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Operation Sports

Chase Becotte

MLB The Show 25: 3rd Inning XP Path Guide and Overview

Show! Bernie Williams Matt Cain Trevor Story Corbin Carroll Cornerstone MLBShow

We’ve emerged from the 2nd Inning Program and now find ourselves looking at three new bosses for the 3rd Inning Program. All three bosses are legends we’ve seen before. They are Postseason Bernie Williams, Standout Trevor Story, and All-Star Eric Gagne. There is also a Postseason Matt Cain to snag on the XP path.

This month, we get two lefty killers in Trevor Story and Bernie Williams. With Gagne, it’s the usual high-end fastball with a 73 mph slurve to try and throw hitters off the scent. All the bosses are 92 overall, and I think they’re a better batch of players than last month’s bosses overall.

We’ll run through those bosses and Cain, and then the Cornerstone players for this month below. As a reminder, you can also collect the three 2nd Inning Bosses for 30K XP towards this month’s XP path.

MLB The Show 25 3rd Inning XP Path Guide

Cornerstone Evolutions

It’s a month of lefty killers as Justin Turner has 125 contact vs. LHP and 100 power. He’s only eligible at 3B and has weak defense and speed. Still, with 93 vision and high contact vs. RHP, he’s a solid 90 overall.

Jim Palmer has never been too popular in MLB The Show because he lacks high-end velocity, but he does have a sinker, slider, and changeup. I don’t think his control is quite elite enough, but he at least has 110 stamina if you do get in a groove with him.

Ralph Kiner comes in as another obvious all-power bat as usual. He’s got 100 power vs. RHP and 101 power vs. LHP. His hitting stats in general are great, but the problem will be that he’s slow and only eligible in LF. Overall, this is not a bad batch of Cornerstones for the month.

Bosses And Rewards

Story has had a weird career full of unfortunate injuries, but he’s always been a solid Show player with a good swing. He’s a top three option at SS because he doesn’t have an obvious weak part to his game beyond the vision. We’ll see if he’s still a top three option by the time most people can reach him in the XP path.

Bernie Williams is a switch hitter with even better hitting stats than Story. His issue is his defense and speed fall below Story’s, and he has to play CF. I think you can make the case Bernie’s attributes eclipse Lightning Corbin Carroll, but I would still take Carroll over him. Either way, he’s a top three option in CF.

All-Star Eric Gagne follows the same trend as the other two bosses of being a top three option at his position (at least on day one). Some versions of Gagne can be very easy to hit, but I think this looks like a good pitch mix assuming you can locate one of the splitter or vulcan change. You really have more three pitches than five because some of his pitches are very similar, but sometimes that can work in your favor.

Postseason Matt Cain is not someone I’m too high on using. I haven’t had tons of luck using him in the past, but theoretically he should be in everyone’s starting rotation as of today, but I don’t think that will last very long.