MLB BURNOUT! ALBERT PUJOLS JUST GOT TOUGHER!

A lot has happened since the last PAX Squads episode, let's get caught up. First and foremost, Aaron Judge has been acquired. He is in the inventory and the Yankees collection is complete. Along with that, we had some movement at the trade deadline. Tarek Scouble is no longer a part of the Tigers collection, which means all we need to complete this is Max Clark, which means Byron Buxton is the only 90 overall that we need in the entire American League. I repeat, we are 190 and 187 from Albert Pujols. And we are just Byron Buxton, Jacob DeGrom, and Max Clark from finishing the American League. Five total players away from unlocking all three 99s and essentially beating PAX Squads for the year. And of course, Weekend Classic from Season 5. But this is where we need to talk. I got MLB The Show burnout. I can't lie, I can't deny it. I have been saying for years, people ask me all the time, how do you play this game so much? Year round, 365 days a year, this YouTube channel is all about baseball and MLB The Show. The answer really is I don't. I go through stretches like this where I just don't want to play this game. And so I don't. That's usually how I get through my burnout and not wanting to play it, is I just don't play it. I played two Weekend Classic games, got absolutely blown out, never finished the rest of them. I've just been in that. The last month has been nuts. We covered the All-Star game, we just had the new baby. I'm physically in Iowa covering the Field of Dreams at the time you're watching this video. We've been filming stuff for Warehouse Games and John Boy Media. I've been doing a lot of Phillies and Philly coverage over on Instagram. I've pretty much just been bombarded with things that aren't MLB The Show and this game's not motivating me. And I know you guys are bored of it as well because series-based content doesn't do what it used to either. Even if you look at my channel right now, the best videos on my channel the last two months are franchise videos and my backyard baseball video. San Diego Studios has already lost a large portion of their Diamond Dynasty audience for the year. A good bit of them are playing college football and Madden and have been gone for a month. So we are going to kick off season six as we try and complete this series and unlock Troy Tulewitzki. It'll be the first time in PAX Squad's history that we actually get the collection reward. And we're just five players away. Our lineup is going to be Pete Crow Armstrong, Sean Figgins, Katel Marte, Andrew Jones, Shohei Otani, Rock Kalowski, Matt Olsen, Jose Ramirez, and Jorge Posada. I'm so sorry. I almost say Mike Wazowski every time I read his name. I can't help it. There's something wrong with me. I apologize. On the mound is going to be 99 Shohei Otani. And now let's see what our challenge for today is. We complete this challenge. We can unlock a collection or program player. And there's been a lot of them added to the game because I've been slacking for the last month. A team cycle. All right. Single, double, triple homer. We need all four in this game. Now I've taken a little bit of a break, but I feel much better and I'm ready to go. We jump in. Today's episode is brought to you by SeatGeek. MLB playoffs are right around the corner. NBA, NHL, NFL is also right around the corner. With over 35 million downloads and more than 70,000 listed events, including concerts, sports festivals, and more. No surprise. SeatGeek is the number one rated ticketing app. Right now, if you head to SeatGeek.com, use code Johnboy10, you can get 10% off of any order from any event, anywhere on the website. Make sure you click the link in the description box down below. It'll redirect you. You won't even have to put the code in. You don't even have to use it now. If you click that link down below, it'll add it to your account. You can use it later. Check out SeatGeek, code Johnboy10. Link in the description. Here we go. And we're going to be the home squad. That's going to make it tough to hit the triple, but we do have the speed. We got to hit 97 Sandy Alcantara. We start the game with an Otani strikeout, turning into a tough at-bat seventh pitch. We're still at 2-2, slurve this time, way out in front for our second strikeout. Try to go one-two sweeper. I obviously didn't want to throw that for a strike. And Lombard goes the other way, yikes. Just like that, it's two-nothing in the first inning. He's homered on the sweeper, the fastball, and the splitter. Three at-bats in a row. That ball was annihilated, dude. Now, Pete Crow Armstrong's going to