Buying MLB Packs

For completing collections which packs should be purchased?  The 15 MLB Pack Pitchers + Position goes for 17.5M, then there's the 7.5M packs:

6 MLB Pack Position Players
6 MLB Pack Pitchers
6 MLB Pack Pitchers + Position

I believe buying all of these every once in a while could help speed up the collection completion process.  For a while, I never even considered buying the 6 MLB Pitchers + Position pack but recently found that a few cards that I've been trying to get for weeks were readily available in this pack.  I even found a Dallas Braden in this kind of pack as well.

Diamond Dynasty Scouting Report

PadChillow
This team used several Baltimore Orioles players.  All of the Orioles pitchers I faced were pretty tough.  Jason Hammel started the game and Jim Johnson had a 1-2-3 ninth. 

The 99 rated arm in CF won the game for PadChillow.  His Diamond Dynasty trained center fielder gunned down two would-be runs at home.  I'll make a note of this and start using the same "blueprint".

+diamonddynasty

Recycling relief pitchers

 Lately, I've been having bad luck recycling relief pitchers with position players.  Usually, the result would be another position player but I've been getting my fair share of relief pitchers and closers back.  When this happens, I try to recycle the MLB reliever with a bronze card and this usually gives me a Diamond Dynasty card that I can at least try to sell.  It's weird.  Maybe I just ran into a string of bad luck with MLB relievers.

Recycling relievers till the preview gets to A- to A+ may not always be a good thing.  I always seem to get the same relievers over and over again.  I might start mixing and matching low end relievers with low end position players and see how that goes.  The goal is to turn those unneeded reliever cards into a position cards - which have more recycler value.

Recycling high end starting pitchers with high end position players has resulted in some pretty good elite cards that usually sell for profit.

Diamond Dynasty Scouting Report

xMeRRiLL
This team uses all MLB players.  I didn't have any problems against his pitching as long as I was patient.

xMeRRiLL tends do a lot of "bunt dancing" and other annoying things.  When he had a comfortable lead he attempted to steal second base when there was a man on third.  I got the runner in a pickle.  The runner on third eventually came home just before the tag.

Finding Dallas Braden

Dallas Braden is part of the "Active No Hitters" collection which currently has the highest reward (30M) out of all of the collections.  From my experience, Dallas Braden can be pretty hard to find.  Currently, the highest bid for his card is at 7M so if you find a way to get him you can probably make a nice profit.

I recently got lucky and found him in a 6 card pitcher pack but I also happened to land him with the recycling tool on that same day.  I recycled Trevor Bauer (73 OVR) and Shelby Miller (82 OVR).  This produced a c+ to B card preview and Dallas Braden's OVR is 84(B).  Both Trevor Bauer and Shelby Miller were non-collectable cards and Dallas Braden is a free-agent type card.  Maybe the chances of landing more of these free agent cards are better if you recycle non-collectable cards together. Maybe this was just a coincidence but who knows.

Diamond Dynasty Scouting Report

tiptop00
This was probably the best hitter I've ever faced.  If you look at the Diamond Dynasty overall leader boards nobody else comes even close to his .440 batting average.  He's able to make good contact on almost anything.

From what I recall, all of his big hits were from fastball type pitches.  If anything, maybe next time I'll throw more breaking balls at him but I'm sure he'll adjust.

MLB or DD Starting Pitchers?

If you look at the top 20 teams on the leader board most of them will exclusively use Diamond Dynasty pitchers in their rotation.  I think going with a Diamond Dynasty rotation is probably the most effective approach because you never know how an MLB pitcher is going to perform unless you very familiar with him.

With MLB pitchers, I've had some success with those elite guys like Felix Hernandez, Justin Verlander, and Yu Darvish but it seems like they always have that one bad outing every once in a while.  Also, Verlander was recently selling on the market for 25M.  It's hard to pass that kind of money up.

Diamond Dynasty Scouting Report

sgorm
I had a comfortable 6-1 lead after 5 innings so I brought in A.J. Griffin to see how he pitched.  Griffin's changeup and curve ball are supposedly very slow.  In this game, Griffin got tagged for 6 runs in two innings.  I'm starting to think that maybe using only Diamond Dynasty pitchers is the way to go. 

Every pitcher I faced on sgorm's team was a sidearmer.

JohnnyHopkins_
I faced two of his pitchers and, from what I recall, there were no four seam fastballs in their repertoire.  JohnnyHopkins_ likes to work fast.  He had a few balks and also didn't appreciate my batters calling time.
 
Interestingly, the two pitchers of mine that JohnnyHopkins_ faced happened to be "factory issued" sidearmers.  I have never changed a pitcher's motion to the sidearm type unless I was trying to recreate Dennis Eckersley so having two sidearmers appear in the same game was rare.

KiNgSriz
Game was played at Coors field and the connection was very smooth.  KiNgSriz will swing almost at everything and is able to make at least some sort of contact no matter where the ball is thrown so be careful how you pitch to him.