Dual Captains: Increasing Complexity and MLB The Show 25 Stubs Opportunity
Hitting and Pitching Captains
Every MLB team now features two captains — one specializing in hitting and another in pitching. These captains provide tailored buffs that encourage strategic squad-building, offering strong incentives to include more players from the same team to unlock Tier 2 and Tier 3 synergy bonuses.

Economic consequences:

Pitchers who were undervalued previously gain market relevance, boosting their demand and price.

Team-specific supply-demand imbalances emerge, especially for teams with deep rosters or uniquely powerful captain buffs.

Trading strategies must account for the dual nature of boosts — buyers and sellers consider how pitching and hitting cards combine economically.

Variable Boost Strengths
Some captains deliver significant attribute increases (+12 to +20 in certain stats), while others provide modest or situational boosts. This uneven distribution affects card liquidity and pricing:

Cards on teams with powerful captains experience price spikes and increased stub flow.

Cards from teams with weaker or less versatile boosts remain stagnant or depreciate.

This disparity can create arbitrage opportunities across theme teams and across patches.

Impact on Stub Economy and Market Behavior
Increased Stub Velocity
More players are engaging with the market, trying to acquire synergistic cards and complete theme teams to unlock powerful bonuses. This increased participation accelerates stub circulation — more buying and selling occurs, leading to higher stub velocity.

Higher stub velocity typically indicates a healthier economy with more opportunities for profit but also higher price volatility.

Price Inflation and Volatility
With new demand surges for certain cards, prices can inflate rapidly. For example, gold or silver players on teams with strong captain buffs might see price spikes beyond their raw performance value. Speculators looking to capitalize on these trends can cause bubbles that may burst if buffs change or if the meta shifts.

Market Fragmentation
The economy now has more "micro-markets" — segmented by team, position, and synergy potential. This fragmentation means the overall market no longer moves as a single entity. Instead, individual player groups behave differently based on their team’s meta relevance and cheap MLB The Show 25 Stubs captain boost strength.