Gint-a-Cuffs VIII: Pack 23

Gary Sanchez: -1 (Yankees Base -1)

Michael Pineda: -1 (Yankees Base -1)

Ngorongoro Crater: +2 (Natural Wonders +2)

Pack Total: 0.00

Running Total: 102.00

Average Per Pack: 4.25

Box Pace: 106.25

Gint-a-Cuffs VII: Pack 7

+2 Starting Points

+3 Black Bordered Mini

Pack 7 Points: 5.00
Box Running Total: 40.00
Per Pack Average: 5.71

Box Pace: 142.86

Pack of the Day 101: I Went Tail Over Teakettle on the Way to Get a Jumbo Pack of 2015 Topps Allen & Ginter (Bubba's Bangin' Batch of Baseball Bits 2015 Topps Allen & Ginter Contest #6 Entry Post)

This all ties together in the most tenuous of ways, and it eventually leads to some baseball cards. I wanted some of the new Allen & Ginter, but I hadn't had an excuse to go the the store. On Saturday we ran out of dog food and I needed to get some lunches and dinners for this week as my family is out of town on a trip, so I had my excuse to go shopping, but I needed to take a shower before I went anywhere. I wouldn't want to show up on People of Walmart for being a stinky fool.

So there I was, showering away, when I stepped on a super slippery spot and began to fall. I cast my gaze about for something to grab hold of, but there is surprisingly little in the way of handholds in our tub. I did manage to grab at the hose leading to the shower nozzle, but not in any way that helped me. I was going down. As I crashed through the shower curtain I thought about how I was all alone in the house, and that's how people wind up dying from falls. I also found time to swear a couple of times. I managed not to hit my head on anything, but I did manage to gather a nice collection of injuries. I tore a big chunk out of one of my fingers, either from grabbing at the shower nozzle or from hitting my hand on the lip of the garbage can. I jammed my other wrist on the floor, and that is still pretty stiff. My back took the brunt of the fall, landing awkwardly on the stepstool my sons use to get up the the toilet. I bruised my tailbone pretty hard and pulled something higher up in my back. That injury has been the worst, as it hurts to do common activities like moving and breathing. I am hoping it clears up pretty soon. I am also looking at getting a non-slip mat for the shower.

I wasn't dead, so there wasn't much to do but step (carefully) back into the tub, get the nozzle pointed back in the right direction, and finish my shower. After that, it was off to Wal-Mart. I had intended to go to Target, but I fiddled around for too long in the day and Target was closed. I wasn't expecting Wal-Mart to have any Ginter, but I hoped that they did. As I rounded the corner of the aisle I saw that there were both Jumbo Packs and Blaster boxes. I first grabbed a Jumbo Pack, but then I figured that they'd been searched and I might be better off with a Blaster. I put the Jumbo Pack back on the hook and grabbed a blaster. Then I finished my shopping. I determined that I probably didn't have $20 to spare, so I went back and put the Blaster on the shelf and grabbed a different Jumbo Pack. That is the pack whose contents I am showcasing in this post.

Here is a scan of the pack itself. It is all pretty standard stuff. 14 picture cards are promised, and the little disclaimer at the bottom reminds you that the cards shown aren't necessarily the ones contained in the pack. So apparently there aren't Jose Abreu and Clayton Kershaw autographs inside every Retail Jumbo Pack of 2015 Allen & Ginter. Good to know.

Every base card in the pack was a baseball player. I thought that was kind of a crazy occurrence. Usually you get at least one non-baseball subject. Some people open packs of Ginter that contain no baseball players! My favorite of the bunch was this George Springer card. The Astros have got a huge series coming up against the Angels after dropping 2 of 3 against the Royals over the weekend. They have the same number of wins as the Angels, but have two more losses on the year. A series win could get the Astros back on top of the division. Springer won't figure into the result at all, as he is out for a few weeks with a fractured wrist.

As far as the card design goes, the set looks like every other Ginter set of the past few years. I went back and looked, and it doesn't look exactly like 2013 and 2014 Allen & Ginter but if you held up a card from any of these three years at random and asked which it was I would probably answer wrong much of the time. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I don't know. I guess at least the brand is identifiable. You aren't really going to mistake A & G for anything else.

