This next pack from the repack I've been working through is more typical of the stuff you'll find in these repack products. It's a 12-card pack of 2014 Topps Update Series. It's also one of those packs that you open and scan and think,"I have nothing to say about these cards at all." But I need posts and this will help to pump up my numbers.
This Carlos Gomez card is probably my favorite one of the bunch, but that's not really saying much. He was a Brewer at the time but he got traded to my team, the Astros, in the middle of the 2015 season. He's a bit too demonstrative for me, but I guess that's not a super horrible way to be. I think baseball needs to have some emotional guys around to keep things interesting. His antics have contributed to some bench-clearing incidents over the last couple of years. I hope he can produce for the Astros in 2016.
Like I said in the opening paragraph, this was a pretty slow pack. It's nice to get a couple of pictures where you can actually see the ball in play, like that David Murphy fielding shot or the Leury Garcia bunt.
I've heard more chatter recently about the NL moving to a DH format, which I personally would like to see. Let the pitchers pitch and the hitters hit. Maybe I'm just bitter because Adam Wainwright was one of my higher picks in fantasy baseball last year and ruptured his Achilles tendon while batting in April. Besides, adding the DH to the NL means 15 more potential big bats to chase for my fantasy rosters. I say let it happen. The only thing we'll miss out on is the comedy of errors that is Bartolo Colon at the plate.
My obligatory insert for the pack was a Gregory Polanco Gold parallel. That's a pretty decent card to pull as a parallel, given the many middle relievers and platoon players that appear on the checklist. I think it should be a rule of some kind that only even numbers of horizontal and vertical cards should be placed in packs so that I don't have to do these funky scans with 3 or 5 cards in them.
These pictures were buried at the bottom of my Scans folder for a very long time, and I've finally gotten around to chopping and cropping all the images. Judging by the contents of the scans vs. what I remember coming out of the average box of these cards, I think the scans are made up of the 'hits' from 4-5 boxes of 2014 Topps Mini Baseball and either one amazing or 2 really good boxes of 2013 Topps Mini Baseball. The scans are dated December 2014, so these were probably the result of some Black Friday or Cyber Monday deals. I've gone ahead and broken the scans out by insert type. Today's post features all the Gold parallels from the scans. This first card is a League Leaders card featuring the 2013 NL Home Run leaders Pedro Alvarez, Paul Goldschmidt, and Jay Bruce. The Gold cards from 2014 Topps Mini have a print run of 63 cards while the Gold parallel in 2013 had 62 copies of each card.
The star of this trio is Adam Wainwright, who was unfortunately injured early this season and missed much of the year with a ruptured Achilles tendon. Somehow he was able to make a very rapid recovery and made 3 relief appearances late in the season, just 5 months after the injury. That didn't help my fantasy teams any, though, as I drafted him at the top of my rotations in a couple of leagues this year.
Anibal Sanchez is another guy I drafted in a couple of fantasy leagues, although not in the early rounds like I did Adam Wainwright. His numbers did plenty of damage to my teams' pitching lines before I dropped him. I didn't do very well in fantasy baseball this year. It was nice to pull a Josh Reddick Gold parallel as he is one of my main PC guys. I haven't added a whole lot of his cards lately, though. The 2014 Mini parallels suffered heavily from chipping and flaking along the edges and corners.
One of the 2013 Gold cards was this World Series card featuring the moments leading up to some man love between Sergio Romo and Buster Posey.
I can't say I have any love for the Giants. Madison Bumgarner has pet Basset Hounds, though, so I guess there is something good about the Giants. Their fans do seem pretty devoted, at least among the category of 'people I know who are Giants fans.' Here's my Basset Hound:
He's kind of a lazy turd, which makes him a perfect pet for me. His fur is super soft, which is pretty much why we keep him around.
Here are the rest of the 2013 Gold cards. Nothing too crazy there. Motte's beard game is pretty strong, so I tend to take notice og his cards. Kyle Seager has been a pretty decent sleeper player in fantasy baseball the last couple of seasons. He hasn't got the big name or the big market appeal, so he comes at a discount in drafts.
This guy, however, does not come at a discount. Most years over the last decade or so he has been worth the high pick, but 2014 and 2015 saw most of his counting stats dip a bit over previous production that led to two MVP Awards and plenty of voting consideration in the years he didn't win the award.
