2014 Topps Finest 11-20

I am sure I can find something to say about many of these cards, as this group even features a few of my 'kinda' Player Collections. I don't know that I go out of my way to buy cards of these guys, but I certainly welcome them in trades and take notice when I pull them from packs. Max Scherzer fits on that list, although with all his success last year he went too early in this year's fantasy drafts and I didn't get him on any rosters. If a guy isn't on one of my rosters I tend to lose track of him, which has happened with me and Max this year. Let's go check on how he's doing.

[Time Passes]

Well, he's having a pretty good year. He's got a 15-5 record with a 3.26 ERA, a 1.15 WHIP, and a 10.55 K/9 ratio (220 K's) over 187.2 innings so far on the year. His last outing wasn't so good, as he gave up Adam Dunn's last home run with the White Sox before his trade to Oakland.

I don't even know what to say about Buster Posey. The coworker in the cubicle across from me is a fan of the San Francisco teams (Giants and 49ers), so I try to track their recent games and place in the standings a little. It gives me some small talk material at least, which is something I am not often very good at. I try not to overpay in fantasy baseball at the catcher position, so Posey has probably never been on my fantasy rosters.

The Rangers want us to know that they are still around in this set. I think I mentioned in the previous post that there are a boatload of Rangers on this checklist. Beltre has been pretty good this season, but not good enough to live up to his draft position. Josh Donaldson was drafted an average of 72 picks later than Beltre and ranks higher among 3B so far this season. I have both of them on one of my fantasy rosters, which is pretty nice. Beltre's average balances out Donaldson, and Donaldson has higher production in the counting stats.

Carlos Gomez has been pretty good, but when I think of him I think of the little incidents he's had as a result of showboating, to include the big kerfluffle with the Braves and the unwritten rules of baseball last year. And then again this year between him and Gerrit Cole that led to the benches clearing and at least one black eye. Although Gomez apparently really rubs other teams the wrong way, I still reserve most of my spite for McCann specifically and the Braves in general. It's not like I have a special place in my heart for the Brewers or anything. I can't explain it. It's the unwritten rules of my card collection.

I don't know what to say here. Kolten Wong appears to be giving props to Carlos Gomez, which is probably something that will never actually happen. But on this blog anything is possible. Wong has been pretty good this year, staying within the top 25 or so second basemen in the league and getting within the top 15 over the last month.

This was a pretty good picture to choose for a loud, colorful card set. That green uniform is wild. I actually went and searched the image to make sure it wasn't some Photoshop trickeration. I guess they wore these green uniforms on September 14, 2013 in honor of Halfway St. Patrick's Day.

I keep thinking that this is Matt Dominguez, the goofy-looking Astros guy. It's not. It's some other guy. They do play the same positions, so there's that. He had 76 at-bats in 2013, but none so far this year. The back of his card suggests he can hit for some power.

You shouldn't buy into a career year, but I bought into Chris Davis' crazy 2013 on a lot of fantasy baseball rosters this year. And I am in the bottom half of the standings with a lot of those teams. He hasn't even been a top-25 guy at his position this year. The power has kind of been there in little bursts, but it doesn't look like he is going to pull his batting average above .200 anytime soon. The face he's making in that picture kind of reminds me of this:

It's basically the same face, except Davis' mouth is tilted the other way. Maybe he just saw his stats posted on the ballpark Jumbotron.

I've seen this picture somewhere before. Oh yeah, it was in my last post. On Bumgarner's 2014 Topps Chrome card. The only difference is that his Chrome card is cropped a lot tighter, so it really highlights the wonderful face he's making. I really wish the major sports leagues would open up their trading card licensing so that more than one company could make licensed cards for a given league. Maybe the added competition would spur some creativity and get Topps to stop reusing the same image across many brands and even across a couple years of product.

Closing out this post is Paul Goldschmidt. My son randomly chose the Diamondbacks as his favorite baseball team a while back, but I don't think he remembers that he did that. It's all about football and the Bengals for him. Last season he would cheer against the Broncos every game, I guess as a way to show some independence from me and my wife. I let him look through a bunch of football cards and choose a team of his own so his favorite team wouldn't always be whoever had played against Denver last. He liked the Bengals because of the orange in their uniforms, so I've been slowly feeding Bengals cards into his little collection. They play the Broncos in December, so I imagine he won't be talking to me very much for a couple days when Peyton Manning and whichever Broncos aren't suspended at the time hang a whole pile of points on them. Yes, I am talking trash on my blog to my five year-old son, who just started Kindergarten this week.

One of the twins (3 years old) sleeps with some Star Wars cards I gave him underneath his pillow. Sometimes I see him sorting through them and naming the characters. Both twins were getting jealous that their big brother was getting football cards, so I now have to split the stacks of doubles into three parts, so each one gets a few cards. They usually wind up in the couch cushions or behind some other piece of furniture, but at least they express some interest in them.