I like Alex Gordon all right, even if the Royals have dropped a little in my favorite team rankings lately. You might say that me and the Royals have some bad blood after this weekend.

I also have some beef with that Fernando Rodney guy. This is mostly because sometimes in fantasy baseball you find yourself in need of saves, and over the last few years Rodney has been in the discussion for saves on whatever team he plays for. His ratios can be so awful, though, that it's like shooting yourself in the foot to pick him up. He recently got another shot at the Mariners closing job and lost it again to Carson Smith. Wins and saves are cruddy stats anyway, but they are the standard in most leagues so you have to account for them.

Tulowitzki has had an interesting career. Most recently he was in the news for misspeaking (or at least for speaking his mind) and saying that he would continue going out and playing like the Rockies' games matter. It's got to be tough to be one of the better players in the league and spend your whole career on a team that just can't get it together for any meaningful runs. edit: Of course, as soon as I post something like this Tulowitzki would get traded after years and years of trade rumors falling through. He's going to the Blue Jays in exchange for Jose Reyes and prospects.

I didn't realize that Adam Jones had been a Mariner, but I also wasn't paying much attention to baseball in 2006 and 2007. I did still have fantasy baseball teams in those years, but I can cruise through just about any fantasy sports season and barely look at names and teams. It's all a spreadsheet game. I probably do worse in years where I am paying attention to real baseball, because I get hung up on the 'name' players and have a harder time letting someone go when they're doing poorly. That's why I do pretty well at fantasy hockey. I've never watched a hockey game in my life, so it's all just numbers to me. Jones has been a regular on my rosters as an Oriole for several seasons now. This year he hasn't quite lived up to his draft position. He hasn't been a slouch at all, but he hasn't delivered on his late first - early second round price tag.

My one full-size insert from the pack was this What Once Was Believed card about the Flat Earth theory, which is pretty much what it sounds like. People used to believe that the Earth was flat, with edges and corners and whatnot.

I got two minis in the pack. One was a regular old Dellin Betances mini, and the other was a First Ladies insert of Caroline Harrison. She's got a bit of a mullet going on there, so I guess that makes her pretty Metal as far as First Ladies go.

The last card in the pack (actually it was in the middle of the bottom half of the pack, so it was probably like the tenth or eleventh card in the pack) is this purple-framed relic of Zach Wheeler, the Mets pitcher who is early in the process of recovering from Tommy John surgery. It's a nice-looking card, even if the relic piece does have a large glob of dusty lint attached to it. I don't know that it would survive a trip through the laundry, although now that I've thought of it I am kind of tempted to try it out just to see what it would look like in the end.

I also wonder what was left behind in the Jumbo Pack and Blaster box that were originally in my cart. I probably wound up with the best pack out of the bunch, but any time I pick something up and put it back I can't help wondering if I had some mega hit within my grasp.

Oh, and this pack review is my entry for the 2015 Allen & Ginter Contest #6 over at Bubba's Bangin' Batch of Baseball Bits.

Pack of the Day 99: The Decline and Fall of Topps Archives

Topps Archives has been one of my favorite sets of the last few years. I opened up a bunch of the 2012 and 2013 sets and I got through quite a bit of the 2014 product, too. Even though the base cards and inserts were largely rehashes of previous designs, there were enough different things going on to keep any given blaster or hobby box interesting. Although 2014 was the weakest of the three years, it was still pretty good. I felt like the base set took a step back with the SPs no longer featuring a number of different historic Topps designs and the inserts lost some variety, but there was still some fun stuff like the wooden Firebrand inserts and a couple different shiny parallels. Just as I had in 2013, I put together the full 2014 Gold parallel set.

Although I didn't do much research beforehand, I was looking forward to the release of 2015 Topps Archives. Today I went out and picked up a blaster box from Target. Here is the pack design and a scan of the retail odds:

2015 Topps Archives Retail Blaster Box Pack Odds

 As you can see, there isn't a lot going on as far as inserts. It's kind of like Topps is expecting the gimmicky allure of Will Ferrell's cards to carry the whole thing. You'll also see the the SPs from the base set fall at ridiculous odds. In past years the SPs in Archives have been at around 1:6 odds, I believe, so the SP part of a base set was difficult to put together, but not prohibitively impossible. At 1:47 packs this year, the SP set is going to be something not even worth bothering with. Outside of that you have some parallels and some autographs, as well as the Will Ferrell cards.

