players”.  Initially, you’ll see a master list of all the Dynasty players that are currently listed for sale.  Press Triangle to filter the list with more specific details of what you’re looking for.  Press X on a player and you’ll be prompted to either buy them instantly at the current price or create a Buy Order.  Creating a Buy Order for a Dynasty Player is a three-step process that will narrow down what exactly you’re looking for.  When finalized, you’re order will be listed and the Budget you are willing to pay will be deducted and attached to the listing.  Anyone looking to sell a card that fits your listing may sell the card to you instantly for the amount you posted.

Selling Cards
If you want to sell a card, you do so by pressing X on the card and choosing the Sell Card option.  Initially, you will see a market Value Comparison that displays similar cards listed for sale on top, and Buy orders this card could instantly fill on the bottom.  To create a Sell Order, press X and choose Accept.  You card will be removed from your inventory and listed for sell.  If your order is filled, you will automatically receive budget in the amount of the sale.

Budget and Credits

Budget
Playing games or completing MLB Collections earns your team Budget.  Budget is used to purchase card packs, individual cards on the market, or train players.

Credits
Credits are purchased through the PlayStation store.  Credits are used to purchase card packs.  To purchase Credits, press Select to access the Hotbar and choose the shopping bag icon.

Play Now – Head to Head
Head to head play is a user versus another user over an internet connection.

In general, Head to Head games reward more Budget than Play vs. CPU games.  unlike Play vs. CPU games, all head to head games are matched and ranked based on team Rating.  When the game is finished, each team’s Rating will be adjusted.  The winning team’s Rating will increase and the losing team’s Rating will decrease.  The amount team Ratings increase and decrease is determined by the Ratings of the two teams entering the game.  Higher rated teams are expected to win so may have more to lose when playing lower rated teams.  the algorithm used is based on the ELO rating system that most competitive online games now used in some form.

Play Now – Play vs. CPU
Play vs. CPU games pit your Diamond Dynasty team against real MLB teams at their home stadiums.  Beating an MLB team will earn your team Budget and permanently unlock the MLB team’s stadium for use in head to head play.

The amount of budget earned for beating an MLB team is determined by the difficulty you choose to play against on the Play vs. CPU team selection screen.  Press L1 and R1 to adjust the difficulty.  Observe that some teams yield a better bounty due to their roster strength.  Losing a game will always yield the same budget reward regardless of what difficulty you choose.

Unlike head to head games, Play vs. CPU games do not affect a team’s rating or individual players’ rating.  Statistics however, are tracked no matter what type of game you are playing.

I think most would agree that it can sometimes be a bit of a headache to read the play by play accounts on the box score pages. It’s especially difficult to keep track of who is currently pitching as you read down the play by play account.  Also, you sort of need a little bit of knowledge on whether or not a player is left or right handed.

Now, play by play account viewing is a lot more enjoyable with this new script.  Take a look at the features below:

1.  Player names are now shaded in blue if they are left handed and pink if they are right handed.  Also, I changed the player names into hyperlinks to their player cards.

Note:  Some players have the same name so they need to be handled a bit differently.  I’ve included hyperlinks for all duplicate names.  In the 2010 set, for example, ‘C.Lee’ could be either Cliff Lee or Carlos Lee.  So, next to C.Lee you’ll find two links numberered 1 & 2.  There’s really no easy way for the script to find exactly which C.Lee is being used in the game so this method will do for now.

2.  Clutch situations are now in “dark orange“.

3.  When Pitch Count Fatigue level gets below F9 the color changes to red.

4.  Ball Park (BPHR/BPOUTS) results appear at the bottom of the play account.  This only applies in the 2010 set.

5.  Pitcher roll percent totals also appear at the bottom.  This only applies in the 2010 set.

The script will currently work with the 2010 and Back to the ’90s player sets.  I was hoping to add All-Time Greats VI but that player list is way too large for me to handle right now.  Hopefully I can add ATG6 sometime in the near future.

Download Stratomatic Enhanced Play by Play Account