Jason Motte and his beard make another appearance in this post, this time with his 2014 card. That grip on Matt Thornton reminds me of an idea I had to photoshop fruit into the hands of players so that they all would appear to be standing around holding apples and pears and stuff. It would work especially well in sets with a lot of close-up posed shots, like Heritage.
Jeurys Familia racked up 43 saves in the regular season and he's come away with 5 saves so far in the postseason. Pretty good stuff. The Astros could have used a bullpen arm like his for their playoff run. The Mets are a game away from a World Series berth. If the Blue Jays and Cubs don't put something bordering on miraculous together it looks like there's gonna be a Royals - Mets World Series for 2015.
Closing things out (shoulda put Familia's card here; then that would have been a good pun) is this trio. Brad Peacock started one game for the Astros this year, then went on the DL with an intercostal strain. He could come back in 2016. Nelson Cruz was an All-Star for the Mariners this year, hitting 44 home runs and batting .302 on the season. Pretty good numbers. Josh Beckett's card shows the chipping and flaking that this year's parallels had, especially along the right edge there. Josh Beckett retired after his 2014 season was derailed by injury. He was in the Cy Young conversation in 2007 and a 3-time All-Star. He put up decent strikeout numbers for a starter throughout his career, so I had him on a few fantasy baseball rosters over time.
That does it for the Gold parallels from this batch of 2013 and 2014 Topps Mini baseball parallels. This is by far the longest of the four posts I've put together for these cards, as the Golds were the most numerous parallels in these sets.
When I saw how bright and colorful this year's Topps Finest offering is I knew I had to get the set, but I didn't want to try building it through busting packs. I couldn't see the value in that, especially when I was able to get the full base set of 100 cards on eBay for about $17. A box of Finest is going to have a few inserts and autographs, but more likely than not won't pay for itself. And it's going to take at least two $100+ boxes to build a full base set.
I scanned the whole set so I could upload the photos to Zistle and figured that if I am going to go to all the work of scanning and cropping these images, I might as well post them up here and get a few free blog posts out of it.
The thing I noticed right off the bat is how dang many Rangers there are in this set, probably because there are three of them within the first 10 cards. I should probably do a count and see how many cards each team gets in the set. I might not do that, though, because it sounds kind of like work. The problem is that I have already raised the question, so my mind will not just let me set the question down and walk away. After extensive research, I have found that the Rangers have 8 cards on the checklist.
I believe that is the most cards of any team in the league, with even teams like the Yankees and Dodgers getting 5 and 6 cards listed, respectively. The Athletics and Astros each get 1 card in the set, and the Giants have 2 cards on the checklist.
The bulk of each card-back is taken up with the player's 'Finest Performance.' Most of these are a great moment from their 2013 Major or Minor League season, but Guerrero came from Cuba and gets a special category listing highlights from his time playing there.
The yellow-to-green fade of this particular color scheme reminds me of a Fruit Roll-Up. This Spongebob Roll-Up isn't the exact one I was looking for, but it's close enough.
I am rapidly running out of things to talk about here. I know this guy isn't Gordon Beckham, but that's the first guy I think of when I see this card. I guess there's only room for one Beckham in my life. Sorry Tim, David, and Victoria, but Gordon is my Beckham because he has occasionally contributed to the downfall of my fantasy teams by being the least reprehensible 2B on the waiver wire when my #1 guy was injured.
Jay Bruce may have pooped his pants just as this photo was taken. And with the move to potty jokes the devolution of this post is complete.
Kemp is the 2nd Dodger in the first 10 cards in the set, but it didn't elicit the same response as the 3 Rangers players did. Probably because the Dodgers have a few cards between them and all the Rangers are clumped together right smack in the middle.
Who? I guess Jimmy Nelson took some time out from chasing Superman around and learned how to throw a baseball. I know, Superman's sometime sidekick is named Jimmy Olsen, but it's pretty close. How would you like for your Rookie Card to call you out as 'jumbo?' Apparently this dude did pretty well in the minors, but has struggled a bit with the Brewers this year.
Well, that's the first ten cards in the set. I will probably post more of them at some point unless I get bored with this project.