The non-SP base set is made up of 300 cards, with each group of 100 featuring a design from a different year in Topps history. The first hundred cards feature the 1957 design. It's nice enough and the photographs are all right, but the main thing I noticed about these cards while sorting through the four packs I opened in the car was that these things are almost transparent. The cardstock is so thin that while looking at them in the sunlight I found the backs of the cards bled through when looking at the fronts, and the images on the fronts bled through when trying to read the backs. Also, the cards feel extremely fragile in-hand, like if you hold them too firmly the stack will fold in half. A couple of the packs had cards that were damaged across the top edge because of the packing process and the fact that these things are paper-thin.

The 1976 design is nice and colorful, and I think Topps did a generally good job of mixing in different photographs. I don't know for sure, but I feel like that Hunter Pence photo is a repeat from another set, as well as the Jon Singleton card in the first scan. In artificial light the bleed-through isn't as pronounced, but the cards still feel cheap and fragile in-hand, like they are just asking to be creased. 

The 1983 design also looks decent. I guess I can give Topps credit for that. The base cards are okay design-wise and I would probably be a whole lot happier with this set if the cards weren't so thin. I guess that may be a bit superficial, but a big part of collecting baseball cards is in the tactile experience of sorting through stacks and holding the cards in-hand. You expect certain sets to feel a certain way. Modern sets tend to have thinner glossy stock, while older sets are thicker and rougher. It feels like Topps went with thin and rough in an attempt to split the difference between old and new, and the combination just doesn't work. 

I got three cards in the box that weren't standard base cards. I pulled one of the Will Ferrell cards, this one featuring him in a Cubs uniform. These are seeded at a rate of one per blaster, so this was expected. There are ten different Will Ferrell cards, and each one also has an autographed variant limited to 10 copies.

I also pulled a Gold parallel of Brock Holt. The pack says these fall 1:47 packs, so they only show up about 1 in every 6 blaster boxes. The Silver and Gold parallels are no longer printed on shiny foil, which for me was a big draw in the 2012-2014 sets. I considered putting together one of the parallel sets this year to keep with my annual tradition, but not like this. The 'gold' border is more of a diarrhea brown color, and it just isn't that appealing.

The Gold parallels are numbered out of # / 50, with this Brock Holt card being # 13 / 50. In past years the Gold cards have been numbered out of # / 199, which was a big factor in my decision to collect the sets. A print run of ~200 makes the cards a little pricey, but not overly so in most cases. The Silver set this year is numbered out of # / 199, but it's not foil and I don't really want to collect a full set of gray-bordered cards. The increase in the size of the base checklist from 200 to 300 is another reason I won't be chasing a full parallel set this year. That's 100 more cards to buy, and that is just too much.

 I also got a Presidential Chronicles insert, which features a selection of U.S. Presidents. This is an insert set that really belongs in Allen & Ginter or maybe Heritage. Each President supposedly has a 1 / 1 cut autograph in the product, so I guess availability of cut signatures is how Topps decided which Presidents to include. This insert falls 1:8 packs as well, so you can expect to get one in each blaster.

And that's it. No deckle edges; no cloth stickers; no acetate Gallery of Heroes or wooden Firebrands; no 4-in-1 stickers; no throwback All-Star cards; no shiny parallels; no attainable SPs; no fun. Topps has taken one of my favorite products and removed nearly everything I liked about it. I like the base design enough that I will probably order the 300-card set from a case breaker on eBay, but I won't be building the inserts and parallels and SPs like I have for the last three years. People are going to buy and break this stuff because there is that chance at a Will Ferrell autograph, but I really wish that collectors would let this product sit on the shelves and rot so that Topps would get the message that this is not what Archives should be.

