A lot of players loaded into MLB The Show 26, saw a bunch of 64 OVR commons in the April Fools program, and instantly wrote the whole thing off. Fair enough. On the surface, cards for names like Kerry Wood, Carlos Peña, Jorge Soler, and Trevor Story look like joke rewards you'd never keep on a serious roster. But if you've been around this mode for a while, you know SDS loves this kind of fake-out. These cards are almost certainly set up for a post-April 1 jump into Diamonds, which makes the program way more valuable than it looks. If you're already planning how to build out your team or even looking for ways to buy MLB The Show 26 stubs, this grind is still one of the easiest wins on the board right now.

The moments are trying to trick you

The weirdest part isn't the challenge level. It's the way the game phrases everything. You'll see a big headline that makes it sound like a normal moment, then the small blue text underneath tells the real story. That's the part you need to follow. In this program, success usually means doing the opposite of what you'd normally do. One moment wants you to avoid hits. Another wants you to get thrown out. Some of the pitching ones are basically asking you to be awful on purpose. If you go in without reading carefully, you'll waste time and probably laugh once you realise the game got you.

Play badly and finish faster

That sounds ridiculous, but it's honestly the best advice for this program. When a pitching moment needs you to allow runs or avoid strikeouts, just groove pitches and let the CPU make contact. Don't overthink it. If a hitting challenge says no RBI, stop trying to square everything up. Bunt, pop up, swing through junk, whatever gets you there fastest. When the mission wants a caught stealing, use the slowest runner you've got and break early. You'll notice pretty quickly that trying to "play well" slows the whole thing down. Lean into the joke and the moments go by much faster.

The extra missions are easy if you cheese them a bit

After the moments, you've still got the PXP and stat goals. The 500 PXP with common players looks annoying at first, but it goes quicker than you'd think if you stack a lineup full of those cards and jump into a low-pressure mode. The stranger missions are actually the easiest. Need errors? Turn on button accuracy and miss the throw on purpose. Need to allow hits? Feed the zone and let the ball find grass. It's not exactly pretty baseball, but that's the whole point here. This program rewards you for doing the stuff you've spent years trying not to do.

Why it's worth doing right now

Even if the whole thing feels like a meme, the payoff is the reason people should get on it sooner rather than later. If these commons flip into Diamond versions, anyone who skipped the program is going to regret it fast. You're putting in a small amount of time now for cards that could have real value on day-to-day squads, and the extra packs don't hurt either. There's also that early completion bonus in the first 24 hours, which makes the timing matter more than usual. So yeah, it looks dumb at first glance, but smart players are treating it like a sneaky investment, right up there with saving resources or stocking up on MLB 26 stubs before the market shifts.