get to that. Three straight homers with two outs. First at-bat of the bottom half, we line out to first base with Pete. Here comes Figgs. Sean, get one back. A no-doubter out to left center. That gets rid of the home run, kind of just snuck over the wall, but that was crushed. Get in that gap. Get over the wall. Oh, I thought Quintel had a chance. Okay, that's going to be the... Get down, get down, get down. That's going to be the double. So, now we're a single and a triple away. Andrew Jones, all over that change-up, but it didn't get the exit velo. We'll tag up and go to third. There's going to be two outs, though. We were all over that. I don't know. Here comes Otani. Dude, I don't know. We kind of hit that perfect. 1-2 on Otani. Hit that right back up the middle, an RBI single for Otani. Went down and chased it 1-2, but we were all over it. Rock. Oh, I was a little late. I was late. Our PCIs were electric that inning. We trailed by just one. Popped up. One pitch, one out to start the second. A big bounce back. Ground ball to first base, just fouled. Center field, two down. When that ball came out of his hand, I thought it was another home run. And a broken bat pop up on the sinker. Three up, three down for Otani. Let's keep scoring. Sinker, playing right back up the middle. I see you, Bobby. J-Ram. We got the PCI in just enough, and we tie it up in the bottom of the second. Big time. I think, did that hit that target on that first deck? No, just to the right. Get out of here. We didn't miss that one at all. Now, that one might have gone into the porch. We're going to have to watch it. It was a low liner. But it may have had, we might have hit it hard enough. Adley's devastated back there. Just watch Adley's reaction. You don't even have to watch the swing. Just watch Adley. Oh, no. Oh. Just devastated. Here we go. Hit it here. Oh, it's just under. Get through that hole. A single for Pete Crow Armstrong. We're just triple hunt. Ground ball up the middle. No, diving play. What a play. We're safe everywhere. That keeps the runner at second, though. And I'm just going to have to try and hijack a double steal here. Taking off, double steal, first pit slider. And they're both safe. Two points on the double steal. Two in scoring position now on Cattell. I was late. Should be deep enough to score the run, though. Won't hurt the batting average on the 99 speed. It's going to be close. It's a short left field. But we are safe. It's a sack fly. Gets us to 5-3. We'll move up to third. And here's Andrew Jones. And Andrew Jones, no shot. First pitch hanging slider. We were just a little early. Fly ball to right. Oh, we got there. I didn't think he had a chance. Ground ball to second base. Backhand play by Marte. Nice. Let's see if I can't squeeze a fastball by him here. Oh. No, we're not trying that again. He's dead red. He almost got that. Hey, bang. Unk is back. First off, before we go back through and count our stats, let's just open up all of the ranked rewards that we get for the fresh season here. So I'm late to the party, but it is the beginning of the new season. We have five standard packs there. We have one ball in as a habit here. No diamond. Got our wild card pack, which is a random deluxe pack. And then our division series pack, which is a choice deluxe pack. The random pack gave us a mural. And the choice pack will go all-star. First, let's do these five standard packs. It'll knock us down to 49. Could you imagine if we just pulled Scooble right now? Can you imagine if we just pulled Scooble right now? 89, Pete Crow Armstrong. That gets us Blake Snell. Open up this mural series pack really fast. See what we get. 92, Ryan Braun. And then our all-star game pack we're going to get. Go. The 95, Luisa Rise, San Francisco Giant. And I think, well, we got three more standard packs still. Three more standards. We got a diamond bat. One more. Last standard. Just like that, we're going to go in and grab Blake Snell. I'll put a bi-order in on him. We'll get him locked in. So now we're just Scooble away from Albert Pujols. Any 90 plus overall diamond pull will get us Albert Pujols. 18 total bases, five runs scored. That's 23 points. Add two for the stolen bases is 25. Add two for the strikeouts is 27. Add 25 for the Rage Quit puts us at 52, and we get a choice pack for the win. Sadly, no challenge complete today. We were just a triple away and we had six innings to go, but he took it from us. He sure did take it from us. All right, let's open the 52 standard packs, see if we can get lucky with these, and then we'll make a decision on our choice pack. Well, we need a 90 plus overall. Just pulled Pete Crow Armstrong out of standards. So diamonds are live right now. They're hot. I need one 90 plus, and we can debut Albert Pujols. It's gonna be sad seeing Matt Olson leave the team long-term. For the year, we'll be done with Matt Olson on pack squads. But Albert Pujols, I can't believe we're this close to getting collections done in this series. 