Workin' at the Card Shop 6: Another Year of Spring Fever

A week or so ago I went in to the local card shop to redeem the Spring Fever coupons I received when I purchased my Hobby box of 2015 Topps Series 1. When all was said and done I got 5 Spring Fever packs, each containing 5 cards. I didn't pull any autographs or anything out of the packs, but I also didn't pull any doubles. I chose nine notable cards to scan for this post, either PC guys or guys who are popular among the bloggers. I was surprised to find myself including two San Francisco Giants among the chosen, as I find that fans of San Francisco teams are largely insufferable. But I consider Bumgarner and Pence to be faces of baseball, as in 'guys who make amazing faces on their baseball cards.' Bumgarner's Ugly Pitching Face (UPF) is legendary, and Pence is an All-Out Effort Guy who sticks his tongue out and pops his eyes so you know he's turning it up to 11.

I don't like this year's Spring Fever set as much as I liked the 2014 incarnation, as that set was LOUD. The colors on the 2015 set are darker and more muted, and the foil isn't as rainbow-laced either. Maybe the Atlanta Braves called Topps and demanded a more reserved set that respected the traditions of the game. Or maybe Cal Ripken Jr. tore up the Topps employees' new suits and beat them up a bit to teach them respect for veteran players. Either way, the cards are subdued this year and that makes me like them a little bit less. I still grabbed a full set of them anyway. I do still want them in my collection.

While I was in the shop I decided I ought to actually purchase something. I had intended to try out a pack of Panini's Country Music release to see if I could pull a Joe Diffie auto/relic, but in a surprise development the stuff had sold out. I panicked and asked to instead grab a couple Jumbo packs of Series 1 Baseball. The box he had open had three packs remaining, so I grabbed them all. This Manny Machado MLB Silhouette Logo Pin manu-relic (Manny-relic?) was inside one of the packs. I believe all the manu-relics combine to fall one per box, so this qualifies as a box hit. It's a fairly sharp-looking card.

Here's the back of the card, with the usual praise of Machado's superstar potential. We'll see if he can live up to it and put up a few healthy and productive seasons.

One of the other packs contained this heavy card, a Silver-Framed Parallel of David Murphy, numbered # 17 / 20. The Silver-Framed cards are base cards with their edges cut off that are then pasted into thick metal frames. They are pretty hefty cards and make for a nice novelty item.

I believe the Silver-Framed cards are seeded about one per case, so it was pretty lucky to buy three packs and pull a box hit as well as a case hit. I hope that next year Topps brings back the wilder colors on their Spring Fever cards. I need that splash of color to help me get through February.

Pack of the Day 82: A Second Box of 2014 Topps Stadium Club

Shortly after I purchased my previous box of 2014 Stadium Club at what seemed like a pretty good price, Dave and Adam's made it one of their Daily Deals for $10 less per box. I was weak and ordered some more. These cards are beautiful, and they have a good feel to them when shuffling through a stack. I have most of a base set now, with just about 30 cards missing. There were some Black Friday deals on Stadium Club, but I couldn't justify spending more than I already had on Black Friday. There will be other discounts later. At $55 or less I like this stuff. At $65 and up it seems like less of a deal. I picked a few of my favorite base cards to show off first:

My player collections have seen a bit of a shake-up this offseason, but for the most part everyone's been shuffled to other teams I collect. I call myself an Astros fan and I do collect some specific Houston players, but most of the players I collect are Blue Jays, Athletics, and Royals. I guess that means I am lucky that Billy Butler went to the A's and Josh Donaldson went to the Blue Jays. Even though I like the guy, I don't know how good of a deal Butler is for Oakland. Maybe he'll find himself down there, or the roster shuffling they do will mask some of his weaknesses, It also seems a lot like Toronto won the Donaldson trade, but we won't know for sure until the season plays out. Alex Gordon tends to make some great faces on his cards. I wanted at least one older player for the scan, and Dawson was the best photo in the bunch. I showed off the Wilin Rosario Members Only card a little while ago, and I finally pulled the base card to go with it. I'm not a Boston Red Sox fan, but that celebration shot was too good to pass up, and I wanted to close things out with a couple of fielding shots.

