Like many Ultimate Team-style modes in other sports games, MLB The Show 25‘s Diamond Dynasty allows its players to skip a ton of grinding and buy its virtual currency to quickly attain the best cards in the game. However, many — if not most — Diamond Dynasty players can’t afford to do this and will have to make do with a “no money spent” team.

“No Money Spent” is exactly what it sounds like — a method of playing Diamond Dynasty without forking over any cash outside of buying the game itself. This is the preferred method of building a team for many players and content creators. Luckily for them, Diamond Dynasty in MLB The Show 25 isn’t nearly as predatory or wallet-draining as other card-collecting modes in other games and offers its players plenty of resources and methods of organically creating viable teams for no extra cost.

Here are the best ways to go about building a “no money spent” team in MLB The Show 25.

Do Programs And Team Affinity

As we’ve stated in previous pieces — including the one about what to do first in the mode — doing Programs and Team Affinity is key if you don’t want to reach into your wallet or your reserve of Stubs to get players. And it’s not a bad method, either.

There are plenty of great players available through Programs and Team Affinity, and plenty of XP to gain (which we’ll tackle in the next section). Many of these players are diamond-rated and among the best you can get in the game that aren’t Collection rewards or Live Series players you have to purchase on the market. Here are a few below:

• Christian Moore (Pipeline Series): An 82-rated card with a sweet and good versatility in the field, and available by only doing Moments in the Pipeline Program.
• Leodalis De Vries (Spring Breakout): Should you be able to grind the Spring Breakout Program and collect all of the players in the series, De Vries is an 87-rated middle infielder who is a switch hitter. He’s been getting rave reviews amongst the Diamond Dynasty community and is a must for your team. All you have to do is grind Spring Breakout and earn him as a Collection reward.
• Yoshinobu Yamamoto (Tokyo Series): To commemorate the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs’ season-opening series in Japan, SDS has dropped the Tokyo Series program with Yoshinobu Yamamoto as the grand prize. He’s an excellent starting with a solid pitch mix, and he could very well be your ace.

These are only a few of the cards you can get completely for free through Programs alone. But what about Team Affinity? Well, there’s no shortage of gas in that category either.

Outside of some of the meta cards available early on in each Team Affinity reward path, a lot of them boast some amazing diamonds as well. Right now, bullpens are going to be thin, and TA provides quite a few really good players who can come in late and shut the door on your opponent. Some of them are as follows:

• John Franco (New York Mets): Finding bullpen pitchers is hard enough as it is. Finding good lefties to come out of the pen? That’s nigh impossible at the moment. But John Franco will at least partially resolve this issue. A fan-favorite of the MLB The Show faithful, Franco has some nasty stuff, including a screwball that will drive opposing batters crazy. He’s especially effective against lefty bats.
• Justin Martinez (Arizona Diamondbacks): Martinez is a nasty option for your bullpen and has an outlier sinker as his primary. Though pitching seems to rely more on sequencing this year with the advent of Ambush Hitting, an outlier sinker is always going to give batters fits, especially if it has a 4-seamer and splitter to work off. Martinez has all three, including a slider, so he’s a must.
• Babe Ruth (New York Yankees): Good bullpen pitching isn’t the only thing you can find through Team Affinity. In the Yankees’ path, SDS is giving away a free 85-rated Babe Ruth. Equipped with a good swing, overpowered quirks, and strong hitting attributes, you can’t go wrong with the Babe. He also has first base as a secondary, meaning his poor fielding attributes won’t be a liability.

Like the Spring Breakout series, these are only a few of the options you have when completing Team Affinity. But how do you grind these Programs without needing to play online?

For one, Events are a good way to build out PXP and XP for reward paths and Programs if you’re absolutely opposed to playing any single-player mode. But if you’re not above playing the CPU, Conquests and Play Vs. CPU are viable options as well. As far as Conquest goes, it’s the best way to grind out all of the Programs. Not only does it provide some exclusive cards that can help with your Collections, but it also requires only a handful of three-inning games that can be played on low difficulties if you’re playing it right. This allows you to double dip: collect rewards and packs, and knock out missions and objectives. Speaking of which…

Complete Missions And Objectives

Some of the best rewards available right now are available through the XP Reward Path. It’s here where star players like Jake Arrieta and Boss packs can be earned. All you need to do to progress through the XP path is collect, well, XP. And this can be done by knocking out those Programs we just talked about.

As with the Programs, the best way to do this is to play Conquest maps and knock out Program missions and objectives. Because in between the players and packs you earn from them, there are also certain milestones that reward you with straight-up XP.

For instance, in the Tokyo Series Program alone, you can earn up to 20,000 XP by gaining 70 of the 75 Stars required to complete it. The Spring Breakout Program is even more generous, giving you a whopping 50,000 XP for completing it. The same goes for the Pipeline Program, which also grants you 50,000 XP. In total, that’s 120,000 XP from Programs alone that gets you two Cornerstone Evolution cards that you can add to your lineup once you’ve progressed through those paths, and some high-value packs.

Invest In Cards Early

To this point, we haven’t mentioned Stubs. This is mostly because virtually all of the Programs we’ve mentioned provide some Stubs for completion, as well as enough packs to hopefully nab something you can flip for profit in the Marketplace. But earning Stubs outright isn’t the only way to earn them in MLB The Show 25. A lot of profit can be made by making investments and/or flipping cards daily.

I’ll be honest, this isn’t a method I often use because it is time consuming. Doing a little flipping doesn’t take long, but to truly make big gains, you need to invest either long term or always be checking places like ShowZone to see what cards are worth flipping right now. Investing also ties up your Stubs in longer-term investments, which means you won’t be able to improve your squad elsewhere if you want to grab some players off the market.

The best advice we can give is to either get used to investing in the “penny stocks” of the market, whether that be bronze/silver players or random equipment items — flipping them over and over for small gains — or plant your flag and start grabbing some bronze and silver players you think could go gold or diamond later in the year. Even if you just end up quick selling all those guys once they hit gold or diamond, those are good margins.

Find Meta Cards And Budget Beasts

Speaking of Stubs, a big part of saving them in MLB The Show 25 comes down to finding cards on the cheap that you perform well with. We’ve done a more extensive piece on budget beasts you can add to your team for really cheap or no cost at all, so feel free to check that one out. But we’ll break down what to look for if you’d rather venture out on your own.

When it comes to meta cards and budget beasts, what you are essentially looking for is a player that is either a low-rated Diamond or a high-rated Gold that possesses anything that could be considered overpowered. For instance, if you have a pitcher who is 81-rated but has a good pitch mix with an outlier, then that could come in handy (think Jose Alvarado with his outlier sinker). Or maybe, you need a good bat in your lineup and stumble upon an 84-rated card that has quirks such as Dead Red or Bad Ball Hitter.

Upon finding such players on the Marketplace or in Programs, snag them up and put them into your roster. Don’t be afraid to grind through single-player modes or Events to parallel them either as doing so will provide boosts to the attributes and make them even more effective.