MLB The Show 21 - Team Affinity: Tips & Tricks + Looking Ahead to Season 5

By Oliver Giles

With MLB The Show 21's Team Affinity Season 4 now in the rearview mirror, the time seems right to address precisely what Team Affinity is, for both new players and old, as the system's functionality has changed significantly in this year's game.

On top of tutorials on how to complete Team Affinity sessions in an efficient and fun manner, this article will also look ahead and discuss predictions for the upcoming Team Affinity season 5.

MLB The Show's Team Affinity concept has appeared in the past few installments of the annual game franchise, each time looking a little different. However, the incarnation present in The Show 21 is by far the best version of the system we've seen so far.

Instead of the slow, often dull, slog of completing team-based tasks and slowly moving up the TA reward path for each individual team, the new system offers a much more streamlined experience.

Players are now tasked with completing moments, missions, and exchanges, among other things, for each division instead of each specific team, which has sped the process up immensely.

The delivery method has changed as well. Instead of a long XP grind, San Diego Studios ads smaller, shorter, Team Affinity XP paths every two months or so. As players progress through each new path, they earn rewards along the way, including in-game currency, live series card packs, and the ultimate goal, Team Affinity Choice Packs.

These packs allow gamers to select one of 5 MLB player cards, one representing each team in the division, to add to their squad for use in online play. By the time you complete the divisional team affinity reward path, you will have 5 TA Choice Packs, allowing you to obtain all 5 featured MLB cards, no lock-of-the-draw or garbage loot box system required.

And, as is typical with MLB The Show Programs, there are plenty of different options when it comes to how you advance on a Team Affinity path. This begs the question, what are some of the best ways to achieve fast progression without turning the process into a tedious and difficult grind.

That's what this article is all about.

Progression - Tips, Tricks, and Strategies

Exchanges - Exchanges are one of the best ways to jumpstart your path progression, allowing you to jump reasonably far down the path right off the bat, pun fully intended. By trading in cards for points to increase your path XP, you can typically complete around ¼ of the whole path in under 5 minutes, picking up plenty of rewards along the way. Often, this is enough path progression to get you the first TA Choice Pack.

You can also exchange Showdown vouchers if you really want to.

Exchanges: Save "bad" Cards! - The cards available in the game become better and better throughout the year, with higher-overall level cards being added several times a week. Since by this point in the game's lifecycle, you probably have an all-Diamond ranked squad, you may feel the impulse to sell off any Gold, Silver, or Bronze overall cards you get while playing the game— DON'T!

The higher a card's overall rank, the more points it's worth in Exchanges. Save your unused cards for echanges to stop yourself from having to spend Stubs on the store to buy them when a new Team Affinity program comes out. This rule also goes for low market-value Flashback Diamond-overalls cards, which can be worth a surprising amount of Exchange points.

Similarly, if you pull low-diamond cards from a pack while, don't sell them unless you have an excellent reason too. At this point in the game, where 85 - 89 Overall Diamond cards rarely sell for over 5,000 Stubs, you're better off saving them for Exchanges.

Collections - Similar to Exchanges, Collections are a great way to start off your path progression. Entering specific types of cards into Collections, typically Flashback cards (Topps Now, Milestone, Player of the Month, etc.), is a great boost of early rewards path XP and, unlike Exchanges, you actually get to keep the cards afterward.

Missions -  After you've completed all your exchanges and collections, make sure to check the missions tab. These missions can be a fun way to earn path XP as they require you to actually play games to complete. Pay close attention to repeatable tasks that can be performed offline (such as total bases, strikeouts, and plate appearances), as these can be the perfect opportunity to jump into a game and beat up on Rookie level NPC's for fun, easy path XP.

Missions: Theme Team - Some of the most straightforward missions to complete in the past few TA programs were based around easy to accomplish tasks with players from different divisions, stuff like getting 15 strikeouts against an opponent, CPU, or another player, with pitchers from a specific division. On top of that, a large number of those missions were repeatable, allowing pliers to complete them over and over again. This is great news if you want to use a division-by-division approach to get 100% completion in a TA program. Simply create a new squad, separate from your main one, and fill it entirely with players from the division you're looking to complete. Then simply start playing games and watch the XP from repeatable missions such as Total Plate Appearances, Ks, and Total Bases start piling up. This is a great approach if you aren't confident enough in your abilities to get vouchers by playing the often difficult Showdown mode and/or don't want to put in the time required to complete a whole March to October campaign. 

Looking Ahead - What to Expect in Team Affinity Season 5

By this point in the year, it's obvious to most long-time fans of the series that there will only be one more Team Affinity program drop— the possibly overpowered Season 5.

Just like in MLB The Show 20, expect TA Season 5 to be the "Show's Finest" program, featuring star players from each team this year, typically with 97+ overall ratings.

In last year's game, this meant a few cards per team in some cases. However, due to the different way Team Affinity works this year, we may just be looking at a one card per team kind of deal, similar to the other TA seasons so far. With that in mind, it's always possible that they'll have some other cards mixed ed in as well, possibly in the form of high-overall flashbacks.