Two of the three Rainbow Foil parallels from this box fit into my player collections. Max Scherzer is getting offers from the New York Yankees, and most folks seem to think he'll be in pinstripes before too long. I guess I'll still set his cards aside for my player collection. I got a Billy Butler parallel to go along with the base card. I'm not a Cubs fan, but that Castro card looks nice enough.

My Gold parallel for this box was CC Sabathia. This would have been a much better pull a couple of years ago.

I got three Field Access cards in this box. I got four in the last box because I got a parallel of the Joe Mauer card. Now I have the base insert to go with it. The Trout and Bench cards have decent photos on them, so no complaints there. I guess the Trout would fit into Dime Box Nick's Awards Show mini collection, while the Mauer would go well in the Kids on Cards mini collection.

My Beam Team for the box is Andrew McCutchen, which means I am having pretty good luck on the player collection front. I like the Beam Team The George Brett Legends insert is another double from the first box. I got one of the better Future Stars cards in Yasiel Puig. Stadium Club would be a fun set to collect all the inserts for, but I don't know if I have it in me to make that a collecting priority.

I pulled two Triumvirate cards, both featuring Dodgers pitchers. The Hyun-Jin Ryu card is another PC card, and is the base Luminous version that comes one per box. The Clayton Kershaw is the Illuminator version, which comes one per case and is made of transparent acetate. I tried interlocking them along the edge where they are supposed to match. They fit together along the bottom half, but up high the die-cuts fall out of alignment.

Here is how they look on the back. The base Triumvirate cards are blank on the back, with the player name and team down with the legal information at the bottom of the card. The acetate cards show the player's silhouette in white.

Closing things out is the three guaranteed autographs in the box. Charlie Blackmon is someone I've actually heard of, as he came seemingly out of nowhere to post an All-Star season. I was able to get in on some of his early big numbers in fantasy baseball. If I recall right, he tailed off at the end of the year, but those first couple of months he was on fire. I don't know much about Luis Sardinas. He played part of the season for the Rangers and may make the roster next year, depending on what happens with Elvis Andrus and Jurickson Profar. Andrew Heaney didn't have a great performance during his audition with the Marlins this year. I don't know anything else about him except that he is on the trade block. His autograph is the Rainbow Foil version and is numbered # 22 / 50. The Rainbow Foil autographs fall about 2 per case.

So I pulled a case hit in the Clayton Kershaw and a half-case hit in Andrew Heaney, as well as an autograph of a guy I've heard of and a few player collection cards from the base and inserts. Stadium Club isn't about the big money hits, so I'd say I did pretty well on this box. I would like to complete the base set eventually, and it would be fun to collect the full Triumvirate base insert set. I wouldn't want to chase down the Illuminator acetate set, but the Luminous base set wouldn't be too awful.

2013 SEGA Card-Gen Extravaganza 7: Kansas City Royals

It's time for another team's worth of cards from 2013 SEGA Card-Gen. This time I am featuring the Kansas City Royals. The Royals get 15 cards in the set, which is two above the overall average of 13 cards per team.

Salvador Perez has been pretty good the last couple of years. He was a top 20 catcher in fantasy baseball in 2012, and in the top five or six for 2013 and the first half of 2014. He offers a little bit of power and a good average. It looks like he's not too shabby on defense, either.

Eric Hosmer has been up and down in his career. He had a good rookie year in 2011, finishing third in the Rookie of the Year voting, and a good year in 2013, with good statistical totals all around and a Gold Glove award. But in 2012 and so far in 2014 he has struggled a bit. It seems like all of these Royals batters have a hard time staying consistent. You almost feel like they're the same guy, full of promise but unable to put it all together.

Mike Moustakas is another promising young bat who hasn't quite panned out. So far this season he is batting under .200 and isn't ownable in fantasy baseball. I guess the good thing about all these guys is that they are fairly young as a group and maybe will all hit their prime in a couple of years and live up to their promise.

Alcides Escobar is one of the Royals who has been pretty good this year, putting up top-10 numbers at the shortstop position, mostly by virtue of his stolen bases and near-.300 batting average. He had a little bit of a down year last year, but was still a top-20 guy at his position.