10 years, it's the closest we've ever been. Down under 20 packs now. They've actually been really bad. I had a good feeling about this after the Pete Crow Armstrong pull, but this is really, really bad. Just four more packs, zero diamonds. Right there was number 50. We are 50 packs in. We didn't get a single diamond out of any of these standard packs. Brutal. And today's choice pack is gonna be on just a 10,000 stub headliner. For two reasons, it's all I can afford right now, but also second, Jonathan Broxson would be a fun add to this bullpen. He is the feature diamond. So along with if we pull a feature diamond, he'll be a beast. I've had some pretty good luck with getting live series diamonds out of headliners this year, much better than any other of the choice packs. The choice packs suck. Headliners and ballins, they've been pretty good to me this year. So let's go ahead and open this up, see what we can get. Double gold. That's a tough choice pack. That's on me. It does appear though that we pulled Max Clark. So we have finished the Detroit Tigers collection now. Bang! The Motor City Kitties are done in the live series collection. One more collection down, just four to go. Dylan Dingler, almost up to a diamond. You get the 91 George Kell for this collection. Obviously, 90 Scoobles in this collection all year. So now it's just Buxton and DeGrom will unlock Felix Hernandez. And just Tarek Scooble or any 90 plus overall will unlock Albert Pujols. Good first game back from the boys today. A dominant performance from the lineup, and we needed it. We're 47 and 14 on the year. The weekend classics have been up and down. And I'm leaving my house in 25 minutes to go to Iowa for the Field of Dreams game. So by the time you're watching this, I'm either on a plane or in Iowa by now. Here's what to expect on my channels coming up. I'm thinking about doing multiple games. It's funny because there was a Rage Quit today and we only played one game. But I'm thinking about doing like two or three games in one episode of Pack Squads, and only doing one, maybe two episodes a week. And then that'll allow me more upload slots to do more offline content, more non MLB The Show videos. I wanna play other baseball games. I wanna play backyard baseball. I wanna do more franchise content. And along with all of that, I do wanna keep Pack Squads going, but I can't keep doing it the way I'm doing it. Three, four episodes a week. It's tough to even keep up with Pack Squads. Because like I said, if you're grinding this game, no money spent, like not a dollar. It's tough, dude. It really is. Because even the marketplace with the bots and everything this year is tough. You gotta have good pack luck with the free packs that you get to have any sort of like speed boost through no money spent. It's tough. I think I wanna do like more in one episode of Pack Squads, less episodes per week. Do other content, play other games. And there's gonna be a ton of short form content. Again, if you're not following me on Instagram and TikTok, go do that. We do vlogs. I just went to a card show with my kid over the weekend. I'm doing a ton of content in Iowa. The amount of videos that I posted from the All-Star game was insane. We have a lot of content like that coming up in the second half of the year and into the post season. You're gonna see more shorts like this one right here on my channel moving forward. So if you're into baseball trivia and just watch that video, you know what I'm talking about. A lot more content like that coming. A lot more short form content in general. A lot more franchise. A lot more non-MLB the show. Doesn't mean Pack Squads is gone. That's not gonna happen. However, the burnout's been real on MLB the show 26 for me. I can't lie. It's just, it's a repetitive issue. I actually think this game's better than last year's, but there's like a repetitive thing. And we're seriously lacking legends. Love y'all though. Hit that SeatGeek link down below. Like the video, subscribe if you're new. Sorry if this is your first time seeing me and I kind of went on a, I don't even like this video game complaint. I actually love this video game. There's just some things I wish they would change and the burnout's been pretty bad.