Alex Gordon has been extremely consistent over the last couple of years, ranking right around 25th among outfielders in 2012, 2013, and 2014. He's a guy I tend to target in fantasy drafts because he gives you numbers in every category and doesn't really hurt you anywhere. He's also got one of my favorite 2014 Topps flagship cards because of the funny face he's making in the photograph as he watches the ball in the air. He looks a bit more serious on this Card-Gen card.

Lorenzo Cain seems to be having a pretty good season this year, but has stayed pretty well outside my sphere of awareness. It looks like he has spent the last few years playing pretty well without standing out all that much.

Jeff Francoeur had a lot of buzz in his career, but again never was able to get it to stick for any length of time. After getting released from the Royals in 2013, he spent some time with the Giants, then got picked up by the Indians system, and is currently with the Padres minor league organization. There are some rumors out there today that he might opt out of that minor league deal in order to go up and be the Blue Jays' fourth outfielder. You've gotta love those high socks he's sporting, probably a remnant of his days in Atlanta, where they do baseball the 'right' way, enforcing all of the unwritten rules of the game.

And here we get to the meat of the lineup, specifically the ham, bacon, and sausage gravy you might find in a Country Breakfast. Billy Butler had a pretty awesome 2012, but his 2013 and 2014 seasons didn't quite live up to expectations. I can't help liking the guy, though. There is still time this year for him to turn things around, but he might want to do that pretty soon. Hopefully he's not hiding an injury or something, because his power numbers are not there at all, and big flies are his calling card.

These 15-card teams are hard to do write-ups on. Here we are just getting into the pitchers, and I feel like I've been working on this post forever already. I haven't even posted any good commentary so far, with nothing you couldn't find just by looking a guy up on Baseball-Reference.com and Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball. But I feel obligated to post something along with these pictures. Luke Hochevar was a pretty middling starter for a few years, but had an amazing year in 2013 as a reliever, putting up video game numbers with a 1.92 ERA and 10.5 strikeouts per 9 innings over 70.1 innings. Unfortunately he is out this season with an arm injury.

Who? It appears that Luis Mendoza is playing pro baseball in Japan now for the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters, after bouncing around the majors and minors here for a few years putting up mediocre numbers. His record there for 2014 is 3-8, so he may not be finding much success there, either.

James Shields would be the ace of this lineup, having been a consistently good pitcher for a while now. He came to the Royals from the Rays in a multi-player trade, with the main guy going the other way being Wil Myers. 2011 and 2012 were really good years for him. He's still pretty good, but his ratios and strikeout rate keep him from being a top fantasy guy.

This season Wade Davis has been a perfect fantasy baseball middle reliever this year. He's got great ratios and a K/9 rate of 14.23 over 36-2/3 innings. He was one of the other guys who came over in the same trade as James Shields. His stints as a reliever have gone much better than his attempts at starting, despite what the back of this card tells us.

Tim Collins is currently down in the minor leagues, having pitched just 17-1/3 innings for the big club this year. He's put up a 0.75 ERA in the minors, so maybe he will get a chance to come back up sometime this year.

Aaron Crow is a decent reliever. He made the All-Star team in 2011, and seems to do a good consistent job. His ratios are pretty good this year, but his strikeout ratio isn't all that hot. I don't have much else to say, so I'm going to go ahead and move on.

Greg Holland has been pretty good since 2011, but in 2013 and 2014 has been one of the top closers in the game, with a big strikeout rate, good ratios, and the ability to rack up the saves. The Royals have a pretty good bullpen, it would appear.

And that does it for the Royals in 2013 SEGA Card-Gen. This post sat in my Drafts folder for a while, but I finally got through it. Hopefully you got through it too. Only 23 more teams to go!

2013 SEGA Card-Gen Directory

Baltimore Orioles

Boston Red Sox

Cleveland Indians

Chicago White Sox

Detroit Tigers

Houston Astros
Kansas City Royals
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
Minnesota Twins
New York Yankees

Oakland Athletics
Seattle Mariners
Tampa Bay Rays

Texas Rangers
Toronto Blue Jays
Arizona Diamondbacks
Atlanta Braves